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Photo clichés

Mainecoonmaniac

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My wife was running errands. We were driving down the freeway and saw 20 cars parked on the side of the frontage road. They were all taking pictures and selfies on the side of the road of sunflowers . Those poor farmers getting their flowers trampled. I’m guilty of clichés too. But what on earth would make people crowd together like that?
 
I understand why they’d be taking pictures. It must have been a pretty sight. Don’t understand trampling, though; that’s just rude and counterproductive. Same thing happens in my area when we get a rare bloom of desert wildflowers, and annual California poppy bloom. Despite the poppies being in a state nature preserve they get trampled.
 
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Lemmings...
 
Well...
When the snow geese migration comes our way, the farmers fields with thousands of hungry and noisy majestic white birds are a remarkable thing to experience, so I can understand why people want to try to "capture" the experience.
 
This reminds me of a discussion I heard the other day about photography in social media (link here in case you speak Spanish: ). They were asking if the photos posted in instagram are really about photography or something else. I agree with their assessment that the pictures posted on social media serve one purpose: assert your own existence through the "I was also there" shot. Yet, these shots become a obsolete within a click. What is really gained from all of this other than a fleeting impression that you belong for a split second? Certainly nothing for photography as an art form.
 
Sometimes, I delude myself fancying myself as an artist. At times in the struggle to find my voice in photography. I'm no different than those photographers in the sunflower fields. Its so easy in such a visually rich media environment that it's easy to copy the photos of others. A lot of great photographers like Michael Kenna freely admits that he's inspired by Bill Brandt. But Kenna has found his voice standing on the shoulders of Brandt. I'm no Michael Kenna. Picasso said “good artists borrow, great artists steal.”
 

Kenna is no Brandt. He's redundant.
 
This is why I carry a bullhorn. It's helpful for letting crowds know that the one true photographic artist has arrived (c'est moi) and I require space to create, and therefore this is a good time to move along.

 
Just verifies the statement^^^^^^ So which are we?
 
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