Well, who knew everyone was so enamored to their smile. I thought you'd like to give it up like a bad night's hangover, but oh no, it's how people ingratiate themselves to each other. It's your comfort zone. Well step out of it. Otherwise, keep your smiles. Mr. Scrooge here will have none of it. I will stay cool, aloof and oh so current as my imaginary woof, Oklahoma and I curl up together and cry if we want to. See it's my party. Oh by the way, the song today is a Happy Thanksgiving to you all. See you next week, laughing all the way.

  "Smile though your heart is aching Smile even though it's breaking When there are clouds in the sky, you'll get by If you smile through your fear and sorrow Smile and maybe tomorrow You'll see the sun come shining through for you." - Words by John Turner and Geoffrey Parsons, Music by Charlie Chaplin On this late fall day, in the month of November, in the 2011 year of our Lord, I realized the same is true today as it was 300 years earlier. Although, it took my teenage daughter Savannah to remind me of this. Let me start at the beginning. I have the sweetest, nicest, cutest daughter around; at least I think I do. You see I rarely have the opportunity to know this for sure. As our daily ritual proceeds, Savannah will quickly pass by me, dashing off a quick "Hi Dad," and then slam her door behind her. If I happen to chance an entrance to her chamber I am immediately confronted with an exclamation of "OUT," and a long hand and finger pointing to the door. She protects her territory from her father like he was a dangerous predator, and rarely does she have much to say to yours truly. I know there is love there somewhere deep, deep down in her soul for her father, but mostly there is embarrassment and disgust at the fact that anyone could be so stupid or so old. Imagine my surprise yesterday when out of the blue, she tells me a story about when she was a little girl, she remembered that as I was trying to get her to be still to take her portrait I would often say, "Don't smile." She thought this odd as all the pictures she saw of her friends were with them smiling and she had never forgot that I had asked her not to smile. Now that she is older, she told me that she had mentioned this to her friends and they had told her that they felt that that made sense to them knowing my pictures. Now, what is the meaning of all this? America has always had it's own perculiar fascination with perception, particularly other people’s perception of themselves. Somehow along the convoluted way of history, the mass of men and women felt it imperative to be viewed with a smile. Smile for the camera, smile for your grandparents, smile for your friends, smile to your teachers? It is a wonder that people’s faces are not frozen in a smile. I know many women who have had face lifts can't possibly smile, their face is so tightly strung, but this is a whole different matter. Where does this fascination, this personal sense of how we want to be seen come from? I have an idea. For years when I was making portraits of the chieftains of industry, commerce, celebrity, or politicians, their first inclination in front of the camera was to smile. Interestingly enough this was not…

I remember in some English class that although Jane Austin never once mentioned the Napoleonic wars in her novels, they were there...every present in the background, affecting her characters decisions and views. Well, dear reader, let me tell you Vietnam was not only in the background of my college life, but it was in the foreground, underground, upper ground, and beside the ground of my life. It was everywhere, with fear and trembling in every day of my life. It never once left my side. Let me digress for a second for the young-ins, who may not know what I am talking about. You see the Vietnam war (another useless incursion into other peoples life) was the last war that America fought with a draft. All able-bodied men and boys (no girls yet, as this was before one of the gifts feminism gave women, the ability to die or be maimed in combat) were subject to military service. With the attrition rate of almost 85% of the people drafted being shipped to Vietnam, and with thousands dying each month in this useless war, all my friends and most of my enemies spent a great deal of time figuring how to avoid this war. The options were, conscientious objection, fleeing to Canada, protests, army reserve (for the real elite as our heroic president George W. was able to acquire through his family), and last but most definitely not least for me a 4F disability or rejection from military service. This last paragraph is loaded with nuance and conflicted thoughts that I will deal with at a later date. Today it is the 1960's. In the summer of 1968 in the heat of battle, my life was completely full of Vietnam. How was I going to avoid this mess of a war? Now let me tell you the truth, or as I often say, let's get to the heart of the matter. I was scared out of my mind. I verbalized noble thoughts, quoted Platonic notions of objections to violence, wrote treaties on the ontological unfairness of the draft and even considered joining the Quakers, but deep within my heart I was just scared to die in Vietnam. The military, the system, all became the enemy and my contemporaries and I marched in protest. Although the truth was I was sincerely morally opposed to the war, and despised Richard Nixon, unfortunately if there were no draft the world would have been as it is today, a country oblivious to the financial, emotional turmoil that a war causes. I would have gone my own way and left the fighting to others, but this was not to be the case in the very early fall of fall of 1969 when I received a well stamped and curtly versed letter from the U.S. Government demanding that I show up for my draft physical in two weeks. Let's return to the scene of the crime for a moment. For years leading up to this day as…

By popular request, I will put off good morning, good day, and good evening Vietnam until next week, and thought instead I'd dive forward into the backwards way I approach a photographic assignment. Let me begin with a recent assignment to photograph for one of my all time favorite creative directors, Janet Froelich. The assignment was to shoot approximately five photographs that illustrated how women have different energy levels and abilities through the course of the day. Their energy rises and falls as the day progresses. So there is the big picture. My restraints were that it had to be shot in one day with one model and because of the number and type of pictures it had to be shot in one location. The first thought that went through my little noodle of a brain was outright fear. How am I going to do this? What does this idea have to do with photographs? I would have much rather gone and taken a nap. But with the challenge of a new day and with a necessity to pay my mortgage, I began to organize my process. Janet had mentioned to me a picture that I had shot years ago for her, with a clock in the picture. With this, a large tick and a little tock went off in my head. I was now off and running. This revelation got me going, I was now able to leave my fears behind and move into possibilities. This transition happens on every shoot. Once I get a vague idea on how to approach the problem I intuitively know where I am going. The next step is to immediately call Renate, my stylist (the miracle of 29th Street) to put her on hold for the shoot, and to try to get her to either come to the first production meeting (in this case there was none) or for her, myself, Michael (the studio manager), Patricia (My first assistant and all around know everything person) to get together for breakfast or lunch. We love to eat away our fears as we begin to talk about ideas props and wardrobe. This first meeting is usually crucial. We all throw out ideas and usually agree by the end of the meeting on the props and type of wardrobe. In this case I remember thinking that time is the answer to the problem. If we use different clocks and wardrobes that represent different times of day perhaps we could at least represent the passage of time. There is always dialectic I must work within. How do I make my pictures that will also work for the clients needs? If you just simply looked at my pictures one might wonder how they compliment a specific clients requests, but they do in my fashion. I am not an illustrator, nor do I want to be. I do not composite pictures together everything is shot in camera. All I do up to this point is arrange the general guidelines…

It was a beautiful October morning in 1967, and I was preoccupied with the life around me, classes, books, clothes, girls, and totally oblivious to the real world around me. I was still so innocent, and I liked it that way, keeping my eyes focused on nothing in particular. I did love literature, and was beginning to be absorbed with knowledge, but real life was still a dream away. One Saturday morning, my good friend and politically astute boy informed me, without any equivocation, that I was to accompany him to Washington for a peace rally, and that every bodied person was needed. I was not to let him down. My body was required to be there, even if my head had no idea where I was going or why. So off we went, and arrived in Washington D.C. on Saturday morning. I was in shock, there were thousands if not hundreds of thousands of students dressed wildly with long hair, beards and placards proclaiming the virtues of Che. As I had no idea who Che was, at first thinking it must have been some Chinese or Latin restaurant in the area, I quickly learned that Che was not a restaurant, but revolutionary who all these kids idolized. Obviously although I think he was dead at the time, he had become not only the model of anti-government revolution, but had created a new fashion statement. His face was placarded on every t-shirt that I saw, with a fist clenched tight and upright on the back. Everyone obviously wanted to be his look-a-like, because they must have felt as they became more and more messy, bearded and longhaired, they must have identified with the revolutionary spirit as it coursed through their veins. I, on the other hand, arrived in my neatly pressed khaki pants, Brooks Brothers shirt and tie, and Paul Stuart sports jacket. I must have looked like Bozo The Clown to all of them. Rock music was blaring, girls were dancing half naked on the mall, and the hippie revolution, which was part party, and part demonstration was beginning. This was all totally new to me. I kept saying to my friend Robert, "What am I doing here? I am not sure I am even against this war!" As usual I am the latecomer to most things, and as time went on I became very fervent and active against the war, but at this time I knew nothing. My mouth must have been gaping open the whole time as I watched the spectacle. Girls dancing, guys screaming and chanting "Hell no we won't go!" through megaphones. Up on the stage there were people yelling into microphones while I had no idea what they were saying or talking about. I kept saying to my friend, "OK, enough is enough. It is time for a nice lunch in Georgetown." My head was spinning with the screams of revolt and all I wanted was a nice hamburger with a few well-dressed girls…

I think what the world needs now if not "love sweet love," and a good dose of repentance is at least a good business story, one that you can believe in. For all the horrible stories about corporations, banks, and those that run them, I am about to tell you a story about where the bad guys turn out to be good and where innocence is a virtue. The only moral from this story is that if you give it all away as you walk in the door, there is nothing to receive as you walk out. It is a story about what you have but are about to loose. Stieglitz (at least I think it was him) once said that a photographer has 25 great pictures in him, that a life's opus distilled down to its essence is left with a pedigree of 25 great works that endure through the tapestry of time. Well, If I am a photographer in the first place (which is extremely questionable with great aspirations, and I know one when I see it, but whether I have achieved the Holy Grail of being a photographer is a whole other matter) I would assume that one of the pictures I have already written about would be one of my 25 greatest hits. As I was stubborn and strong enough to fight for control, this picture has always remained my property. Not so much lately, but for years it was licensed by every conceivable type of business throughout the world, and purchased by collectors until now there is only one editioned print left to be sold. It is easily one of my greatest hits, well enough of the prologue and onto the story. One evening in the fall of 1999 in a far away time where photographers were still mostly shooting film and protecting their copyrights, I received a call at about 10 o'clock at night. The caller asked me if I was Rodney Smith the photographer. When I replied yes, the woman introduced herself by saying that she was Mr. Y.C. Lee's secretary calling from Seoul Korea,  and that Mr. Lee was just getting on a plane in Korea and flying to New York to see me. She told me that his plane would land the next evening around 9 p.m. and Mr. Lee would like to come immediately to my house. I told her I was very happy to meet Mr. Lee, but asked if he might come the following morning as I held to the American dictum of early to bed and early to rise. I also asked her if she knew what the visit was regarding, to which she replied that she did not but said she would tell Mr. Lee to come the next morning. The only other information she left with me was a New York phone number, which she said I could call the next morning if I had any questions. With that I said goodbye and goodnight and…

I know I promised to begin the beguine this week, but I thought it necessary to ask you to abide for one more week of the mundane. I know photographers love the how as much, if not more than, the why. So I will share a few more nuts before I promise to get to the good bolts. Firstly, I must address an issue that has perplexed me for many years; the need for photographers to describe themselves with terms that I abhor: fine art photographer, commercial photographer, editorial photographer, wedding photographer, still life and journalist, etc., and the list just keeps rolling along. The term photographer, as well as the word artist are both sacred to me. They are so overused and violated that they almost feel like curse words that need to be expunged from the vocabulary. They have grown to denote and connote nothing. Everyone who picks up a camera is a photographer, and everyone who paints, draws, sculpts, or doesn't even work is an artist. To be a photographer implies a calling, a dedication, an ability to expose oneself in a way very few people have the capacity or courage to do. If one ever becomes a photographer, it is as if one has won the Nobel Prize. At any one time there are only a few people in the world that are photographers. True, there are hundreds of thousands (if not millions) who take pictures but these are not photographers. I find it amusing and disturbing at the same time that people who work for clients can't produce anything of significance that will endure. Well, that leaves out a large list, from Michelangelo, Bellini, Titian, Goya, to Sargent, etc. This is a very twentieth century idea that art lives in this rarefied world, produced by pure souls and edited, displayed and criticized by distinguished members of an elite academy. As it was earlier and as it is today this is pure hogwash and generally at best a lie agreed upon. Some weeks down my path of life, I will tell you more about these thoughts but I want to get this final erudition of usage out into the fall air before all the leaves drop and life goes dormant. My fees are not based on the traditional photographer’s day rate. The fee is based entirely on how the picture is going to be used and for how long. For example, if a client is going to use a picture for a small one time printing for a brochure with a domestic distribution, printed in a small quantity of 5,000 copies or less, the fee to shoot that picture would be $3,500 plus additional costs for scouting, production, etc. There would also be the non-photographic costs such as a stylist, wardrobe, hair and makeup, location fees, etc. However, to shoot the exact same picture, requiring the same effort, but the usage being a complete worldwide buyout in all media except broadcast for one year, the fee…

For years, young photographers have asked me how I charge for my services, so I feel it the opportune time to share with others the business of my photography. I also wanted to share with you a few bolts with the nuts, but that is to follow in the next few weeks. As I am by nature a loner, I have no agent or agency that represents me. In the 45 years that I have been a photographer, only one of those years did I have an agent, who was somewhat unsuccessful in representing me. I seem to do it better by myself. I like to think of myself as a fairly astute business man (probably inherited in my genes from my father), as I like the business of photography almost as much as I like making the pictures. It is close to a one-man shop for all your photographic needs. I have a studio manager, Michael, (who I try to keep in the forefront of all negotiations, estimates, invoices, correspondence, etc.) but I am there in the background if needed. There is also at the studio, Patricia, (who has been with me for over ten years and I hope she stays until I die) she is the archivist and printer and knows more about my work than anyone alive. Both of these people are on every shoot, along with many others, as it is very important when it comes to printing the work, or negotiating usage rights, that all of us are as familiar with the process and the particulars of each shoot as possible. There are generally three aspects to the business. Firstly, there is the assignment work. I am basically only emotionally and physically capable of shooting about 30 to 50 days a year. Although this seems small it is an enormous amount of work that keeps us all busy. I am not one to shoot everyday, nor would I be able, nor want to. For example, three days of shooting probably requires the studio a minimum three weeks of work and that is assuming that there is no travel involved. If we have to travel to some distant place, it probably would add close to another week of work. The shooting work goes something like this; a client with a general idea usually approaches me. Most often people do not give me very specific layouts. I am the art director as well as the photographer. I like this. It is usually a combination of people, my stylist Renate (The Wonder of 29th Street), the studio manager Michael, Patricia, myself and the client that generally comes up with the ideas the wardrobe, the props, and the type of location. This usually requires a day or two of production meetings. After we have begun to have some idea of location and props, I usually will assign a location scout to do the preliminary location scouting. Sometimes we look through location services. In either case, after I find the…

For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required. -Luke 12:48 I've had enough! You're all cowards and you don't even know it. You've given away your legacy without much of a fight, and I am embarrassed and ashamed to be considered part of the fraternity of photographers. Oh, I know times are tough (they've always been tough for photographers) and you have lost your power to larger powers (that's only because you've let them) and if you didn't give in, they simply would have given the job to someone else. Well, too bad. If we had all stuck together in the first place there wouldn't be someone else, and besides you've lost a lot more than that loving feeling, you have lost the greatest gift you have as a still photographer. Directors do not have it. Graphic Designers do not have it. Art Directors do not have it. Only you have it, and because you are scared and desperate, you are giving it all away. Well don't! Stand tall and upright! Be proud and do not forsake what others have given to you. What am I ranting about? Well, I am going to tell you. In the early 1950's, LIFE Magazine decided that the pictures that were shot for them by many wonderful photographers were their property and therefore, they had the right to re-license them. The photographer's thought otherwise, and insisted that the photographs were their property to resell at their discretion. This went to court and after a long heated battle with TIME-LIFE the photographers won the battle. The courts decided that the copyright remained with the photographer and the magazine had just licensed reproduction rights. The original property, after the contract was concluded, returned to the photographer along with the negatives. So dear photographers, others before you fought hard and long to give you a gift. And although everyone from corporations, to magazines, to art buyers try desperately to take it away from you, I implore you not to give it away. Most of you are young and feel the need to work, and feel powerless against larger forces. You do not realize that when you get older, having the rights to your own work will be the best gift you have as a still photographer. It will help you when you need it most. I have never given it away, despite enormous pressure or at times significant time to educate a client. I have walked away from magazines and clients, unless we could reach a compromise that was acceptable to me. The pressure is on. The economy is awful and people will grab what they can get away with. I implore you to stay strong and fight hard for what many other photographers, over the last 50 years, have fought hard to give you; the right to own and control your own work. We are at the precipice. Either you retain your rights, or the next generation will have none to protect.…

I'm in a shopping mood, desperately trying to do my part for American commerce.  This feeling comes upon me seasonally, like the primordial smell of early fall.  The summer drought is over and a hallelujah revival is at hand.  I'm feeling very productive, which translates on occasion in true capitalist fashion for desiring a very few beautiful objects. Which gets me to the "heart of the matter", a matter I have ruminated over for the abundance of the many years I've been on this earth.  I am primarily a black and white photographer, who tends to like to see things in black and white, right or wrong, rich or poor, correct or incorrect, and even appropriate or inappropriate.  The dilemma I'm about to describe to you although, may be ambiguous or have extenuating circumstances to you, reader, to me, there is no deviation or fluctuation.  There is only one true way. To truly understand the magnitude of this problem, I am forced to relate two stories that best illustrate the problem, both in life and most especially in pictures.  Both occurred within months of each other. The first goes back to a lunch with an advertising friend of mine.  I do not remember what preceded the conversation, but what I do remember is this particular discussion. On occasion some people have commented on my watch.  It is a beautiful, classic, gold time piece.  I purchased it well over twenty-five years ago but like most things I own or do, one could not tell by it's look or condition whether I purchased it yesterday or many years ago.  It is made of 21 carat gold with a delicate tiny sapphire on the knob.  It has been on my hand so many years, it almost feels molded to my body.  It's time keeping is immaculate and it has kept me at the right place, at the right time for many years. I'm drifting, so now back to the story.  My friend glanced at my watch and asked me quite inappropriately but very typical of all of us, how much my watch cost.  I told him and he pointed to his $29.95 special on his wrist and said his watch probably kept better time than mine (which was probably true), looked really nice (also true), and saved him an enormous amount of money. This conversation quickly led us down the road of aesthetics and ended at some outpost I'm about to describe. He said (before the years of exact copies of everything a woman wears) that if I could buy the exact same watch that looked exactly the same, made out of slightly different materials (12 carat gold, for example) and upon close examination it would look and feel identical but was half the price, would I buy it? Without hesitation and without equivocation I said "Absolutely not.  I want the original and even if no one can tell the difference, I want the best." Now you may think this is a product…