Art or Incompetence? The con job explored.


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Just my 2 cents..

Photography may be an art to some of you. I am no professional nor even close to amatuer though I like photography with regards to the technical "know-how". I am more like a newbie. Pictures I take may not be of class to some of you but I take them because I wanna capture this special moment and remember it.
 

Originally posted by Linus
Just my 2 cents..

Photography may be an art to some of you. I am no professional nor even close to amatuer though I like photography with regards to the technical "know-how". I am more like a newbie. Pictures I take may not be of class to some of you but I take them because I wanna capture this special moment and remember it.

Linus,

Nicely said and it's not people like your good self that this thread is aimed at, but rather the posturing often government financed artists who pass of rubbish as prime quality art.
 

1. Use Leica : Serious photogs only use Leitz optics. Anything else is not real photography. All the great photogs used Leica - HCB, etc.

2. Use f/2 or faster : Anything shot with smaller apertures is not art.

3. Use Tri-x : (I know, hornet's nest) : Use Tri-X to take grainy pics with that butt-ugly Tri-X "Character" (aka grain) instead of using better film like HP5+ or APX-400. Oh, all the "great" photogs always use Tri-X.

4. Always print full frame like HCB. Any cropping is cheating. Though you have that ugly coke can in the corner, you can't crop it.

5. Blurred photos are ART damn it :) It's a style of expression, just like the impressionists who freaked with blurred unclear junk they passed off as art. (Yeah, I hate the impressionist paintings - give me the biting clarity of Ansel Adams any day). I remember seeing a pic by Henri Cartier Bresson - it's a guy with a big violin on a cycle and there's bad camera shake. I can't imagine how he could actually publish it. I would have thrown it out.

6. Have an important subject (or part of the photo) out of focus or shaking or blurred : There's a pic in Galen Rowell's Mountain Light where a plant in the bottom corner is out of focus and shaking in the wind. When I looked at the pic, that is the FIRST thing that caught my attention ("yuck, now why did he do that?"). IMHO that distracts the viewer and gives unwanted attention to a messed up part of the image.

7. Use 6x6 or even 4x5 and use soft focus lenses or diffusers : I hear over and over again about the improvement in sharpness and quality of a larger format. Well I guess it only increases when they use a diffuser. How can it be otherwise?

8. Use a camera without a viewfinder or TTL meter. Like the old Leicas. I have heard many many people claim that it "forces" them to compose, estimate distance, estimate the metering and shoot. It's a skill and an art to produce true journalist pics (so they say). Now why can't these guys simply use something like a Ricoh GR-1V or even a quiet SLR with AF? I've got many perfectly exposed/focused pics - shot from the waist with my EOS. Or is it a masochist / sadist thing?
 

I went to an exhibition where in the Q&A session, one of the photographers commented that he will ONLY USE RANGEFINDERS; esp a Leica and will refuse to use an SLR. Hmmmmmmm.......
 

Originally posted by kongg
I went to an exhibition where in the Q&A session, one of the photographers commented that he will ONLY USE RANGEFINDERS; esp a Leica and will refuse to use an SLR. Hmmmmmmm.......

Nothing unusual, coz some people will only use SLRs, TLRs, or even MF or LF. It has to do with the photographer's preference and the subjects he likes to shoot.

Also, rangefinders are lighter and less conspicuous, so they lend themselves well to things like street photography.

Regards
CK
 

Well, I thought a photographer should be adaptable to equipment. By not even wanting to use a particular class of camera at all seems a bit too restrictive IMHO
 

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