Does anyone else take woeful photos? (all the time)

Does anyone else take woeful photos? (all the time)

  • I am happy with many (or most) of my photos

    Votes: 99 20.2%

  • I am happy with some (a few) of my photos

    Votes: 289 59.1%

  • I am unhappy with most of my photos

    Votes: 82 16.8%

  • Photography is for me, it's private, I don't show my work to others

    Votes: 9 1.8%

  • None of the above

    Votes: 10 2.0%
  • Total voters
    489
Only the mediocre are always at their very best. Ever seen Shakespeare's Cymbaline? No? There's a reason. Bloody awful play.

Back in the days of film, I could plan on wanting to print one image out of most rolls. So one in 35 or so. Now, I print much more like 1 in 1000, but that is probably because the medium on which most of these images are shown is a computer screen, so printing does not mean what it did when the negatives I was producing couldn't be viewed by folks with whom I wanted to share the images. When I have hit a rut, I usually turn to a formal project to try to shake things loose. After all, if you can make an egg and some cutlery interesting, real people are a piece of cake.

Ben Marks
 
Here's a photo that some hack photog was probably told to "Go down to Wall Street and get a shot of Chaplin".

It transcended from topical news photo to historically and technically great photo:

NSAPMI54_EXTR.JPG


Look at the power, promise and energy of New York City. Is there any doubt that this country was going to win WWI and become a superpower, and last almost a century before going into decline, corruption and dissolution?

.
 
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Aren't #2 and #3 complementary? When I've gotten a few keepers, I'm happy with some. When I don't, I'm unhappy with most.

But I'm pretty miserable at this avocation, all in. Reinforced by some of the fine work I see here and elsewhere on the web.

Funny, prior to spending significant time on the internet, I was happier with my output. There's a lot of great images around, mine aren't.
 
I see a lot of puzzling avatars featuring cameras next to bottles of beer or cups of coffee.

Maybe if people weren't practicing "drunk photography" or "buzzed photography", or "kawaii camera pictures next to intoxicants" they would have better pictures.

What's the idea of cameras with coffee or beer photos?


MCTuomey said:
Aren't #2 and #3 complementary? When I've gotten a few keepers, I'm happy with some. When I don't, I'm unhappy with most.

But I'm pretty miserable at this avocation, all in. Reinforced by some of the fine work I see here and elsewhere on the web.

Funny, prior to spending significant time on the internet, I was happier with my output. There's a lot of great images around, mine aren't.
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Agreed. 100 years ago, even the bums wore nicely tailored 3 piece suits and hats.

Now the public dresses like the Barnum and Bailey Clown Parade.
 
I am very happy with maybe 3 or 4 photos from a roll of 35mm, same goes for 6x6 or 6x9 120... and almost every shot I take in LF. That is "happy with many" to me. I probably take at least 20 photos a year that I think are *really* great... that is also "a lot" to me.
 
endustry said:
I know a few engineering types who use dSLRs w/ Canon L lenses and take really dull, tunnel-visiony, "hey, look, it's a mug beer and now it's a photo of a mug of beer!" type photos without any narrative or geometric pull whatsoever. They talk a lot about all the things their digital doohickey can do and read up on how to manipulate it to do even more while arguing over how much better this or that mechanism could have been built.

I've never once told them that their photos are boring because it's very obvious that they are having about ten times more fun doing whatever it is that they are doing than my miserable artistic ass is doing whatever it is that I am doing.
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Ahaha.
I think this is me in a nutshell.
 
You are not alone. I am another one of those guys who loves buying cameras and taking pictures, but who has precious little to show for it. Recently took a shot of my mom that I really liked, but she and everyone else absolutely hated--said it made her look old. For some of us, improvement is just a much slower road than for others. At least it's a scenic journey.
 
http://www.amazon.com/Elements-Phot...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1238375861&sr=8-1

I do not have formal training in art, but want to share what I see and feel with my photos. I am very comfortable with exposure, speeds, apertures, composition etc. But, something was missing. I got the technical aspect down and in many ways the excitement of it all was going away. I found the above text perfect for an intermediate level photographer like me (my wife thinks I am advanced).

If exposure, aperture, speeds, composition are words. If cameras, lenses, digital/film, printers, enlargers, papers are your pen/pencil/keyboard etc. Then this books shows you how to put together sentences and paragraphs and stories.

Highly recommended!
 
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Putting on a conservative suit and tie can make a big difference when dealing with anybody from the police to the teller at the drive-through at your bank. You don't have to dress that way all the time once you've been noticed dressed that way. There's a lot of truth to the old saying "Clothes make the man!"
 
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