No sympathy for the creative class

Of course, those who continue to work in the creative class are the lucky ones. Employment numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show just how badly the press and media have missed the story. For some fields, the damage tracks, in an extreme way, along with the Great Recession. Jobs in graphic design, photographic services, architectural services – the bureau’s phrasing indicates that it is looking at all of the jobs within a field, including the people who, say, answer the phone at a design studio – all peaked before the market crash and and fell, 19.8 percent over four years for graphic design, 25.6 percent over seven years for photography and a brutal 29.8 percent, for architecture, over just three years. “Theater, dance and other performing arts companies” – this includes everything from Celine Dion’s Vegas shows to groups that put on Pinter plays – down 21.9 percent over five years. Other fields show how the recession aggravated existing trends, but reveal that an implosion arrived before the market crash and has continued through our supposed recovery. “Musical groups and artists” plummeted by 45.3 percent between August 2002 and August of 2011. “Newspaper, book and directory publishers” are down 35.9 percent between January 2002 and a decade later; jobs among “periodical publishers” fell by 31.6 percent during the same period.

So why aren’t we talking about it?

Live music on Sat, 4-28.

Playing with Sun Drugs on Saturday if you are around the Portland areas. Cello, guitar / singer and lap steel.  Mellow and low volume but fun stuff...

Chris Dave Trio

Amazing Drummer. Brings a very interesting edge and sense of danger to the sound. Crazy....

Why We Have to Go Back to a 40-Hour Work Week to Keep Our Sanity

Odds are that you’ve been doing this for months, if not years, probably at the expense of your family life, your exercise routine, your diet, your stress levels, and your sanity. You’re burned out, tired, achy, and utterly forgotten by your spouse, kids and dog. But you push on anyway, because everybody knows that working crazy hours is what it takes to prove that you’re “passionate” and “productive” and “a team player” — the kind of person who might just have a chance to survive the next round of layoffs. This is what work looks like now. It’s been this way for so long that most American workers don’t realize that for most of the 20th century, the broad consensus among American business leaders was that working people more than 40 hours a week was stupid, wasteful, dangerous, and expensive — and the most telling sign of dangerously incompetent management to boot. ’s a heresy now (good luck convincing your boss of what I’m about to say), but every hour you work over 40 hours a week is making you less effective and productive over both the short and the long haul. And it may sound weird, but it’s true: the single easiest, fastest thing your company can do to boost its output and profits -- starting right now, today -- is to get everybody off the 55-hour-a-week treadmill, and back onto a 40-hour footing.

Hawaii 2012

I'll start to post some photos from our recent Hawaii trip here over the next few weeks as I get them processed out.  Once I get them all done I'll have a gallery then to get them all into one place.

Here is a hand held pano shot with the Fuji x100.  I shot exclusively with that camera on this trip and it and was a treat.  I have not had this much fun shooting since I was in college.  To remove all the headache of DSLR's and just focus on the image is a really freeing thing for me.  Looking forward to shooting more with this camera moving forward.

Getting old

Just realized I have been working in the photo biz for 22 years now. Yikes. First assisting gig for a local Mall (remember malls?) was that long ago. It was where I first learned to call duct tape "Gaffers Tape" to make it sound fancy. LOL!