Clint Clemens

I went to the Clint Clemens presentation/speech last Thursday; although he is a really cool and interesting photographer, he is one of the less able speakers that I have seen in Newhouse.

The first part of his speech was bearable; he was showing us his work (which was so awesome), and explaining how he got those shots. He uses some interesting guerilla tactics, like hanging off of helicopters, riding in the side-cars of motorcycles and leaning over to get the car as it is turning, and other mildly dangerous methods. I love his work. I suggest everyone check out his website, because his work is fantastic!

His speech was a little bit discouraging to me as a photographer, because he only reiterated how hard it is to be an artist now, and for the future, because it is so easy to create an image with new and developing technologies. I was puzzled and annoyed, because I had started photography as an 11-year old with a busted SLR from the 70's, the film compartment of which would pop out everyvtime I would take a picture; I never got any of that film developed because it always ended up over- exposed. Nevertheless, I had to learn photography the hard way, without digital. And now all of that technique/skill is useless, because any bozo who can push a button on a fancy camera can take a good picture by accident (optimistic, I know).

Another thing that I found rather annoying was that he had clearly (or so it seemed) been payed to advertise Canon, so several times during his speech he would stop and rattle on about Canon for a good minute.

The second part of his speech was very difficult to sit through because Mr. Clemens was giving a long- winded explanation of three-dimensional modeling.

A positive thing that I took away from his speech was a realization of how important 3D modeling will be within the next couple of years. I had taken a course on it in high- school, and because it was so frustrating, gave up the idea of being an industrial designer; that is how much I hated working with those 3D programs.
People began to get bored and talk about what they had for dinner, at which point I thought it was best to leave because it became increasingly difficult to hear Mr. Clemens.