# For mysteryscribe.....



## PNA (Jul 25, 2006)

Sitting her sipping a fantastic cup of java, brewed myself, I have reluctantly come over to your side. After spending much time viewing and reviewing photos on a daily basis, my conclusion is: there is a lot of _crap_ out theremine included. There does exist however, a fair amount of good stuff, but sadly mostly crap! I know from my end, I want to take that perfect shot and get great reviews, it aint gona happen! Instead of being deliberate about a shoot, I search for unusual targets and attempt to massage them using photoshop into something that may have appeal, but in reality doesnt resemble the target I have in mine in the first place. Im sure youre getting my thoughts here since you lead me down this exploration. I was a happy soul, happily looking at photos with determination to prove to myself at least, that there was no real crap, but alas the photo world has proven me wrong and I detest being wrong because Ive always been right, ask my wife! Let's raise our glass to............,you fill in the blank.

A faithful follower,
Paul

Long live B&W and film!!!


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## terri (Jul 25, 2006)

Long live B&W film.....period!  

You go, Paul. :thumbup:


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 25, 2006)

I'm no evangelist for film.  If anything, as my son in law says, I'm one who believes in substance not style.  That he suggests, behind my back im sure, is because I have no style.

But lately he has begun so to see the tricks and gimmicks as not really showing what he wants to show.  Oh he is going to keep on doing it for the brides, and the families that want the glitz, as would I.  However, I think he has come to the conclusion that like the early photographers, the thing that you shoot has the beauty.  It is not your job to make it more beautiful but to capture the beauty inherent in it.

I got some comment on the background in my retro bridal shot.  It is absolutely called for, if you look at it as a photoshop project.  It is also called for it you look at it as, "could you have moved her somewhere else?"

I totally agree the shot would have been better without it, but would the inherent beauty of the subject have changed.  Since the shot was retro of a time and in a building from the 1800s, I'm not sure that the rough background wasn't called for.  A formal portrait no, it was a shot at the wedding portrait.  "Shoot it as it lays" Kind of thing but I'm not defending it because they may well be right.  When I print it, I might do a texture thing to minimize it's impact without getting rid of it totally.  But that is enhancement a fine line between that and cheap trickery.

The major problem with photography (need I say in my opinion) is that it is too damn easy now to make 3/4 decent pictures.  75% of the time you are going to get acceptable pictures, if you just set the camera on auto everything.  That is pretty good considering never before in the history of photography was that rate possible.  90% of the time you are going to get pictures your family will love.  The other 10% you can delete.  So what is wrong with photography that so much is what we lovingly call crap (substitute mediocre)  here.

Sometimes it's a tricky lighting problem that the camera can't fix and the photographer doesn't know enough to fix.   Sometimes it just a boring shot though technically good.  In others, if it were a film camera would we have wasted the buck on the shot? Think about what I just wrote.  There is no longer any need to be selective in what we shoot.  Hell with digital, we can shoot like it was a damn movie.  Hundreds and hundreds of shots at a wedding, come on now why not just video everything and then select frames to enlarge.

Composition can't be stuck in a paragraph in the owners manual of a dslr.  So you have a nikon, that doesn't mean you are an artist my young friend.  It means you have a nice camera and can go clicking away at the world.  I'm sorry a horizontal shot of your daughter with a mile of black on each side is NOT good composition, no matter what they tell you around here.  On one side sure, if you are going to make a poster but not for a portrait.  All it takes is to turn the camera so the format matches the subject.  But that isn't in the owners manual from Nikon or canon so it can't be important.

There are hundreds of little things that move a snapshot up a level.  If you know the rule and you break the rule it is innovative.  If you don't know the rule is just a screw up.  I'm sorry everybody who owns a camera is not talented.  Just because you are alone in a crowd, it doesn't make you an artist.  I'm sorry but thats just the way life is.

These days it's all about how to avoid paying your dues.  Well guys when you do you get a majority of mediocrity aka crap..

Now let me say this right up front, or right in the rear.  Not all digital photography is mediocre.  Some of it is really, really good stuff.  I don't much like the look of it usually, but that is just taste.  The best of it comes from people who know about photography, not just the camera they are holding.  They had studied and shot lots of pictures and LEARNED from their mistakes not by defending them.  So, guys who know what's what and shoot digital, don't take this as inditement of you, cause it isn't.  What it is though is a statement that if you are looking for short cuts to being a quality photographer, there are none.  Shoot lots of pics listen to people who tell you things about them,  and try real hard not to cop an attitude.  Most of what people say about your pictures isnt personal.

From this point on I refuse to critique anyone else's photos.


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## PNA (Jul 25, 2006)

I expected an &#8220;I told you so&#8221;, you let me off the hook again, thanks.

I&#8217;m not into building cameras, light gathering boxes or any other light transmitting device, but I do admire the work and workmanship involved in the effort.  Be your box handmade or the priciest Nikon digital/film, seeing, composing, and shooting a scene is learned over many years of practice. So I agree with you from that standpoint. However there is a place for &#8220;snapshots&#8221; and it should remain there. Snapshots do not need &#8220;professional criticism&#8221;. They belong in a scrapbook for future viewing to bring back memories of the events. Actually I think you&#8217;ve defined correctly the classification of mediocrity. 

Digitally speaking&#8230;&#8230;shot till you drop!

I still don't what to drink to.....it's scotch-thirty here.


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## terri (Jul 25, 2006)

It's been easy to take crappy pictures since the first Brownie came out in mass production. Polaroid made it even easier.  I have several shoeboxes at home full of my in-laws' old Polaroids, and I can promise you there was not much selective thought going on there.

Blame the internet, not digital, for allowing us to view crap that otherwise remained mercifully under wraps in showboxes. Stored in closets. 

Blame PS, if you'd like, for letting folks think crap can be made beautiful if you know how to add gaussian blur and put a frame around it.


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## PNA (Jul 25, 2006)

Looks like we have the beginings of a meeting of the minds....think we can convince any others?


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 25, 2006)

Im going to simply agree with Terri and repeat. So you feal alone in a crowd, that does not mean you are necessarily a misunderstood artist, you might just be weird.

I know that applies to me.

But I do blame automation and digital is the latest in the line of cameras that have auto everything. Now when you had a brownie, you knew you had a brownie and went to a studio for the shot to give your boyfriend and or girlfriend. Now with everybody having a digital camera and the myth that everyone who buys a nikon or canon is automatically vested with professional status is what burns my butt.

If this wasn't an open forum I could site examples but I won't. It would serve no purpose and would only upset people. Let me say this, the world needs more professional photographers who think all photos are horizontal, cause their computer screen is, like it needs more lawyers.... Now that is the true didital nonsense. I have no idea what composition is, but it has to be horizontal because my screen is horizontal duh. (usually followed by scratching some private part.)


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## terri (Jul 25, 2006)

> Im going to simply agree with Terri


Well it's about time! 

Such a nice boy. :sillysmi:


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## PNA (Jul 25, 2006)

terri: Acknowledgement at last.....

mysteryscribe: Weird I am, always!


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## PNA (Jul 25, 2006)

I'm starting to be honest with my comments to the gallery at large.........touble is brewing!


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## EBphotography (Jul 25, 2006)

Mysteryscribe types a lot!


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## JamesD (Jul 25, 2006)

I would like to politely, and only partially, disagree.  Unfortunately, time is limited, so I'll have to think through it more thoroughly, before I comment, later tonight.


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 25, 2006)

You are supposed to disagree... Most of this is to make you think it isnt carved in stone by any means.


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 25, 2006)

And to honest not only do I type too much I express my opinons way more than I should.

Do I hear and amen from the congregation.


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## JamesD (Jul 25, 2006)

LOL Charlie.

I mainly agree...  it's really a difference of perspective, rather than a disagreement.  I'll explain later, I promise.


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## PNA (Jul 25, 2006)

JamesD said:
			
		

> LOL Charlie.
> 
> I mainly agree... it's really a difference of perspective, rather than a disagreement. I'll explain later, I promise.


 
Now this is getting interesting..the suspense is madding!

By the way, Im having a conversation with Funkacious Funk in the General Gallery, yal are invited to tune in.


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 25, 2006)

I dont know about the gallery thing, but im not commenting any more but that is a person who should be shooting film. Then see how random his shots are.

Some things fall even below mediocrity to the level of a prank.


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## PNA (Jul 25, 2006)

Or lower.....


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 25, 2006)

As i was told when I suggested that a crop was way out of proportion, "Hey man thats just my style." Rofl.

reminds me of the scene from rocky he is walking with the teenaged girl and he says put the cigarette out . It'll give you garbage can mouth.

She says, "Maybe I like garbage can mouth." Garbage can mouth was obviously her style to.


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## PNA (Jul 25, 2006)

Maybe there's hope............nite!


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## JamesD (Jul 26, 2006)

Okay, rewrite #5.

Those of us present at the moment understand this, but I'll state it plainly for any visitors who might not know:  these are my opinions, and I'm not passing them off as fact.  They reflect my outlook, my philosophy, and if you disagree, great!  If you agree, also great!  It's all about individual taste and preference, as I'll reiterate shortly.

If someone intends a specific effect, and achieves it through volation of the generally-accepted guidelines we may or may not call "rules," then so be it.  If the message they inted to convey is in fact conveyed, then they are successful.  Whether or not we find it aesthetically pleasing is an entirely different issue--with the exception of a hired job, such as a wedding or whatever, where the photog is expected to produce work in accordance with customer specifications.

_"It's just my style."_  If someone understands what he is doing well enough to consciously control what he's doing, and does indeed exercise that conscious control, then he's justified in making this statement.  If he doesn't, then he's not.  If he says that "it's just my style," then in the former case, the statement is valid; but in the latter, it's invalid, merely a thinly-veiled excuse for uncertainty of purpose--or worse, justification for incompetence.  However, it's not up to us to decide this.  We can form our opinions, but ultimately it's on his own integrity.

Any image that conveys the photographer's intentions, whether we like it or not, is a successful photograph.  Robert Maplethorp is my favorite example.  I despise most of his work--at least, what I've seen of it.  It is intensely unappealing to me.  However, it clearly conveyes his intent, and his work is therefore successful.  That's all I'm trying to get at.

As for snapshots... they're a special case.  They aren't intended as art, they're intended as a record of an event or scene which the photog thought worth recording as a memory-aid.  Perhaps he'll share them, perhaps not. Perhaps they'll be "properly" composed and exposed, perhaps not. In either case, they're usually successful, in that they evoke the memory they were intended to evoke.

That's why, for instance, the snapshots from my last birthday party aren't hanging in a museum somewhere.  They aren't art.  They were only ever intended to bring to mind the events of that day, and nothing else.

That, and because I burned them as incriminating evidence.

Okay, I think I'm done, now.


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## JamesD (Jul 26, 2006)

In case anyone is wondering....

The reason I rarely post is partly because I have little time to get around to shooting, processing, and scanning, but also because I know (or believe) that my own photogaphy is either A) aesthetically unappealing; B) intent unconveying (or perhaps merely unintentional?); or C) all of the above.  Many of the few things I do post, I post primarily because they illustrate some technical point I've been working with.

Just thought I'd throw that in there.


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 26, 2006)

OKay let me give that some thought.


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 26, 2006)

I decided to post these random responses as I think of them. Rather than one rambling comment since I can't organize my thoughts that well at the moment. So number one.

"It's my style man." my response to that ran about a thousand words so let me just say this instead

"Whatever man"  Taken from the response posted here in the gallery by the photographer


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## PNA (Jul 26, 2006)

You gotta love the brevity of the explination.....


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 26, 2006)

well its right up there with "hey it's just my style man."


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## journeyman (Jul 26, 2006)

I first must say that I've found the sweet crowd of the forum in this thread.

You have all basically expersions my opinion on photography I have had for a long time now. I'm so excited all I can really think of liittle excerpts of thought I've had in the past that apply.

"If I wanted to make money I'd shoot digital I shoot film cause it's a hobby"

It was said before that these days anyone can pick up a digital camera and take a good picture.  I say where is the fun and challenge in that.  Film provides me with a challenge that I get to work with.

"You have to know the rules before you can break them"

again if you are going to say "it's just my style" you have to understand the basic rules of composition and break them in a way that produces a descent picture.

These people are not contributed to the photography community.  It sucks that when I went to the local photo shop the guy treated me like crap cause he thought I was another stupid college student who he said " didn't know an f-stop from a bus stop" (I love that one)  It was like I had to prove my knowledge and competence before he became a really sweet guy. 
Anyways this wasn't very thought out just a jumbled rambling but It was good to finally get the feelings out there.

Another little pet preeve since when did everyone start using ISO instead of ASA. Do we need to be international?


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## terri (Jul 26, 2006)

Welcome to TPF, journeyman. 

All opinions are welcome, as long as everyone's tone remains civil. (And that's not directed at you, but to all who may post in this thread.) 

Everyone comes to a photo forum with different experiences, levels of knowledge, and expectations as to what their love of photography will ultimately bring them.  We know nothing about these differences unless we respectfully choose to find out. 

Having said all that....

Carry on!


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## JamesD (Jul 26, 2006)

mysteryscribe said:
			
		

> I decided to post these random responses as I think of them. Rather than one rambling comment since I can't organize my thoughts that well at the moment. So number one.
> 
> "It's my style man." my response to that ran about a thousand words so let me just say this instead
> 
> "Whatever man"  Taken from the response posted here in the gallery by the photographer




Yeah, that's pretty much what I was saying, as well.  If it's his style, and I don't like it, then "whatever, man."

If it's just his excuse for producing crap, and I don't like it, then "Whatever, man."

In any case, if I don't like it, "Whatever, man."  I won't lose any sleep over it.


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 26, 2006)

Just want to say this one time.... he/she/it aint foolin' nobody some of you are just more polite ..... lol


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 26, 2006)

I just read the thread that got closed.  Why is it always a third party that jumps in and start the foul mouth stuff flowing.  I think there are a handful of kids on here with ten names lol.


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## PNA (Jul 26, 2006)

That third party jumped in at a point when I thought jophassa was beginning to understand what I was saying. I was pushing him to give up a reason for his shots, not to offend his work, but to see another side to photography and his photos. I hope he thinks more about the whole concept of pictures. I respect his right to shot exactly what he wants.....


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## mysteryscribe (Jul 26, 2006)

None so blind as those who refuse to see.  Then some kid with a gallery no less jumps in and helps them not to see.  Beautiful.


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