Pet Peeves

Freakscene said:
It’s a problem on YouTube too. There is a whole genre of “[insert name of city] nightclub district walk” videos that focus nearly exclusively on young women. A lot of them get huge numbers of views.
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I think those are not even pretending to be street photography. Now AI images of young women are some of the most popular being created.
 
Freakscene said:
They aren’t photography by definition. I am simply pointing to broader societal objectification using visual media.
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A perennial problem in a field dominated by straight men, from Helmut Newton all the way down to the local "camera club" nude model shoot. The attitude seems to be that it's always been done, so it's OK.
 
Retro-Grouch said:
A perennial problem in a field dominated by straight men, from Helmut Newton all the way down to the local "camera club" nude model shoot. The attitude seems to be that it's always been done, so it's OK.
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Dear Retro-Grouch,

Which brings me to another pet peeve. On social media it seems sometimes that the gender roles have been reversed? But maybe it's bots, or fake profile people hoping to snag a sucker?

I say that because every single week on Instagram I am friended by large breasted women who would literally run into a 6 lane highway in front of speeding semi's if they ever met me in person.

For better or for worse, I am very real and do my best to show that every place I visit.

Regards,

Tim Murphy

Harrisburg PA 🙂
 
Pál_K said:
People loitering around.

When I was younger, I'd make photos of everything in my town and didn't care much about people or cars being in my photo. Much later, I'd go to car shows or go to someplace where I want to photograph a building, and there'd be one or two people just hanging around that I knew I didn't want to preserve in my photo.
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Do what they did in the early days: use low ISO, small aperture and slow shutter speed, maybe even a dark ND filter. With a slow enough shutter speed, the loiterers will blur away. This obviously means a tripod, but it could work!

My pet peeves:
  1. People who carpet bomb flickr groups with irrelevant images.
  2. People whose flickr accounts have thousands of images, with long strings of images of the same thing, taken from different angles. Learn to cull, people!
  3. The reverse-elitist idiots who inevitably crop up in a discussion about Leica. Usually something like, 'if you''re an insecure fashion driven New York doctor with more money than sense, you buy a Leica for neck jewelry because you're out of touch with reality'.
  4. Instagram being overrun by Onlyfans sex workers who copy each others' content to get click through. When you see four different women jiggle their chests while some text caption reads the same thing, it gets pretty annoying when you're trying to look for Tokyo street photography.
  5. The way that inexperienced beginner photographers gasp when they meet you when you're working an event, and say, "I'm hanging around YOU tonight!" or 'Oh, you're gonna be my new best friend!" Get a life arrrrrrr...
 
Archiver said:
4. The reverse-elitist idiots who inevitably crop up in a discussion about Leica. Usually something like, 'if you''re an insecure fashion driven New York doctor with more money than sense, you buy a Leica for neck jewelry because you're out of touch with reality'.
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4.1 French people in a foreing country loudly commenting other people's cameras, speaking french and thinking nobody understands.

Last time it happened to me was in London, the d*ckh**d commenting my M4 to his girlfriend. I'm french so understood his rant, and walked away thinking to myself that I can understand why we are despised sometimes... I have no time to lose with such crappy persons.
 
Yokosuka_Mike said:
My pet peeves are horizons that are not level and verticals that are not vertical.

I spend a lot of time editing my pictures to make sure that my verticals and horizontals are perfect or as close to perfect as can be. For some reason this is very important to me.

All the best,
Mike
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I do the same. My best software for this is Corel Paintshop Pro - a photo editor similar to the old Photoshop Elements which just happens to have a very competent horizontal/vertical correction tool plus an even more competent perspective correction tool. The former tool speaks for itself but the latter comprises a four sided rectangular box which appears on screen. Each side of the box can be independently moved to align with a vertical or a horizontal element in the photo so that the box is no longer a rectangle but is now some kind of other quadrilateral (e.g. a rhombus, trapezium, parallelogram etc. with sides aligning to whatever is out of whack in the image) one click of the finish button then makes those elements either horizontal or vertical as required. I tend to do this more or less religiously even if I am using Lightroom to carry out the bulk of the editing (Corel Paintshop Pro can be set up to run as a plugin under Lightroom so it's a simple matter to drop into it from Lightroom then when these edits are finished save the result back into Lightroom for any other final edits that may be required in that software. It is wholly worth it to save the aggravation of having unwanted distortions in the finished edit.)

Glad you are similarly OCD as I am. 🙂
 
Dogman said:
My biggest pet peeve is a perfectly exposed, clean, technically perfect photo with everything exactly perfect and it's as boring as a glass of warm water.

I take a lot of those pictures.

........................
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I agree. As a result though I spend sh#t loads of time in post processing to mess with my perfect exposures by adding elements like blur, shadow/ differential lighting and even on some occasions, texture. My view is that perfectly clean photos are as dull as dishwater - really interesting images need character - and that means flaws. (As long as they are the right kind of flaws.) And I have few qualms about adding some of this in post if that is what it takes.
 
Pál_K said:
People loitering around.

When I was younger, I'd make photos of everything in my town and didn't care much about people or cars being in my photo. Much later, I'd go to car shows or go to someplace where I want to photograph a building, and there'd be one or two people just hanging around that I knew I didn't want to preserve in my photo. Sometimes they wear clothing with obnoxious crap written on it. They hang around so long, they just won't go away and I'm waiting and waiting.
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I have a similar reaction to people who are unaesthetic in one way or another. I have no objection to using as my subjects, people who are relatively unattractive as long as they are interesting / character filled for some reason. But I am very often reluctant to take shots when some obese, badly dressed, tattoo covered, really repulsive looking low grade person (more often as not who, as you say is wearing some sh#tty T shirt with revolting logos) wanders into frame. And believe me, my world is full of them. I think this is one reason why perhaps 2/3 of my "people photos" are of women - not necessarily because they are women as such, but more because I find that on average, women tend to dress better and comport themselves better than many men I see in the streets (at least here in Australia). Any guy with a beer gut, in baggy shorts, an ill fitting T shirt and flip flops need not apply! 😛
 
peterm1 said:
I have a similar reaction to people who are unaesthetic in one way or another. I have no objection to using as my subjects, people who are relatively unattractive as long as they are interesting / character filled for some reason. But I am very often reluctant to take shots when some obese, badly dressed, tattoo covered, really repulsive looking low grade person (more often as not who, as you say is wearing some sh#tty T shirt with revolting logos) wanders into frame. And believe me, my world is full of them. I think this is one reason why perhaps 2/3 of my "people photos" are of women - not necessarily because they are women as such, but more because I find that on average, women tend to dress better and comport themselves better than many men I see in the streets (at least here in Australia). Any guy with a beer gut, in baggy shorts, an ill fitting T shirt and flip flops need not apply! 😛
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Ahhh, now I see! This is why, despite constantly walking the streets of Adelaide, I am never in your photos 😂😂😂
 
We get close to the old "Worst words in photography" thread of some years ago, which had a lot of very, very funny contributions.

Pronunciation is certainly complex. I won't touch Nikon.

There is a certain style in upper crust England amongst whom a rake might be dubbed a Don Juan, pronounced something like the Spanish version, but the opera Don Juan, is pronounced with great confidence and dismissal as Don Jewan.

Some English surnames are complex with very obscure correct pronunication. Monty Python caricatured this when a Mr Luxury Yacht was invited on as a guest for an interview. He quickly corrected his host on the pronunciation of his name: "I know it's spelt Luxury Yacht, but it's actually pronounced Throat Warbler Mangrove."
 
laurentb said:
4.1 French people in a foreing country loudly commenting other people's cameras, speaking french and thinking nobody understands.

Last time it happened to me was in London, the d*ckh**d commenting my M4 to his girlfriend. I'm french so understood his rant, and walked away thinking to myself that I can understand why we are despised sometimes... I have no time to lose with such crappy persons.
Click to expand...

That reminds me of something that happened back when I was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico back in 2007. I was dating a woman from one of Santa Fe's founding families; her family had been there since 1610. She was white and of pure Spanish ancestry, like most of the Hispanos (the name the old families in New Mexico call themselves). We were at the grocery store one day when we walked past a couple of Mexican guys. One of them says to his amigo, in Spanish (thinking that we were Anglos since we were white), "Look at the fat ass on that ugly bitch!"

This guy was a little short skinny guy. My girlfriend at the time was a BIG woman. Not fat; BIG. Like built like a tank. She was 6 feet tall and weighed 340lb. I was 5 foot ten inches tall and weighed 110lb at the time. Yes, I'm one of those skinny guys who likes big women. She instantly turned around and grabbed this little dude by the throat and SLAMMED him into a steel column in the middle of the aisle! She then told him in Spanish that is he wanted to live a long life, he should get his ass back to Mexico. The poor bastard looked like he was going to piss himself. He was SCARED!

You gotta be careful what you say, even around people who don't look like they can speak your language!
 
peterm1 said:
I have a similar reaction to people who are unaesthetic in one way or another. I have no objection to using as my subjects, people who are relatively unattractive as long as they are interesting / character filled for some reason. But I am very often reluctant to take shots when some obese, badly dressed, tattoo covered, really repulsive looking low grade person (more often as not who, as you say is wearing some sh#tty T shirt with revolting logos) wanders into frame. And believe me, my world is full of them. I think this is one reason why perhaps 2/3 of my "people photos" are of women - not necessarily because they are women as such, but more because I find that on average, women tend to dress better and comport themselves better than many men I see in the streets (at least here in Australia). Any guy with a beer gut, in baggy shorts, an ill fitting T shirt and flip flops need not apply! 😛
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You should take a Bruce Gilden workshop. It would open up a whole new world of subjects for you! 😉
 
Retro-Grouch said:
You should take a Bruce Gilden workshop. It would open up a whole new world of subjects for you! 😉
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Sorry but I hate Bruce Gilden's work - I just find it somewhat unpleasant to look at. And his style of photography is no better - shoving a camera with flash in someone's face is not what I would ever want to do. Same with a lot of Dianne Arbus' work, now that I think about it. 😳😳😖
For me photography (at least my photography) is about trying to create something aesthetic and even beautiful if possible (not that I often succeed.) 🤪
 
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