I was so happy to hear that Graeme McDowell from sunny ‘Norn Irn’ won the US Open this past weekend. It reminded me of a cool shoot I did with him back in 2004 for The Observer Sports Magazine (UK). We spent an afternoon on a Scottsdale, Arizona golf course, just shooting around making pictures, and he was awesome to work with. No publicists, no handlers, just me and him having a laugh. I still can’t play golf though. I guess i never picked up any tips. Anyway, good for you Graeme. I’ve always been keeping an eye on your progress.
A friend recently posted this link on facebook, which lead to an interesting discussion about real vs unreal, as used in the (mainly advertising) media today. Now I’m told it turns out this is apparently a ‘not- real’ moment, or a created video, made by Gatorade, which has gone viral, which of course was the intention in the first place. But the question is this: At what point do they become in-effective and therefore pointless, and in fact just plain stupid. Now I get that the point is to ‘wow’ us, but when you’ve seen so many just not possible things, it becomes tiresome to me, and therefore probably almost everyone else out there. I mean, now were seeing countless babies breakdancing, day- trading etc etc. I mean, come on! Cheap, tacky, creatively lazy. I think it was effective a few years back, when Nike showed a video of Michael Vick throwing a football beyond the stadium walls. And that worked, because the wow factor had traction. But these days, it’s just so gimmicky and cheap. This is why i honestly believe the need for ‘true’ imagery will always have legs. It’s like this is the current ‘photoshop’ filter du jour, a fad that i hope will soon run it’s life- cycle. Remember a few years back when everyone was producing high contrast, desaturated images? That soon went away. The same will be said for gimmicky, ridiculous, over- exagerated footage. Because at some point, it’s human nature to say ” Ok, that was fun, but show me something i can actually connect with.”
I heard today that Lorena Ochoa, the world’s number 1 female golfer ( and has been so since the beginning of time, or so it seems), is retiring right in the middle of the season, and right at the top of her game! I had the great pleasure of being asked by Sports Illustrated to travel down to her home town of Guadalajara, Mexico and do a shoot with her for their end of year portfolio. It was a great trip and shoot, and Lorena was so unassuming and sweet to work with. I can only imagine it’s a temporary retirement ( i.e. a break form the game), as she’s been the queen of women’s golf since she was 8!
