(no subject)
Digital photography is going to kill photography as an art form. For the purposes of this rant I am not directing this at professional photographers or even seasoned amatures using digital cameras as just another tool available to them while taking high quality photos that inspire and amaze. I am referring to thousands of teenagers pouring out into the streets with a brand new digital cameras in hand and some emo-du-jour band in their MP3 players. They proceed to hit the shutter about 200 times or whatever the memory card allows, not letting little things like composition, exposure, or even focus distract them from their sudden calling of creating Art, with the capital A. Why worry about technique when you have hundreds of chances to get it right? And if you still fail to evoke any feeling whatsoever with your mediocre snapshots, then just make up some imaginitive title, preferably containing words like "Dreams" or "Tears" before posting it to your favorite LJ photo community? The critics in said community, no doubt also in their early teens, also full of angst, feeling misunderstood and disenfranchised and also in posession of brand new digital cameras, encourage them with comments like "beautiful", "gorgeous", and "wow". At the same time, these critics wouldn't know an f-stop if it sat on their face. Thus emboldened our shutterbug considers him/herself an Artiste and starts taking pictures in black and white thinking that it somehow lends legitimacy to and evokes more emotion from otherwise quite ordinary images, still having never heard of Ansel Adams or the Zone system. They have no idea about the basics of composition, Rule of Thirds, but they venture into macro photography, creating more blury images of the quintessential subject -- their own eye. Any attempt to point out their shortcomings in the hopes of actually salvaging some modicum of talent is met with resistance, refusal to learn and accusations of just not understanding them. While this behavior is typical from any teenager, those who imagine themselves photographers are going to have to get used to critisicm. The sad thing is that they are destroying the very thing they claim to be practicing.
Over the course of this past weekend, I finally finished a roll of slide and got almost through another roll of film. That's close to 72 frames. If there are 5-6 images out of those 72 that pass my internal critique, I'll be happy. If just one of those 5 earns praise from a few real photographers whose opinion I value, but more importantly, actually listen to, I'll be ecstatic. If not, I'll just try again....
Over the course of this past weekend, I finally finished a roll of slide and got almost through another roll of film. That's close to 72 frames. If there are 5-6 images out of those 72 that pass my internal critique, I'll be happy. If just one of those 5 earns praise from a few real photographers whose opinion I value, but more importantly, actually listen to, I'll be ecstatic. If not, I'll just try again....