On Photography.

[back alley]

photography - greek, painting with light

the one percenters - harley riders

 

[Gid]

Stephanie,

Don't be down. You are amongst friends here and you are involved in an art/craft that can provide satisfaction on many levels. Your post has stimulated some healthy debate and such is the diverse nature of the people here that you are bound to get a wide range of views.

I agree that doing it is more important than talking about it. However, healthy debate is good and here it is usually entertaining. It doesn't drop to the level of other forums often and when it does it is dealt with appropriately.

Tomorrow's a new day and will provide us all with new opportunities to get "that shot". However, we'll all be back here bemoanng the lack of that special lens, the lack of a FF digital RF that sells for $500 ..............

Roll on tomorrow - didn't get anything worth keeping today, but I enjoyed the experience and I will tomorrow.

Regards

Gid

 

[Stephanie Brim]

Well yeah, *healthy* debate. As Joe has said, tensions are high around here lately for some reason. I think we could all do with a step back to remember what brings us all here in the first place: a love of photography in general and our love of rangefinder cameras.

 

[robert blu]

Hi Stephanie,
when discussing digital/chemical or RF/SLR we discuss the way we are going. But what is important is where we arrive : the photo itself, not so much the way. I appreciate your remind, and the feet (yours, I suppose) in the calm water to relax. Take more photo, post and comment them...

 

[Gid]

I love photography and RFs, but what brings me here is the people and their attitude which by far and away is the best there is.

Gid

 

[peterc]

Nothing matters as much as the photographs we make.

For me it's more what the photo means to me. Selfish, I guess, but that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
I got back into photography after about a decade in which occasional snaps were all I did. An hour of walking (or equal time at a gym which I really detest) a day was part of my doctor required recovery after a bout with cancer. I decided to require myself to take a photo a day and have taken a camera on my daily walk since.
The photos I take are for me. If others like them, that's fine, but not necessary.
Some people have liked some of my shots and suggested I try to make some money and have a really hard time understanding that that'd make it work and take the fun out of it.
So, do what you like for yourself ... if other like it, fine ... if they don't, it's their loss.

Cheers,
Peter

 

[ClaremontPhoto]

If I got hold of the same type of paper and ink that Shakespeare used could I write plays too?

 

[aizan]

you know why people don't talk photography as much as they talk gear? because the attitude that makes talking about gear fun is the same one that makes talking about photos hell.

 

[Gid]

you know why people don't talk photography as much as they talk gear? because the attitude that makes talking about gear fun is the same one that makes talking about photos hell.

Agreed!

Gid

 

[nomade]

Earth gets older, with more humanbeings on it, they r always the same, the technology is different though but nothing cna hold'em back...
Make ur own life, dsign ur own world, put some flowers here an there, paint ur toe nails, hang some photographs, live the moment, and dream for eternity...

Each has his own way to change the world around(relatively) and to do that u need to have a ahcracter ot be expressive, and each has a gift, a talent, to do so, one goes through numerous roads, tries and fail, tries and fail, reaches the top of the wall, look slightly through and falls down again,and then when one gets bored, he paints the wall, or do some new trick, jump using a stick, or put some books and climb over...

It's all living, and giving ur life, a shape, taste, colour, or what u call a meaning..

 

[VinceC]

Your essay made me nostalgic for the time, more than two decades ago, when I first learned photography -- largely on my own, largely by walking around and meeting people with a 50mm lens and, first, a Pentax ME Super, then a bit later, a Nikomat FTn, and after perhaps reading a bit too much about Cartier-Bresson. This weekend, after reading your note, I rummaged through a long packed-away box and retrieved a few of those old prints. And of course, they transported me back to my youth. And made me quite glad I had spent a portion of that time learning a craft instead of just living -- learning to balance the two, really; learning to see, to observe but also to interact (a 20-year-old with a camera isn't really ignored), filling notebooks, too, with written impressions. But it was always the photographs that stayed in my memory. And I haven't looked at some them for a decade or more, and yet I recall taking them, recall the mood and emotion they captured. recalled printing them in my makeshift darkroom where some curious mix of chemistry dyed my hands a dangerous shade of brown. I recalled the joy of First Creation that only artists and clerics can glimpse, if only fleetingly.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, in a letter to a sister or cousin: "If thou be a writer, write as if thy time were short, for it is indeed short at the fullest." I read that when I was your age, and I've never forgotten it. There are many among us who live unrecorded lives, and for many, that is fine. But there are a few who seek to record, to set-down memory, and to understand. And our role is transcendent in understanding humanity. We are the descendents of the tale-tellers of the tribe who, after the Great Hunt, gathered our listeners around the campfire to recount the deeds we had observed, or which had been recounted to us; we are the descendents of the cave-painters, for without us, there would be no record of humanity's passing except arrowheads and garbage.

Well done, Stephanie. Bravo.

 

[Fred]

Steph, a wonderful thread. The past month or two there have been times that I've got wound up by some discussions but seeing this one reminds me why I'm here and why I like photography.

 

[Paulbe]

Stephanie---great thoughts! Thank you--we all need to reflect. Good stuff and I hope you are very successful.

Joe--sez the 1%ers are HD riders. Welllll---maybe 40 years ago but not today. Just a bunch of middle-to-old age (mostly) guys dressing up in "Be Bad" costumes and riding around from rest stop to rest stop. And I'm one of 'em....

You won't find the Hell's Angles around the newbie HD riders---absolutely ruins the HAs reputation!
Paul

 

[hoot]

That was an excellent post. And some very good replies, too. It's a pleasure to see people who can wield meaningful words as well as compelling images.

 

[yossarian]

Stephanie, I think you'll find your essay represents the views/feelings of many of us.
The images of my own which matter most are the ones which represent my own skewed little vision of the world around me--maybe a peculiar subject, or perhaps a
different take on a familiar subject. In all cases I can say that if someone else had photographed the same thing, the following quote would apply: "It would have been different; it might have been better. But it wouldn't have been mine"--Orson Welles.

yossarian

"I want to show you the world in my eyes"--Depeche Mode

 

[aad]

Thanks, Stephanie. I spent some time today indexing slides taken by my parents 40+ years ago, hundreds of them. Next is making sure the people in them don't get lost-like the neglected aunt, in her youth, dancing, now long dead. That snapshot from a party is in my living room now, on a 127 slide. It's very important.

 

[squeaky_clean]

That was a very nicely done essay Stephanie.

I only wish that I could write as nice as that... 🙂 And I totally agree that all the debates can detract from what photography is all about; taking pictures, no matter how you accomplish that.