Continuous Agitation – Details, episodes & analysis

This first episode is an origin story — why two working photographers decided to start recording their phone calls and sharing them with strangers. We’ve been having these conversations for years and figured other photographers might get something out of it. But also: Jay can't find much content that reflects the business reality he’s actually living in. Not tutorials. Not influencers teaching us how to establish a personal vision. Just plain talk about commercial photography from people who are in it, confounded by it, and not pretending otherwise.

We touch on AI image generation — and the fact that it’s not photography. We were both relieved to hear Rob Haggart and Heather Morton say publicly that they wish it never happened. Not that that solves anything. We talk about what has actually changed in the business, and the disorienting experience of knowing what a job used to be worth, having no idea what it's worth now, and wondering if the confusion is a character flaw or just an accurate read of the situation.

"What's the value of an image with a lifespan of literally hours?" That's kind of the whole show. But, you know, like not that bad.

Links to stuff we mention:

Chris Buck — Photographer

Chris Buck’s Lena Dunham Blog Post

A Photo Editor — Rob Haggart's long-running blog about the photography business

Heather Morton (@hmphotoprof) on Instagram

Rob and Heather on “The Grain” Podcast about “Photography vs. AI”

Adam Fuss

Man Ray — Artist and photographer; inventor of the Rayograph, the original camera-free photographic image

Theo Welling — Photographer, mutual friend; "see if you can figure out what's going on."

Find us:

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill’s photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: jay@jayfram.com / bill@sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

The Danziger Gallery is showing a large-format AI-generated color version of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico. Prompt: make a realistic color version of Ansel Adams' iconic Moonrise over Hernandez.

Reaction: gross. But also, this is the AI version of Richard Prince shenanigans. Which pulls us into Prince's Untitled Cowboys — Marlboro ads torn from magazines, rephotographed, sold for millions — and one real cowboy photographer describing what it feels like to watch someone copy your life's work and sell it for $3 million.

From there: do we use AI, and what for? Jay uses it as a marketing coach. Bill mostly avoids it for not exactly ethical reasons. Harder question: if a client can get a convincing image from a prompt in an hour, why should they call us? Bill says it’s a business case: if the people who need appealing to – the audience – are moved by interacting with real images and film, and are actively turned off by AI facsimile, then AI ain’t gonna cut it.

"Knowing something real happened matters to me in the context of viewing photographs."

Links:

Ansel Adams Moonrise, Hernandez, NM – the real one

The AI version of Ansel’s Moonrise, along with a new statement released by the Ansel Adams Trust

Giuseppe Lo Sciavo at Danziger Gallery

Richard Prince “Untitled Cowboy” 

Sam Abell’s iconic cowboy photograph

Bill’s Norm Clasen profile

Bill’s Lynn Goldsmith Copyright Story

Cal Newport

Author of Deep Work; Jay heard him on the Offline podcast talking about AI and the atrophy of difficulty

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill’s photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: jay@jayfram.com / bill@sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

Is usage licensing dead? Not exactly. But the business it was built for doesn't really exist anymore. Print is all but gone. Social media now accounts for 80% (!) of ad spend in the US. Clients want the C word [rhymes with shmontent] by the dump truck load and there are ten times as many people willing to shoot it.

@asksternrep, a prominent photo rep with an excellent advice page, recently posted a follower’s question on her Instagram feed and the comment section got real spicy. Her advice to photographers losing bids over usage: be the best photographer you can be, and clients will pay for limited licensing. Will they though? 

We try to unpack what actually happened to the commercial photography market, why work-for-hire is the real threat, and why "hold the line on licensing" is good advice for 5% of photographers all of the time, a few more photographers some of the time, but never all photographers all of the time. 

"Telling photographers to do better is an outdated answer to a structural shift in the industry."

Links:

@asksternrep — Andrea Stern’s (generally) great advice resource on Instagram

ASMP — American Society of Media Photographers

Find us:

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill's photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: jay@jayfram.com / bill@sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

This one’s a Part Two. If you haven’t listened to the last episode – “Let Them Eat Cake” – go do that first.

We pick up where we left off on the unlimited (sa)usage debate that started last episode, this time getting into the practical reality of how we bid jobs, when we mention usage/licensing, and when we don’t. And why the idealistic advice to "hold the line on licensing" doesn't work the way it used to.

In the second half Bill introduces a possible future: retainers. Shooting multiple times a year for a client for less than you might have charged before, but making more than you would for a one-off shoot. Win sorta win? Bill also uses the C-word and Jay doesn’t like it.

"You give the same bid three times and you don't get it, and you say to yourself: I don't think this costs that anymore."

Links:

@asksternrep — Andrea Stern’s (generally) great advice resource on Instagram

ASMP — American Society of Media Photographers

Mike Kelly, architecture photographer

Wonderful Machine — wonderfulmachine.com (commonly referenced resource for licensing and bidding)

Find us:

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill's photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: jay@jayfram.com / bill@sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

How do you handle a good client who becomes difficult? We discuss slow payment, unexpected image use, and how good communication skills are your most valuable asset. Jay describes an annual report/image library shoot for a publicly traded company where 30-day terms weren’t met; after 57 days and a new rush request for more images, he considers withholding delivery, worries about seeming unreasonable, and sends an email to say I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore if that’s ok?

Separately, Jay sees his interior photo used in a New York Times app ad despite being licensed only for unpaid marketing, debating whether to invoice, let it slide, or message the client tactfully and adjust future pricing, while weighing relationship value, leverage, and practical licensing.

"Not needing work is the ultimate negotiating position."

Find us:

Follow Jay on Instagram: @jayfram

Follow Bill on Instagram and Threads: @sawalich

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Jay's photography: jayfram.com

Bill's photography: sawalich.com

Write to us: jay@jayfram.com / bill@sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.

We’re on YouTube! Now you can see our big dumb faces: 

https://youtu.be/gJTkpYIEOp4

This is the place for feedback, suggestions, support, and hate mail.

Today:

I thought we agreed that big photography jobs were dead.

And then a big ol' production plops right on my (Jay's) desk, and I spend a week to ten days gnashing my teeth and crying to Bill about how hard my life is. I'm glad these jobs still exist and I'm glad to even be considered, theoretically. In practice, it's confusing. Are jobs like this still worth striving for, worth building a business around, or are they so rare that chasing them is more of a distraction than an actual strategy? If you shoot two a year, you’ve made it. But in the likely event that you shoot NONE a year, you're f***d.

We get into the treatment process (and why I think it shouldn't exist), what a quarter-million-dollar budget looks like once you subtract 40 other people's paychecks, and the cold email that brought a dead job back from purgatory four years later. Bill asks the hard questions. My answers are FINE. Somebody brings up an orange sofa.

Did I get the job? Tune in next week.

Links:

Bill’s Substack about our content future

Nick Vedros

Lou Bopp

Find us:

Our big dumb faces on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ContinuousAgitation

Write to us: continuousagitation@gmail.com

Read Bill's newsletter, Art + Math: artandmath.substack.com

Follow Jay: @jayfram  /  jayfram.com

Follow Bill: @sawalich  /  sawalich.com

Rate and review Continuous Agitation on Apple Podcasts — it actually helps.