Overall, Bruce, I love your work so these comments are in no way a reflection on that.
For most of the non-photographer people I talk with at the galleries, natural scenics are what they think of when they think of the words 'photography' and 'art' combined. And most of them will ooh and aah for about ten seconds when a superb, truly grand scenic in the classic AA mould is put in front of them, then move on and forget it entirely. And that's one out of perhaps a thousand landscape scenics that attract their attention for *that long* !!! What engages these folks' eye and mind with far more staying power are photographs that relate human beings and the creations of human beings to the world, to other humans, to each other: emotional expressions of human context in the universe. The variety of images that do this is much much broader than photos of flowers, trees, sunsets, mountains... in my opinion anyway. There is certainly a place for all kinds of photographic expression and lovely florals, beautiful mountains, spectacular sunsets are definitely a part of the game. However, a sunset is a sunset: a moment in time unique in the universe, perhaps, but one out of thousands we experience in our lifetimes. Photos of people and the human world connect us to time, history and our own individual mortality in ways that a sunset cannot. I was at one of the local photo group meetings last Wednesday evening. The presentation this time was by a photographer who went on and on about how his highly manipulated florals were being created in a traditional way and bridged from the modern to that tradition, they were symbolic representations of "ineluctable beauty standing against the hand of Man's destructive power". Those were his exact words ... Gag me before I laugh out loud. I thought some of them were pretty nice flower pictures, but not a one of them could hold my attention for more than a few seconds of "a pretty flower" and then I move on. Godfrey On Jan 19, 2007, at 9:21 AM, Bruce Dayton wrote: > I appreciate your candor, Boris. I guess I have to ask, how, most > other photographers also develop a more common motif, that no one > comments on getting used to them? Godfrey, Juan, Kenneth and others > all shoot mostly similar types of scenes - is it because nature is > more boring than people or what? I'm more curious here than defensive > - just trying to figure it out. > >> Bruce, I like the bridge shot the most. Is it Golden Gate? >> >> The rest is good, but somehow I am starting to get used to your >> work in >> a certain way. The bridge shot is nice deviation from your most >> common >> motif of calm tranquil nature. > -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
