David Menuez lecture

David Menuez's lecture at the Crittenden gallery was another one that I was much more anxious about. Again, his orientation is different from most of the school's visiting artists. I have often wondered what a commercially based career in photography might be like but there isn't really any emphasis on that through the school. I always imagined that a commercial career could be lucrative and still creative and original. Doug's lecture kind of showed me that that was still possible. The way I was beginning to see things was that photography is so abundant nowadays that stock photography was essentially robbing photographers of lucrative contract based work. I felt like commercial photography was a bottom dollar business where the agencies who previously contracted photographers for particular assignments for specific campaigns now just sought out the cheapest stock equivalent. Doug's lecture showed me that there is still a value to being good at what you do and having a vision.

I enjoyed following Doug's stories of the places he's been and the people he has met. He started explaining his journey all the way back when he was shooting the people at Macintosh for time magazine while they were in the process of developing their own operating system. He was able to capture really personal moments like Steve Jobs laughing among other things. If you Google Steve Jobs you wont find any pictures of him laughing and his biggest smiles don't even show his teeth. When word got around that he was shooting Steve Jobs, CEO's and different companies started calling him up to photograph them.

That wasn't the only once in a lifetime kind of stuff that Doug has been able to shoot. I wouldn't describe this as luck but Menuez was actually in New York on September eleventh and got shots of the towers. As crazy as it may sound to someone not from New York, Doug and his wife were actually moved to relocate back to New York after being stuck in the city for three days after 9/11. It seems to me that Doug has a rather nurturing heart. Him wanting to be back in New York after such a tragedy is apparently part of who he is. His work in Uganda is just as commendable. Most of the work that he does there is surrounding a camp full of starving orphans who have lost their families after rebels attacked their villages. Doug tells their story as a select few of them get to travel to the U.S for a dance tour to raise money for the orphans of Uganda. Menuez has compiled the stories and photographs into his book Transcendent Spirit. Not only does he tell their story, but all of the profit from that books sales go to the orphanage.

There is a lot about Doug Menuez that I admire. I admire that he is a family man even though at times his work can take him away from them for lengthy periods of time. I admire that when he realized that he was doing exactly the kind of work that he didn't want to end up doing that he was able to just pack up and move on. It's impressive that he could just drop everything and take three years off to be with his family and get back in touch with what he really wanted to be doing with his career. I could only hope to have a fraction of the success and respect that he had achieved. Though he mentioned it briefly at the end of his lecture, I would like to talk more with him about what kind of approach he might take in today's job market to achieve what he has to this point. I feel like he would have some great networking advice as well as general advice about navigating your way through the business.

I really took a lot away with me the night of this lecture. Its a kind of funny comparison but this lecture was like one of those success stories from those late night get rich quick infomercials. It really made me want to get out there and do it and he sold it quite well. At the same time he put everything into perspective by talking about things like how annually the U.S. averages about 5,000 students that graduate with photography degrees every year. So like I said, I took a lot away with me from Doug Menuez's lecture. and really enjoyed seeing his work.