Originally Posted by Clint Clemens

The photography space, as you know, has been flooded with imagery because the barrier to entry for photography has dropped so dramatically. Previously, you had to know how to focus, you had to know how to expose, you had to know how to color correct. All that’s now gone, and it’s largely an automatic function. And, I think that there is an iTunes effect that’s happening in the market place. What iTunes did is they said, “Look, we’re going to sell data for a very small amount of money to a very large number of people.” And what that has done, is dropped the value of data in general. So if you’re selling photographs, which are generally in the form of data, the value is dropping because everybody’s expecting it to be less expensive.

When everyone has a camera and everyone is able to rapidly change and create new looks and companies need photography and they need to change more often due to the influence of the web, does that lead to an increase in value or a decrease in value of the imagery? My sense is that probably it leads to decrease in value of the imagery.



You’ve got the concept that data, because it’s ones and zeros and it’s not a physical asset, has less value. And that’s driven by what I call the iTunes blow-back effect. How do you sit at home and download music for 99 cents and then go to work and pay $5,000 for a data set?



Here’s the overall concept. When you look at a marketplace and when you look at your business, you have to figure out, “How can I maintain a barrier to entry?” Barriers to entry can be cost, they can be complexity they can be access.

So, how do you build a wall around yourself? So, that’s what everybody’s trying to figure out, and that’s why I went in this direction, because the barrier to entry is so high.



When digital first came out, it was like, “Oh, this is great. We can make all kinds of stock pictures.” Well, now, guess what happened: stock is now worthless.

Originally Posted by Ron Martinsen

Prior to my obsession with photography, I was (and still am) a car guy. In fact, all of my film shooting in the early 80’s was of only one subject – cars! In 2006, I was lucky enough to finally buy my dream car – a Porsche 911 C4s, but I’ve always wanted to get some special shots of it.



Porsche is famous for great automotive imagery and offers posters at their dealerships, so my office is wallpapered with their posters. However, there’s one poster that all true Porsche lovers know and lust after and that’s Clint Clemens’s famous “Kills bugs fast.” poster of a 911 Turbo. It represents the type of image I’d like to get of my car one day, so you can imagine my excitement when I had the opportunity to speak to the legend who created this iconic image!



Clint Clemens Kills bugs fast!!!!
Porsche fans like myself think of the ultimate Porsche poster by which all others are judged – the 911 Turbo “Kills bugs fast” poster. This is “the” poster to own, two of my friends have a framed copy hanging in their office. Now stop and name two people you work with who have the same ANYTHING framed in their office – it just doesn’t happen, but this poster is just that cool (especially in real life).



When I found out that Clint Clemens took this iconic image he immediately got to my top 50 list, but when I went through his portfolio I began to feel like I was on Wayne’s World and was saying to myself “I’m not worthy.” With this in mind, imagine my delight when I had the opportunity to talk to Clint and ask him about this legendary image – yeah, it was hard to take notes!



When I talked to Clint about this image I found out that Porsche trusted him so much that his only information from his client was the slogan “Kills bugs fast.” and he was simply told to “illustrate the idea”. It was up to him to figure out the rest, and so he did. Clint invented this type of image style which is so common today – the sharp image of a moving car with a blurred background. Yep, that’s right Clint invented this concept in 1980, and he was the only photographer who could pull this shot off thanks to his patented rig to grab these shots off with his FILM camera!

In case you glossed over that last statement, let me say it in another way - these are in-camera film shots in the days before Photoshop and Digital Cameras existed (resume bowing) where you had to get it right in the camera.



“The Art of Photography has been lost”
He explained how he feels that “the art of photography has been lost” because the “barrier to entry” has been lowered. It used to be that you needed to know how to “choose the proper film, expose it, color balance, etc…” and that made it difficult for just any average Joe to master this craft. However, digital photography has changed all of that so that anyone can do it.

Now if the barrier to entry has been lowered, how does one succeed in these times? If you examine Clint’s work and see how creative he has been, then you know the answer – you raise the barrier to entry!



Raising the Barrier to Entry – Modern Day Transportation Imagery
Just as Clint broke new ground with his automotive work, he’s not just sat back and let himself become obsolete. Instead, what Clint has done is pushed himself to raise the barrier to entry once again.

Originally Posted by Allen

I have the red 993 and a paragraph "It usually happens about the third or forth day when your just cruisong around and you realize your car was almost entirely built by hand....."