How do you spell "curmudgeon?"

Bill Pierce

Bill Pierce

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Turn the mass images off as one would turn off a TV set and go for a walk with no camera or Ipod and really see the world Bill.

It clears the mind and one is at peace with one's self for a short time.
 
I think two things are at work here. One is that every Uncle Jack, Cousin Marty and even Auntie Madge, if they own a halfway decent DSLR and zoom made in the last five years, can turn out a decent enough photograph. Technology has taken all the challenge out of the equation. Hold the shutter button down and there's bound to be a few good ones in there somewhere.

Then there's the sheer proliferation of average to poor images posted all over the web.
We've become visually numb with the weight of dross we're presented with and have turned off. Even the good ones get drowned in the avalanche.

I still shake my head at the President of a local camera club who went to Vietnam on a photographic holiday for two weeks and came back with over 4,500 images. Fourteen days, eight hours a day and it works out at 40 images per hour non-stop! He got a lot of images, but did he actually see anything? That was two years ago and he still hasn't been able to finish editing them.
 
"Photography is killing photography" ...

I think this sums it up best. The Pier24 gallery approach seems an interesting, different approach though.
 
Ctein is an excellent writer musing intelligently on "A singularly peculiar and enjoyable experience." I can't see why you connect him with the other two and their puerile proclamations. One proclaims that a despot is prosecuting a massacre because last year there were too many photos. The other smugly belittles people who enjoy their photos. Those two truely bring out the curmudgeon (OED spelling) in me.
 
channeling Andy Warhola and Newton Minow for a moment:

in the future, everyone will be famous for 15 milliseconds (on flickr).

the web is a vast wasteland.
 
Like many things in life these days, we have to search better to find those things that we appreciate in images and photography. Life used to be simpler (for me); Shutterbug magazine gave me multi-page historical articles about some old German cameras, and I would enjoy reading many hours those articles. Then I "discovered" some photographers works in books, and I learned from those published images. Then we moved from ,manual focus cameras to AF cameras and I was not too happy about it. Things got worse ...we also got digital cameras, and the output was nearly uncountable. I did not panic or lose hope, as I simply decided to enjoy photography for what it is. I document the lives around me, and I enjoy the images posted here at RFF and at some other sites. This is enough for me.

We cannot stop such changes, so we can either fight the changes or move along with them. Photography is here to stay.
 
Leigh Youdale said:
I think two things are at work here. One is that every Uncle Jack, Cousin Marty and even Auntie Madge, if they own a halfway decent DSLR and zoom made in the last five years, can turn out a decent enough photograph. Technology has taken all the challenge out of the equation. Hold the shutter button down and there's bound to be a few good ones in there somewhere.
Click to expand...

This seems to be a popular opinion, but I'm not sure it is accurate. Sure, they are making technically better photos (better exposure, white balance), but their compositions and content generally still suck. You still have to point the camera at the right subject and frame it correctly.
 
"Thoughts of a Bohemian". That's a stitch. "melchersystems" . . .the guy is as "bohemian" as Coke and KFC. I think what he's mainly bitching about is too much competition for his own glitzy photo sales operations.

However, slightly on topic. . . I enjoy sites like Flickr, where I can page through thousands of bad photographers to find a few delightful ones. I love pictures, and there can never be too many people with cameras, IMO. Even when I was doing it for a living, I'd enjoy filpping through someone's bad family pix, etc., looking for the good stuff.
 
Bill Pierce said:
http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

http://kennethjarecke.typepad.com/mostly_true/

http://blog.melchersystem.com/2012/02/07/photography-is-killing-photography/
Click to expand...


Yikes, their sites' formatting is inherently old school, so it doesn't surprise me. Now, the argument against that would be "who cares! it's the content that matters". Ironic, as the main complaints are about readily-available content and media. Not to mention that online, everybody is a writer.

Oh, the good old days of writers with experience in writing...

But today is...what it is.
 
a variant spelling of of c-u-r-m-u-d-g-e-o-n is p-a-u-l-f-i-s-h-4-5-7-0 ... :)

volume certainly can be a problem. i occasionally post on the flickr minimalism site. about one in 25 photos is at least vaguely minimal, but i don't mind sifting; that is what thumbnails are for ...
 
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