Eliminating Gun Terminlogy From Photography

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Ready Aim Fire

Ready Aim Fire

Actually:
Cock, ready, aim, fire the shutter release.
How could there possibly be any other terminology?

Fire: to launch or start something up.
Being politically correct doesn't doesn't have to crossover into stupid timidity that compromises the language or its history.

For God's sake I was raised with Roy Rodgers and Hop A Long Cassidy, it's not like I have any skeletons in my closet.
 
you shoot a basketball, a bow and arrow, a quick email, etc. - its definition is not entirely restricted to the gun industry.

I don't have a problem with it. Words have multiple meanings, context clarifies. This is common in many languages.
 
rogue_designer said:
you shoot a basketball, a bow and arrow, a quick email, etc. - its definition is not entirely restricted to the gun industry.

I don't have a problem with it. Words have multiple meanings, context clarifies. This is common in many languages.
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As you and Oh Two have exemplified, this demonstrates how things get "censored" because some people choose to view something in a very narrow, slanted way.

This is opening a huge can of worms, and they ain't gummy-. More like tapeworms.
 
>you shoot a basketball, a bow and arrow, a quick email, etc. - its definition is
>not entirely restricted to the gun industry.

As a basketball player, I must admit that I hadn't associated "shooting baskets" with "shooting pictures" -- and ultimately with "shooting guns".

An excellent counterpoint. One that resonates deeply with me as an argument against my teacher's point of view.
 
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This is for all the sheep out there: Baahhh.

It is a shame that it is more important to be PC than smart over there. Is it PC to let thousands die so you can save a buck on gas, how about blockades that kill hundreds of children because they cant get medicine, how's about droping 200,000 tons of depleated uranium Yugoslavia? Get serious and Merry Christmas!
 
AusDLK said:
I had a photography teacher that had a real problem with the gun (ie. firearm) terminology that infiltrates photography.
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Personally, being someone who believes that word choice is important, I would be inclined to support this philosophy lock, stock and barrel. (Er... well, you get the idea.) Except that...

...shooting a gun doesn't necessarily involve killing anyone or anything. There was a period in my life in which I fired guns fairly often, but I never massacred anything other than tin cans and paper targets. (I always wanted to have a pop at clay pigeons, but never quite reached that income stratum.)

The reason I was interested in shooting guns wasn't that I was training myself to kill anything at all. I wasn't interested in hunting and had no intention of becoming a sniper or a murderer.

I simply liked the way that shooting guns taught me to summon up concentration, calm myself physically and mentally, and focus my attention on a specific objective. Not such bad training for photography, come to think of it...

The fact that "shooting" does not necessarily equate with "killing" takes a lot of the moral starch out of your professor's philosophical position, doesn't it? If you don't agree... well, don't shoot the messenger!
 
I have some weapons and then some cameras as well. Also been involved with the military and also Law Enforcement. I have found it universal that the weapons themselves are not morally deviant or subvertive in nature. Immorallity and evil exists and would be exploited in any way it could find, if by violence or some other method. What is good and useful can be twisted to something that causes harm.

Rather it is our reaction that determines a final outcome. Wisdom is very difficult to come by in these things. Will we blame the object or the man/women that pulled the trigger. I , personally, refuse to blame the object or associate said terms with the actions of bebased men.
 
Does that mean that I can't have a shot of my favorite whisky or that I don't get a flu-shot?

There are a lot of examples how this word is used and a lot of them has nothing to do with weapons, when used in the medical sense a shot can even be a lifesaver...

It's not the same in Europe but even here I'm getting annoyed with PC. Can you imagine that Shakespeare or Luther couldn't have written their books or the first german bible because they would get censored? Or think of Mark Twain or Paul Salinger (they got censored in some communities!). Censoring words is just a method to control your thinking because if you declare words as nonwords most people are starting to censor their own thoughts.

Next stage: Censoring Street Photography?
 
It resonates, vaguely.

Guns are very alien to me. It had never actually occurred to me that the language of cameras is common to the language of guns. My reaction was "oh", but that's about it. I do believe in choosing my words, but in this case I don't think it will make any difference to me.
 
Well I shoot, and frankly often my camera is my weapon.

I don't have a gun, and while I live in a country where hand guns are banned, nor is it easy to get a license for those guns that are not banned, it's the same country that will export any number of weapons to pretty much any country that desires them, for whatever use they wish to put them. I find that strange, I find it sad, it makes me angry.

Never mind chemical weapons, which incidentally been sold to certain countries by the country I live in, or for that matter nuclear weapons, nothing has done more harm to society than the gun, nothing has killed more, nothing will ever kill more.

No I don't blame the gun, the gun can be a handy tool in the right hands. I blame our governments, their obsession with control and imperialism, their greed, and perhaps most of the all the ****ing fools that elect them.

Political correctness? Sure it exists, but more than anything it exists as a propaganda tool of the right, very much a myth, used to try and destroy any kind of liberal view or free thinking.
 
AusDLK said:
>I'm curious how my teacher's philosophy resonates within RFf.
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I think your teachers a twit...but that's just me saying 😀

If this is what the prof is teaching in a photography class, I'd bitch-slap him and ask for a refund. Seriously, spend the money on film and your time shooting and deveolping your skills instead of listening to this useless dribble, you'll learn more about photography.


but, what do I know?
Todd
 
gareth said:
I blame our governments, their obsession with control and imperialism, their greed, and perhaps most of the all the ****ing fools that elect them.
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Makes you want to line all those ****ing fools up against a wall and shoot them, doesn't it. That's the problem with democracy -- people who disagree with your superior wisdom still get to vote.
 
There is a similar use of terms in computer slang that can be disburbing to some. Familiarity wears off the other associations, it needs to be looked at with a fresh eye to find the other connotations.

examples--

we 'kill' a program that is running

a program 'aborts' (fails to finish successfully)

a program 'dies' (fails to finish successfully)
 
fraley said:
There is a similar use of terms in computer slang that can be disburbing to some. Familiarity wears off the other associations, it needs to be looked at with a fresh eye to find the other connotations.

examples--

we 'kill' a program that is running

a program 'aborts' (fails to finish successfully)

a program 'dies' (fails to finish successfully)
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and don't forget the "money shot" in a popular form of cinematic theatre. Does the director really mean to commit currencycide? I think not!

yep, the prof needs a bitch-slap 😀
 
>a program 'aborts' (fails to finish successfully)

Another interesting comment. (This thread has been great.)

In my former life, I was a programmer creating numerous commercial products.

I self-censored myself from ever using the word "abort" in code I wrote and it was definitely for PC reasons. I did not know who would be using the programs I wrote and felt that "abort" was too loaded a word and its use was best avoided. Better to choose another word then risk offending a prospective customer.

To be honest, I don't remember if this was my original idea or if a supervisor mentioned that to me at some point during my career.

However, I remember feeling an aversion to using the word "kill" too.

No wonder I was sympathetic to my photography teacher's (btw, not a college professor, but a teacher of an adult workshop) point of view.
 
gareth said:
Never mind chemical weapons, which incidentally been sold to certain countries by the country I live in, or for that matter nuclear weapons, nothing has done more harm to society than the gun, nothing has killed more, nothing will ever kill more.
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Apart from infectious diseases and viruses like Malaria, AIDS, bubonic plague, influenza etc.

Guns are just the latest in a line of implements that have been used, by people to kill other people.
 
AusDLK said:
> I'm curious how my teacher's philosophy resonates within RFf.
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I just shot a quick glance at this thread. AusDLK, you should have your teacher join RFF. I have been dying to try out my ignore list to see if it works.

Wayne
 
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