Hi,
>>"I was watching a rich suburban mom shooting pictures of her son's team
>>at
>>a high school track meet today. She was using A Nikon D2h and 300/2.8
>>with a 1.4 converter--about $8000 worth of equipment and better than
>>what
>>I as a pro was carrying. Watching what she was shooting I'm convinced
>>she
>>got a lot of dull, stunningly sharp pictures ("here's Jake before his
>>race"...). That is probably exactly what she wanted and was aspiring
>>to.
>perhaps she was a professional photographer spending some time with
>her children, and knew exactly what she was doing. To be honest, your
>assumptions say far more about your prejudices than they do about her
>photography.
Of course they do. I did not, as has been pointed out, see the results of
her shooting. From the standpoint of a photojournalist, her photos
were, given where and when she was pointing the camera, likely to be
unimpressive images AS PHOTOJOURNALISM. She was not a photojournalist,
but a mom. I know what she was up to because I talked to her. She was
shooting pictures for the team banquet. In THAT context my
photojournalistic photos probably would not have been well received
(too few kids, not smiling, etc). Most team-banquet style photos would
not be well reviewed in artistic and technical contexts because they
are not intended to be "art" or "saleable". They serve the user well,
but are not "great photography". They aren't intended to be.
The people bemoaning the death of "photography" are overlooking the fact
that the goal of most photography is not "photography".
>I've been photographing children at a safari park today, using several
>thousand dollars worth of Contax equipment - including a 300mm lens
>and x2 converter, like your suburban mom. The children (11 and 7 years
>old) took at least 25% of the photographs, and most of those that I took
>may not have reached your obviously high standards
I have no standards for other people's private photography, unless I have
to edit it at work or some such. I actually have a lot of trouble
critiquing other people's work because I KNOW I have a strong trained-in
perspective on it. I'm not real sure what the standards and assumptions
of the rest of the photographic world are. This is the main reason that
I don't contribute to the PAW discussion here on PDML.
A lot of gear is crap, and is going to produce technically inferior
results even in skilled hands [Shel's original assertion, if I read him
correctly]. A lot of pictures are "crap" (by most artistic or
professional standards) even if taken with the best gear [A point often
made by Cotty, and what I was originally alluding to in my response].
Neither of these things matters if the user is satisfied with the results.
Crap persists because it is satisifying people somehow despite being crap,
and that's fine.
DJE
