On 3/31/2011 12:39 PM, Collin Brendemuehl wrote:
Tim just gave us some pretty macro flower pics. A lot of people will like
them. I enjoy them as well and even really liked a couple. But as someone
said a couple of weeks ago, the more seriously he takes his photography the
less he shoots. The question is: How do we better our photography and get
past cliche images? Can we take it more seriously without falling into either
the trap of elitism or the trap of demanding a certain level of commitment from
others? (That's the motivation behind my recent technical criticisms. We can
do better without burning ourselves out.)
I think about the retirement home with little old ladies taking oil paint
lessons so that they can do still life paintings of daisies. I wonder how many
of us have nothing better in our imagination than warm fuzzies. And I think
Tim senses some of this with the sarcasm in his title about beating us to a
bloody pulp with these cliche images. In 2D art one can hardly get more cliche
than pretty flowers.
So the challenge is this: Make a picture say something. Make it say one word
That is, other than Ahhhhh or Ooooooo. A real word. High. Long. Fast.
Friend. Love. Charity. Cold. Hot. Soft. Hard. Tomorrow. Yesterday.
Win. Lose. Amateur. Professional. Try. Succeed. Fail. Return. Leave.
Strong. Weak. Majesty. Humility. Service. Nouns, pronouns, adjectives,
adverbs -- they all work.
This can help you when you take pictures at kids baseball games or at a
wedding. Capture more than just the people. Get their faces, their hands,
their interactions with each other and the world around them, their full
expressions.
That's what makes the Ali(Wasn't he still C. Clay at the time) v Liston picture
so special.
http://www.sportsmemorabilia.com/sports-products/muhammad-ali-framed-8x10-photo---ali-over-sonny-liston.html
Sorry about the rant, but cliche images bother me deeply.
Sincerely,
Collin Brendemuehl
http://kerygmainstitute.org
"He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose"
-- Jim Elliott
Personally, I shoot what catches my eye. If that happens to be a
flower, so be it. But, most of the time, it's not the flower itself
that catches my attention, but the way the light falls on it. Having
only pursued photography relatively seriously as a hobby for a little
over a year, I'm still learning a lot about the camera itself, and a
great deal more about photography itself. So, in essence, I shoot to
learn how to shoot. Sometimes, flowers provide a great opportunity to
learn how the camera captures light.
Also, there's the fact that I like taking photos that people like to
look at. I don't shoot for other photographers, simply because there's
really no way to impress them. Every photographer has his own notion of
what makes a great photo. I spend precious little time worrying about
the technical details of my shots -- and that obviously shows a great
percentage of the time. But, when I put the camera to my eye, I have an
expectation of what I want my photos to look like when I finish with
them, and I gear my shooting toward that end: Shoot, chimp -- nah,
do-over. Shoot, chimp -- dammit. Shoot, chimp -- getting closer.
Shoot, chimp -- dammit.
And, then, there's the fact that I love to photograph just about
anything that will catch my eye -- birds, flowers, people, cars, junk,
hot babes, dead opossums, you-name-it. If it has something about it
that recommends itself to the eye, I think it's worth shooting. As I
see it, if you're walking past something that has obvious beauty and
decide not to shoot it because, well, someone's going to make fun of you
for shooting it, you've given up a little bit of the joy that made you
want to be a photographer in the first place.
Part of the beauty of the Ali vs. Liston image is the fact that it puts
the viewer there at ringside. It captured the climactic moment that
makes people want to go to boxing matches. And that was a good part of
the rationale behind my shot choices while I was out in California -- to
capture what I saw while I was there and to give the people who will
look at my photos (the vast majority of whom are non-photographers) a
sense of what I saw while I was there. Regrettably or not, a great deal
of what I saw was flowers and bugs and the sort of thing that "real"
photographers would consider cliche. I'm comfortable with that, just as
I'm comfortable with the notion that people on the list who see what
I've posted will say, "Well, it looks like Walt yanked out the K-x and
ran out to the flower patch again. Pass!"
In the end, I guess my view is that, even though some images are
naturally more compelling than others, there's no reason not to photos
that other people will like. There's no crime in making
non-photographers smile, even if it does curl the upper lip of your
photographic betters.
-- Walt
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