Hi all Having first passed this note via list mom and following a number of comments that my musings have got a bit thin of late - here is one to think on.
Following recent postings of the technicalities and complexities of digital photography, I hope you will accept this posting as a light hearted thought bringing together a real situation where those outside the box believe photography is so easy, compared to those who once inside the box, suddenly find it very complicated! Recently, we were invited to an 'olde worlde' pub in deepest Norfolk, Eastern England, to sample the restaurant of the new owners who had only been in charge for three months. Finding out we were photographers, it wasn't long before the publican and his partner engaged us in conversation on - guess what - digital photography. His partner has made a very successful career as a consultant for a number of well known companies in the food industry and also has a degree in photography. Indeed, not to be out done by stories of my travels around the globe she recounted that she had been in South America recently on a culinary programme. So you are giving it all up to run this pub I asked? Oh no! came the reply. I will do both jobs at the same time. Then it was the turn of the man of the house. It turns out that he was a very clever IT guy for a multi-national corporation and along with his partner and being in his fifties, decided it was time to give it all up and run a pub in the country. Clever or foolish, I wasn't sure, so I politely opted for the former, until he announced that he had also enrolled for an HND course in digital photography at a very well known college of photography. Oh, I said, you are developing a hobby as well then. No, he said, I am going to take up photography professionally. You know, do a bit of photo-journalism, landscape work, a bit of fashion and of course sell images through a library. So you see, photography is so unbelievably easy that you can, with no knowledge at all, be an instant success whilst running a pub and a restaurant as well. It think it is called being ambidextrous, to carry pints in one hand, focus a camera with the other and check the histogram with your foot. Why didn't I think of this before? Why do you guys on this list have so much trouble understanding the complexities and technicalities of digital photography in all it shapes and forms? For heavens sake! All you have to do is to take a course in running a pub and digital photography is laid bare before you. The mind simply boggles at the number of people who think that what ever they have done in the past, their goal is to end their lives being an outdated David Bailey. I am beginning to believe that there is a correlation between photography and the lottery. There are many who think that the digital world is a passport to instant riches for very little effort - and all it needs is that momentary spark of genius, like putting six numbers down on a card. Maybe things were not going as smoothly as they should, when the drinks order arrived wrong, and the food sat on the plates going cold, whilst we frantically tried catch someone's eye to say we needed ironmongery to pick it up with. Still, fingers came before knives and forks. In the meantime I have enrolled at medical school to become a brain surgeon, so that I have a subject to take photographs of at the same time. Yours jaundiced, but with kindest regards to you all. Norman Norman Childs Mobile: +44(0)7831 519217 Tel: +44(0)1256 767611 Fax: +44(0)1256 767612 Website: http://www.greenshoots.co.uk =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
