Sydney, Tuesday, 09 November 2004 01:10:24 I've been a lurker on this list for longer than I wish to admit and during this time I have learned and benefited greatly and I wish to express my sincere thanks to everyone that has taken the time to share their knowledge and insights.
I've earned my living from photography for over 30 years. Its been an amazing journey with a continuing and steep learning curve and non-stop learning on the job. I've photographed over 25 large format pictorial books and have contributed to well over another 30 (most of them in remote and wild parts of this globe), as well as many international magazines and publications. I'm a keen (addicted?) learner. I've been in the digital loop since its beginnings, although until recently I've found limited application for digital capture for books on remote locations because of lack of power. My commercial work however, has been all digital for many years now. I often feel qualified to answers pro-digger's questions but without fail, before I've cobbled together my little pearls of wisdom, some of the 'old hands' on this list have responded with answers more clearly and eloquently put than I could manage. In my opinion, digital photography is in fact an umbrella description for an incredibly wide area of skills that only a short time back were separate and specialised professions. Apart from mastering the un-changed traditional creative craft of using light, mood, composition, intuition and understanding of the human condition, digital photographers need to have wide-ranging computer and software skills, must be proficient over a huge and ever widening range of disciplines such as printing press, multi-media and non-creative tasks such as networking, TCP/IP, FTP, etc, to mention just some. For this reason, I personally don't mind a large range of subjects on this list. No matter how trivial or unrelated questions may seem at times, I'm sure that there are always grateful readers (lurkers sounds somewhat defensive?) that will be empowered by answers � just as I was, when I first dabbled with computers. I use Macs for my creative work and XP PCs for servers. I eagerly soak up any shared knowledge covering even mundane platform-specific issues. I've grown fond of this list precisely because it covers many of the issues digital photography encompasses. I'm not bothered by what some members have referred to as 'noise'. I'm all for LESS interference by list mums. I think this group should decide as a collective where discussions should go and guidelines should be as flexible and accommodating as we have to be in order to cope with the rapid changes and evolution of our profession. Even when I do know the answers to questions, I find it reassuring to read someone else's explanation. I find it very easy and quick to skip emails when their subject lines indicate that they are of little interest to me, or have been covered multiple times and trash them with one swift shift-click and right-click (although I do feel that sometimes questions are disrespectful to contributors who have given their time to answer the same questions and who's answers are readily available in the archives). Whenever a new technology or new piece of equipment arrives on the scene, this list becomes very active, exciting and especially valuable. Let us not become despondent in the lulls in between, but be gracious in allowing recent starters to catch up with members that have reached higher levels of understanding, even if that does not excite as much. That's the spirit this list has shown to me over a number of years. Cheers, Leo Meier =============================================================== GO TO http://www.prodig.org for ~ GUIDELINES ~ un/SUBSCRIBING ~ ITEMS for SALE
