May
3
Noah Kalina’s 6 Years Worth of Photos
15 million people have watched Noah Kalina’s 6 year (2356 days) of daily photos, what a unique way for a photographer to promote himself. Over the years he has been interviewed by tons of blogs and photgrapher magazines… some interesting quotes where he explains how the internet has enabled him to be a successful photographer.
2008 Gothamist Interview discussing the perks of internet fame
Things have changed considerably. The video was accepted by both the art world and pop culture worlds. As a result I was flown to a show that displayed everyday in a museum in Switzerland and I was flown out to LA to attend parties and take part in the VH1 Big in ‘06 awards. For a time I was really busy preparing for all of these different shows and events. I also get a lot more emails now but for the most part things have seemed to have died down. At least for now.
Regarding my professional photography it has helped, but I can’t really quantify how much. Millions of people have looked at my video and a lot check out my photography afterwards, but it hasn’t really turned into jobs. I think people look at my work now and say, “This is the work of that guy who took a photo of himself every day for six years,” scratch their chins and move on.
Interview with Noah where he discusses how he gets paid…
I just put my work online, either my website, which I have had since 2000 (it looked way different back then) or on the photo sharing websites. I started with Fotolog after I left art school and then ended up on flickr. 90 percent of the work I get now is through flickr and other 10 percent is from personal connections I have made. I have had art directors and photo editors reach out to me after seeing my work on flickr. Then it snowballs. They publish you in a magazine, another magazine sees it, you get another job. That art director moves to another magazine and hires me at the new mag.
The story behind the music … Carly Commando (Noah’s girfriend at the time) created the song specifically for the video…. and since has licensed the video a NBA commercial and also to a German bank. With over 1.3 million followers on myspace it’s clear that she is doing quite well with her inspirational music. Though with anything that has become popular online there is always a wee bit of controversy has many people have claimed she has ripped of Philip Glass’s Truman Sleep’s piece from the movie Truman Show… and she responds to that criticsm here.
I don’t even think I had ever seen The Truman Show in full until after Noah’s video came out. A lot of youtube comments were “this is Philip Glass,” etc. I was really confused and stressed out, because that’s the last thing I wanted to hear. So, after someone posted what song “Everyday” sounded like, Noah and I immediately went to listen to it. We were shocked. This question has been asked a lot.. and it’s really hard to answer it convincingly, because the 2 songs have a similar melody line. I wasn’t aware of the song “Truman Sleeps” at all, but they do sound similar. All I can say to that is “Everyday” is my own piece, written for Noah, in front of Noah. I’ve had many freakouts concerning this, because I’ve had a really hard time answering mean and rude e-mails that don’t care what I have to say, anyway. From what I’ve heard, and after finally watching the Truman Show, Philip Glass is a great composer.
Homer Simpson pays tribute in an episode of The Simpsons… The Simpsons used the actual music from Noah’s video though it wasn’t until after it aired that she was properly paid for the song
Parody Video watched 2.6 million times ….
