Graham, you misunderstand: I'm the one allowed mild dyspepsia! ;-)
Lindbergh is indeed a top-bracket name, and I'm sure he could and probably does shoot film when it suits him, but as you say, he too is in the industry, and nobody seems to be that high up the pole they can disregard reality when it's called Client. I suppose some jobs have to be done via monitor surveillance (which is basically what it comes to) but there are also videos where he works untethered, though who knows if there's actually a wireless link to some computer regardless of what's visible. For a while, I even doubted if some of the videos were real or just mugging for the cameras, as he used long lenses hand-held, but I was forgetting IS which I have never had, and recently I did some hand-held shots with my 180mm on a cut-frame, making it equivalent to 270mm... working with auto ISO and set to anything between a 500th and 2000th of a sec, wide open, and to my happy surprise there was no reason to worry, and that's without IS, as I say. With film, I never used even my 135mm off a tripod. So who knows...
Advertising: of course, it's all about selling dreams! Have a look at yacht brochures! That's all of commercial photography: dream-peddling. And there the huge difference between editorial and advertising fashion photography: editorial blatantly sells dreams, and advertising not so much; it has to show how something actually looks, especially nowadays in Internet selling, where somebody has to foot the transport and restocking bill if something gets sent back because it isn't what someone thought it said on the box!
I used to do a regular half-page newspaper advertising gig for one or two of the House of Fraser stores; it was during the peak of the boutique craze, and up in Glasgow we sometimes got the stuff that Harrods hadn't sold - same owner at the time, before the Egyptian became the way to walk - and my brief wasn't necessarily to sell the items we photographed, but to illustrate the idea of excitement just to get young women into the store, where they could then see a broad range of stuff in the boutique, and probably - hopefully - move further through the store and even patronise the restaurants... it was about holding the arms wide open to the world that was young and alive, perhaps nervous about large upper-level stores, and trying to make them friends for life. The "ladies who lunch" already had their place within the system, and populated an entirely different world within the same stores. With matching prices, I may add, which was great, because I could look at the price of a blouse or a hat, and feel absolutely not nervous at charging as I did, and in guineas! Spendid idea, the guinea. Neat little earner in time.
But the impoverished are always amongst us, and they are never going to be customers of the glittering bazaar. But neither must they be allowed to close the funhouse doors for everyone else. If that happens, then those same folks ain't gonna get no benefits nowhere: killing the goose wot lays dem golden nuggets has never solved a thing.
As I say, I don't personally know how photography fares regarding money these days; I read that photographers are usually obliged to do video too, and all of the stuff at prices lower than they were a few years ago. I'd find it difficult to imagine that the top guns don't feel the wind of change too; even the magazines are selling less and less space, have to set up and go online... maybe the electronic dream is actually turning out to be a nightmare. Ask Yahoo.
;-)
Rob
