I've been thinking a lot about this very subject. I've got a lot of things that I ought to be spending my time and money on, but I've been spending them on photography. On one level, I think I take pictures to get better at photography. It's almost a zen thing.
On another level, I've been learning a lot of humility lately in all of the other areas that I used to think I was good at. The bar for impressing non-photographers with your photography is really pretty low. I know that most of my photos are mediocre, and most of the people on this list do too, but compared to most of the crap that most people shoot, it's pretty good, so it's an easy way to get people to say nice things about me. On Mar 31, 2011, at 10:39 AM, Collin Brendemuehl wrote: > Tim just gave us some pretty macro flower pics. A lot of people will like > them. I enjoy them as well and even really liked a couple. But as someone > said a couple of weeks ago, the more seriously he takes his photography the > less he shoots. Actually, I said that the more professional style work I do, the less that I do for fun. By professional style, I meant photography for other people, of the sort that people often (used to) get paid for. > The question is: How do we better our photography and get past cliche > images? Can we take it more seriously without falling into either the trap > of elitism or the trap of demanding a certain level of commitment from > others? (That's the motivation behind my recent technical criticisms. We > can do better without burning ourselves out.) I think of flower photos as candy. Pleasant, but not generally substantial, and just fine in moderation. When it gets down to it, I guess that my mushroom photos are also technically flower photos too. One way of getting around the cliche is that while a photo of a flower is cliche, when juxtaposed with other subjects, they're no longer cliche. A flower arrangement in the engine compartment of a hot rod, a beautiful flower being held by a street beggar, the stem of a rose in the barrel of a gun (at least it wasn't a cliche when it was first done). > > Sorry about the rant, but cliche images bother me deeply. Cliche images only really bother me when I find myself relying on them too much, in general, they just bore me. -- Larry Colen l...@red4est.com sent from i4est -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List PDML@pdml.net http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
