Tim, on the topic of choosing What To Shoot, I 100% agree with you: choose subjects that you care about, know about, wish to learn about, feel passionate about. You may need to make an exception to this if you are shooting a commission or for stock. :)
But I don't think that's Moose's angle. After you have chosen your topic of passion and you take 50 shots, assuming you want to show something publicly you need to narrow those down to your "best" work. So what does "best" mean? The shots that photo contest judges might pick? That random people off the street might pick? Best is at least the apparently strongest or most representative shots from the shoot. The ones that best _communicate your intent_. Right there, to me that means show them to people to get their reaction. Otherwise you ain't *communicating*. As to whether folks in a restaurant are the best judges of art, perhaps not. But they are people and that's who we want to communicate with, isn't it? Watching the reaction of complete strangers is going to get you more honest feedback than from your parents, friends, etc. And depending on what you hope to say it may be better feedback than you'd get from photo-club judges too as they won't be concerned about nit-picky technical details, just what the image says to them. On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 10:36 PM, Tim Bray <[email protected]> wrote: > Apologies in advance for ranting, but this touches several hot > buttons. I couldn't possibly disagree more with Moose. If you want > to produce work that pleases the largest number of people, go and > publish picture of celebrities’ breasts. People love it, check out > any supermarket news-stand. Don't try to get into other people's > heads. There's only one human being whose tastes and feelings you > really understand, and that's you. > > I speak from my experience as a reasonably and occasionally > unreasonably popular writer. I have occasionally consciously > published something that I thought covered gripping essential issues, > with a huge investment of effort and multiple rewrites, and seen it > sink like a stone, unnoticed. Then a 45-minute squib that I write > while watching TV goes viral and gets 200,000 page-views. I'm not > smart enough, and I don't think anyone's smart enough, to predict what > people are going to like, and I think that pursuing it is deeply > corrupting. > > I'm pretty dogmatic: You should only bother sharing things that move > *you*. I bet if you talked to any artist, any genre, who really moved > the needle (not that I'm one of those), you'd probably hear the same > thing. -T > > On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 1:19 PM, Bruce Walker <[email protected]> wrote: >> Moose Peterson discusses how to edit; ie: learning how to choose just >> your best work. >> >> I like his suggestion of getting work on a restaurant wall and then >> observing people's reactions to it. Could be a cringe-worthy exercise! >> >> http://www.moosepeterson.com/blog/2013/01/04/to-share-or-not-to-share/ >> >> -- >> -bmw >> >> -- >> PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List >> [email protected] >> http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net >> to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and >> follow the directions. > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- -bmw -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
