Life in Mumbai, or Bombay or whatever you call it these days.
- A Question from Tim Gruber
Hello everyone. I know I’ve been terrible at posting but I’ve been slammed lately. Not only have I been super busy but almost everything I’ve been shooting has been assignment based so I’ve not been allowed to post anything until it runs… which hopefully will be happening shortly.
Here are a few images I’ve shot lately that aren’t embargoed.
Since I’ve moved to India I’ve received several emails from friends and colleagues asking all kinds of questions about working overseas, moving for work, working with agencies etc. Its not like I’m an expert but people seem to want to know how my experiences have been so far in India and I’m happy to let them know. I figure I’m going to start posting the questions and answers here. Maybe it will spur some discussion maybe it will bring new questions, maybe it will show the world that I really have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.
This first one is from Tim Gruber. Tim is an up and coming photographer based in Louisville, KY who graduated from the Ohio University School of Visual Communications this past May. You can take a look at his website here and his blog here .
He wrote me a few weeks ago asking:
Hey Michael,
Hope things are treating you well in India? Judging by your blog it
looks like that’s been the case.I’m looking to get started with this freelance thing. I’m entertaining
the idea of finding a rep since the newspaper world is no longer a
place I’m really looking to call home.I was hoping you might have a little time to answer a few questions?
If you’d like I can just give you a call too, but I’m not sure how
expensive minutes are over there for you.I guess most importantly how’d you go about finding a rep and deciding on them?
How has your experience with Redux been?
How often do you go up to NYC to shop your book around? Is someone
from Redux coming with you to those meetings?
Are you finding that most of your work comes through them?Sorry for all the questions, but this is a game I know nothing of.
Wish I would of been thinking about this stuff at OU rather than just
thinking a newspaper was a place for me.Thanks for any wise words,
TimHere is my response to Tim:
When I started out as a photographer, and I mean when I first picked up a camera and started making pictures I had a friend in Portland named Stephen Voss http://www.stephenvoss.com/ . He was two or three years into his photography career and was working with World Picture News. They were taking pretty good care of him (in fact they still are) and when I asked Stephen if he could set me up with someone over there he set me up with two editors, Todd Cross and Sandra Stevenson. Todd is still there while Sandra is now a metro editor at the New York Times. I went to New York for a visit and we decided we liked each other enough to start working together. Essentially I fell into having an agency. As a photographer who hadn’t been to school and hadn’t really worked much it was great. They set me up with assignments and really got me started. The problem was that at that point in my career I really had no idea what I was doing. I thought I was pretty good but the assignments I was shooting were basic and the results were mediocre. It didn’t take me long to realize that I needed to do something to improve both my photography and my journalism.I left Portland and went to Ohio University. Of course you know that because that’s where I met you but I figured I’d fill everyone else in. While I was at Ohio I decided that my work was going in a different direction than WPN. WPN was going through a lot of changes at that point and my work was moving away from documentary reportage and into editorial portraiture. After my first year at OU I picked up a job in Portland and spent six months working at the Oregonian working a lot with Mike Davis and Patty Reksten thinking about what direction I wanted to take my career in and came to the conclusion that I’d part ways with WPN. The people there had always been very supportive but it just wasn’t working out for me anymore.I stayed in Portland for another 8 months stringing for the Oregonian and a few magazines here and there and my career was coming along though not nearly as quickly as I would have liked. The combination of being fairly new, not being in New York and not knowing all that many editors wasn’t a great career starte.All I could really do from Portland was send out emails and postcards and do the best I could to make solid images. I made my second trip to New York that spring and with the help of Mike Davis, a great photo editor at the Oregonian, and Deb Pang, a fantastic graphic artist and designer, I set up a bunch of appointments I never would have been able to get on my own. One of those appointments was with Redux Pictures. I met with Jasmine DeFoore, Laura Reid and Marcel Saba for about thirty minutes. They had seen my website and took a look at my book. They had some very constructive things to say and we talked about whether I was a good fit for Redux and whether Redux was a good fit for me. I had looked through Redux’s roster and thought that the work I do fit nicely with the photographers they already had. At that point I was living in Portland and Robbie McClaran was already there for them so it was kinda silly for me to start working in the same tiny town doing fairly similar work for the same agency.Marcel and I spoke on and off for the next few months. I had wanted to go over seas for awhile and as luck would have it Redux didn’t have anyone in India. I took a few days to think it over and had some serious conversations with my fiance but in the end we decided it would be a fantastic opportunity for both of us. We (Janikka, my fiance and I) have been here for 9 months now and its been busy. A lot of work, a lot of adjusting but otherwise really, really busy.Redux has dealt with all my contracts, billing, a lot of promotion and they have scheduled almost all of my meetings for me when I go to New York. They send out my books and send me supplies in India, a place where even a freaking roll of Tri-x is unavailable let alone 3/4 of the things I use on a daily basis. They also take a fair portion of my assignment fees to pay for it. At this point in my career and my life I say its totally worth it. Will it be in 10 years? I don’t know. But I do know this, unless I’m grossing 250k a year, I won’t be able to afford a NY office with staff to promote me and sell my stock.New York:I go to New York to shop my book around at least twice a year. It really should be more but the flights are freaking pricey. I should also send out promos much more often but that’s a different story. Basically, I’m pretty bad at promotion and keeping up an aggressive schedule. I really should spend more time on it.Like I said before, Redux makes my appointments for me when I come to New York, especially when I want to see editors that I’ve never met at magazines I’ve never worked for. They give me a place to drop off my bag, change my clothes, generally get ready to rock before I go out and meet with clients and potential clients, but no, they don’t come with me, as cute as that would be, I’d much rather have them working in the office getting me jobs!Am I finding most of my work or is Redux?I’d say that 60% of my work right now is coming through Redux and 40% is coming from past clients or from word of mouth or from editors seeing my work in other magazines or newspapers. In a way though you could say that some of that word of mouth work is coming from Redux as well since there is a good chance that that work is coming from editors that have seen my work in magazines that I shot for through Redux.I’d say that in addition to pitching me to editors Redux also helps me figure out what personal projects might get picked up, they give me a sounding board for the work I want to do and they help fund it if they think its promissing. The editors there have a lot of experience between them and it really helps me to go back and forth about them about everything from promotion to projects. Being associated with a good agency can get you a chance based on the reputation of that agency and the photographers that work with them. At the end of the day though, if your work is good you’ll get work. If your work sucks you won’t. At least that’s what it seems like to me.Hope that helps.M
- This is really funny.
I’ve been a terrible blogger. Just returned from a week long trip split between Pune and New Delhi where I worked on a couple of stories for two fantastic magazines. Monocle and Art+Auction. I also got to see one of my favorite people in all of Asia, my Japanese friend Manami, a great writer who focuses on alternative cultures. She’s the one who introduced me to my first Yakuzas! I’m looking forward to working more with her in Tokyo or Kyoto this coming winter.
Unfortunately I can’t post any photographs right now, but I can show you what could be the funniest thing I’ve seen in months.
check it.
M
- Michael Rubenstein in Geographical
The story I did with Richard Orange on traditional boat construction in Gujarat, India.
- Sharanam
A couple of friends of ours volunteer at a place in Dharavi that houses 30 or so girls. Yesterday two of them had birthdays and J and I went along to check it out… you know, party down a little bit. I’ve jammed way too many pictures into a slideshow for them to take a look at so I’m posting it here for you too. I mean really cake and cute kids? How can you go wrong.
- In Other News…
I’ve got a busy couple weeks coming up. Next week I leave for an undisclosed location to shoot an undisclosed project for Monocle for five days. Then I’m off to Delhi to shoot an undisclosed subject for Art + Auction Magazine. I’ll stick around in Delhi for a few days visiting with my writer/photographer friend Daniel Pepper and meeting up with a few editors and writers while visiting some Embassies trying to get some visas.
Back to Bombay for a bit and then off to meet up with the newest National Geographic intern extraordinaire Matt Eich in a location to be disclosed since I can’t say anything about what he’s doing either. Funny how that works eh?
I can tell you that the story on Salaya boat builders that I worked on with Richard Orange was published in Geographical Magazine, the magazine for the Royal Geographic Society of England and that the story that I shot for Gulf Air Magazine should be running in their next issue.
I’ll be posting regularly throughout these next few weeks and I’ll be available, as usual, through email and the good ole tele.
- Lesson Number One
I had a 1.5 TB drive fail on me this week. Its not like this hasn’t happened to someone before. Its not like it hasn’t happened to me before. 1.5 TB of photographs from three years of work in the United States, Japan, Bangladesh and India. Poof. Gone. Yes its all backed up. Some (most) of it is on Photoshelter, all of it is on another drive in storage in the US and a lot of it, at least the more current important work is backed up on two other drives here in Bombay. This doesn’t change the fact that getting to my archive is now a real pain in the ass. With my mind blowingly fast 512 internet over here in the megaopolis financial capital of what is supposed to be the new economic power of the world getting my 1TB of photographs off Photoshelter and into my system here would take months and flying back to the States to pick up my RAID from my storage unit would cost thousands. Not to mention a week to recover from jet lag. So what to do?
The first thing I did was the Crashed Hard Drive dance. Its a little known dance from a small island off the coast of New Jersey. First you jump up and down moaning to yourself, “why me, why now, why me, why now” and then you fall to the floor, cradle yourself in the fetal position and rock gently back and forth while continuing to repeat though this time at a whisper, “why me, why now, why me, why now.
Of course, this had absolutely no effect on the drive.
The next thing I tried was freezing it. The rumor is that if you freeze a drive you have a slight chance of getting it to mount the next time you attach it to your system. It also gives you time to have a nice glass of whiskey while you force yourself to stop muttering, “why me, why now, why me”.
You would be right if you were sitting there thinking, “That idea didn’t have a chance in hell”.
My final attempt to save some of the data on my drive was to spend 99 bucks and buy Disk Warrior. WAMMO! The drive was found and Disk Warrior fixed its directory issues and mounted the drive. The drive is super unstable and half of the data on it was in a magical directory called Lost and Found. I shit you not. Lots of images randomly placed in randomly numbered folders. I was also given a message as soon as the drive mounted on my desktop. THIS DRIVE WAS NOT REPAIRED PROPERLY. BACK UP YOUR DATA AS SOON AS POSSIBLE AND REFORMAT THE DRIVE IMMEDIATELY.
For the last 36 hours I’ve been transferring data I had just enough free space on my secondary backup drive to move most of what I think I’ll need in the next six months. Other than that I think I’m SOL for the time being.
So the moral of the story is….BACK, BACK, BACK IT UP. FOR REALS.
- Michael Rubenstein in the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune
I shot a story with writer Anand Giridharadas, a great guy who’s been based in Mumbai for ages. It ran in the New York Times today so I can finally post a photograph or two and a link to the story. It really is quite an interesting piece about these very small restaurants in Mahim, one of the Muslim sections of Bombay where men wait for passersby to give the restaurant owner money and
Please be sure to check out the slide show!!!
The article also appeared on the front page of the International Herald Tribune.
Michael
- New York
I’m finally beginning to recover from the New York City trip. The jet lag is subsiding, I’m starting to fall asleep at 4am instead of 8am and waking up at noon instead of 4. I’ve never had jet lag this bad before. I thought I would fare a bit better this time since I was flying home in Business First. That’s right, BIG OLE SEATS, full on recline, free drinks all night and LAMB CHOPS!!!!!!!!! Seriously medium rare lamb chops. I honestly don’t know if I can ever go back to coach. Wait, lets think about that and rephrase If I was filthy rich I could never go back to coach, but as we all know the life of a freelance photographer, at least a photojournalist won’t likely result in filthy rich.
Since last week was pretty much a wash, this week will be packed full of work. I’m delivering a triptych to a client on Monday, the day before she leaves for Singapore for good, filing the Forbes job I did last week, writing thank you letters to all the lovely editors that took time to meet with me while I was in New York, working on the awfully late project that I started last fall for the GP Task Force on generational timber families in the Pacific Northwest and doing final edits and toning for Megan at New York Model Management. Lots of work. Lots and lots. Not only do I have all that fun stuff to do, and believe me it will be fun, but its time to start planning some India trips and start pitching some new projects to editors in New York. I’ve got a few ideas bouncing around in my head so we’ll see which one’s win out. Oh and add to that my new and improved plan to file stock. Yes, that’s right, here in lovely Bombay you need a plan to file stock. I need to organize it all into one file and then I’ve got to go over to one of the five star hotels and hijack their super fast internet. The five stars have wireless that is half as fast as my wireless was in Portland. Which in turn is about 20 times faster than my internet at home. YAY SLOW INTERNET.
Here are a few of the fashion shots from the Chelsea Hotel with models from New York Model Management, Make up by Erin Green and Hair by Whitney Scott
- Monsoon is here.
Monsoon hit Bombay a few nights ago. I was in town shooting an assignment for Forbes. It was super humid, the wind was picking up and the clouds were building. I looked over at Larina and said, “Its going to rain.” She thought I was crazy. “It’s two weeks early from Monsoon. It’s not going to rain.” The subject was an hour late we started shooting and 10 minutes later the sky opened up and boom. Monsoon. Of course the subject took that as his cue to call off the rest of the shoot and take off.
Now its raining. Supposedly it won’t stop for the next three months. I’ve traded in one super wet city for another. At least this one is warm and wet.
- This is really funny.
Seriously funny.
