Jens Bladt wrote: > Actually, it is a very good question. > I believe many people (consumers) only take pictures, when ever there's a > family event to remember - a birthday or some sort of family get together. > And they only photograph people they know. So, when I'm photographing > strangers, they start to wonder why. > > I once did some quite nice portraits of a young woman. I showed them to a > colleague at work. > She asked; Who is she? I answered: I don't really know her, but doesn't she > look nice? My colleague quickly lost any interest in my photographs.
As I have discovered, not all that unusual a response. > The lesson I learned was, that lots of people don't look at the photographs > as such. They look at the people IN the photographs. Photographs as such are > not at all interesting - to most people. A good photograph is a photograph > that shows a relative or a friend the way the he or she wants to remember > this person. Noting else really matters. I think they're looking for "meaning." I recently attended a wine tasting, on a warm Sunday, near a small lake, in a grassy glade with trees. Since this was a festival, with crowds of people, I thought this was a fine venue to test my rather new pseudo-dslr. I showed several of the images I thought turned out well to my daughter, who very competently uses an Oly XA like she was a foreign correspondent with a $3000 Nikon kit! Her first words were, "Who ARE these people?! Do you know them?" How she can put both an exclamation mark and a question mark in one sentence, I don't know, but she manages... In any case, my critical error was in not prefacing my short exhibition with what the venue was, and what was happening there. Once I did, and she now had background, she immediately and totally lost interest, not even following up with a single additional question! That, in itself, was an interesting but totally unexpected response... I chose to not pursue the matter. > Once a famous photographer, who died suddenly, left behind thousands of > photographs showing a white cup. > The journalists started to wonder why. They began speculations abuot weather > the photographer had gone mad or perhaps was looking for some mystery - a > message form the universe - like the alchemists did*. > > No one seemed to understand that the white cup may very well have been the > photographers way of testing lenses, developers, lighting etc. ;) That would be my guess. I can see how it might have been the ultimate simple test object, not all that easy to photograph well. In his eyes. > Not even the journalist saw the photographs as - photographs. They looked at > the cup! I understand. Not quite his own "Haystacks in 4 seasons," but perhaps similar... > Do any of you guys remember who this photographer was? No, but now my interest has been piqued! <g> > Note * > (The alchemists did not really try to make gold - they made the Kings, who > paid for the experiments, believe so, in order to get the financing, but > they were really looking for messages form the universe - or something > similar - so I've read) Clever indeed! > Jens Bladt keith whaley -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
