A CAMERA TOSS INTERVIEW
A detailed interview about the origins of Camera Toss, that subsequently went unused as the reported rushed a story to press before receiving or reading it, now published to make sure my time was not wasted.
Participants:
Interviewee: Ryan Gallagher in Austin, Texas, United States
Interviewer: Anonymous Staff Reporter in Illinois
Questions:
1. What is camera tossing?
2. How did you get started doing it? Aren't you sort of a pioneer of the technique?
3. Tell me a little about yourself -- where you live, what you do, your age, your photography experience, etc.
4. Is camera tossing dangerous, to the camera or to one's face? Should people with expensive digital cameras (like me) observe any special precautions?
5. Anything else you want to add?
1. What is camera tossing?
In the simplest definition possible, Camera Toss is photography technique, the
singular action of throwing a camera into the air intending it take a picture
while in free flight. As with all techniques however, where the
photographer, hobbyist, or artist chooses to go from there is highly an
individual decision/direction and subject to interpretation. Everyone has
their own reasons for trying it, and those that keep doing it creatively are
contributing to it's rather bizarre saga and perhaps taking it to the next
level.
For more detailed thoughts regarding "art", it recently cropped up in
our community forums and I expounded a little more there:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/cameratoss/discuss/141994/
2. How did you get started doing it? Aren't you sort of a pioneer of the technique?
I got started because of what I feel turns out to be an important lesson in
creativity. My only digital photography equipment (at the time I
could not afford to process film) was several generations old an incapable of
doing night photography. I spend a good deal of time awake at night and
wanting to take pictures. There was one form however that my camera could
manage alright, and that is the classic activity of pointing it at some city
lights and waving it around to capture light trails. Everyone who's spent
any time with a camera has done this sort of thing, but I was stuck where that
was the ONLY thing I could do. When you trap yourself into a corner with
limited resources, you create with what you have... so a natural development
was to work with "other" camera motion. As soon as I viewed the
result of my camera exposing while in mid flight, I knew there was something
about it worth exploring; I've been doing it and developing it since.
That was about 6 months ago now. I believe I shot the first one on Aug. 20th 2005.
How it got from that night, to where it is now is a long story, but it revolves
around my continuous sharing of my results with the Camera Toss community that
I created (http://www.flickr.com/groups/cameratoss)
on the photo service website called flickr (http://www.flickr.com). Slowly others were inspired
to give it a go, eventually we had enough interesting results being produced on
a regular basis that I created a weblog for highlighting them (http://cameratoss.blogspot.com).
Buzz caught on online first, mostly in the form of blogging and the
"hotlinks" sites, then eventually you real media folks started
contacting me. This interview is my 3rd and I have offers for gallery
exhibitions in Germany (Der Spiegel was one of the other interviews).
It would seem that I am a pioneer of this technique, no doubt others have given
it a shot at numerous times in the past. But it seems either no one got
results that convinced them to really pursue it further, or it just never
captured a broad audience before. I definitely am directly to blame for
this current phenomenon of people deliberately putting expensive cameras into
harms way (catching flying cameras is not always a straight forward activity).
3. Tell me a little about yourself -- where you live, what you do, your age, your photography experience, etc.
I'm 28 and currently working in my field of theatre production. I'm a
member of the labor union IATSE Local #205. My photography experience is
limited to very brief exploits earlier with film cameras, only recently when I
came into the aforementioned piece of crap digital camera did I start doing
photography as a consistent hobby/passion/obsession. I like to think my
background in lighting design had something to do with all this, the texture of
light itself has always interested me and throwing cameras is particularly well
suited to capturing it, among other wondrous things. I've also always
been a fan of art and music that has a chance element, and keep up with a lot
of topics such as generative and evolutionary art. I even have an
unhealthy hobby of investigating unsolved number theory problems... all these
interests seem to collide nicely in my current photography explorations.
4. Is camera tossing dangerous, to the camera or to one's face? Should people with expensive digital cameras (like me) observe any special precautions?
There is definitely an element of risk to your equipment, but one popular myth
is that this is some bizarre form of male testosterone photography. This
is simply unfounded, and the very active female members of the community were
quite upset at the thought. Your risk should be relative to what you can
afford to lose. My cameras are of little monetary value, thus I take a
lot of risks. The phenomenon and results are compelling enough however
that many have launched their several hundred dollar digital SLR cameras and
expensive lens glass into the air. Most people start out in a location
where dropping their camera involves little risk, such as squatting on their
bed, or over the soft, even tall grass has saved several cameras during early
trails by community members. Several people have even purchased separate
cameras specifically for this form of photography. It is a bit humbling
to the realize that sometimes the best equipment is not the best equipment for
the job. The odds however seem to be in the favor of success. Flickr
alone boasts 5800+ recorded events of thrown cameras. I have no way of
tracking how many have been thrown off flickr but no doubt countless more at
this point due to major media coverage. Despite these astounding figures,
to my knowledge only 5 have actually permanently damaged their equipment, that
I have been made aware of.
5. What is the appeal of camera tossing? (Looking for a good quote here.)
This is a tough question actually, but it seems from my observation that the
primary appeal is that it is an "atomic idea", simply understood, and
simply executed. If you keep doing it the nuances of the concept start to
unfold and you get further into it, some would even say addicted. Part of
the addiction comes from the fact that the results are always a sup rise, no
matter how much set-up you employ, there is still a lot of chance
involved. Each picture is like opening a little black box into a world we
can not see, and makes you want to open another box. I should also add
that it's just a hell of a lot of fun! It's just a technique, and thus
variable enough that almost any photographer can find something they like about
it.
I also expounded a little, perhaps too much, on why I think camera tossing is
so innately capable of producing raw beauty in this blog posting:
http://cameratoss.blogspot.com/2005/12/echoes-of-aesthetics-and-physics.html
6. Anything else you want to add?
It will be interesting to see where all of this goes and what new developments come of it. I am looking forward to it all. I also am curious to see how well this "open source" (usually reserved for software and programming) model can function in the world of art. No one told me to share my technique with the world in this way, they certainly wouldn't teach you this in arts management, but so far it seems to be extremely effective.