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f3.5 | 1/200 | ISO400

BTS

Turns out this might be the last BTS I am able to post for a while, the business is slowing here and it feels like doom is surrounding the entire business. LA is burning, AI is rapidly developing, and greed is being exposed all over.

How does greed factor in it? Well, the business minds here are very good at sifting their piece from the pie without providing much more than a good time all the while scraping the bottom of the barrel wherever possible from the labor that actually puts the product on the carousel. Now, it’s not that bad, I mean, the opportunities are fantastic and the fun of the production is always exciting, but the reality is the equity is dependent directly on how well you are able to ignore the negatives. The long hours, the poisonous materials inhaled, the inability to affect the artistry when those in charge are making uninspired choices…

I really sound ungrateful, don’t I? Well I will tell you that it is not that at all. I am throughly grateful right up until the point the money is no longer there. The problem that I can discern is that these companies promise big things and then use whatever means necessary to exploit budgets to be as top-heavy as possible. And who is really doing the work?

My last project was a failure from the top down. The people at the top promised this and that and delivered nothing of the sort. Now, a majority of the workers were putting in 110% to make sure that the train stayed on the tracks and we made it to our destination. But, the amount of bloat between the dirty hands and the hand-wringing was spectacular. I will walk into battle with that shooting crew again any day, but when the production team doesn’t do what they set out to do and seemingly think that we are all meant to be on 24/7, things end up quite lame.

But this is all a microcosm of how the industry works and it is in dire need of fixing. Poor management is the death knell of any business, it is a symptom of poor ownership (ownership of problems, ownership of quality control, etc.) and when it reaches the managerial level, that is when you know things are not going to improve. Because if the production team can’t fix things without throwing money at the problem, then there is no fixing the problems that are being swept under the rug.

Will this business change? Who knows. All I can hope for is to work with the good people I encounter, the ones who stick up for the rights of those on the front lines and the ones who know how to plan these major projects accordingly. Until then, I am excited to use my camera in other spaces.

For those who I worked with on the above project, know that it wasn’t you who I am talking about here, so much as the lack of a cohesive unit that I am skewering. The people, the ones who I know in and out, they are my family and I appreciate everything they did for me.