What is your priority?

Nothing is wrong to call “shooters” camera-worker and to call workers in darkroom “printers”. It is wrong to call camera owners photographers. When my brother in law got a camera I said once “look my brother became a photog”?. He smiled and said “I am not a photographer, I just take pictures”. So he is a camera-worker, true, even he know it. Photography is not “a part of photography” or collective exercise. When Michelangelo was forced to paint Sistine chapel, disappointed he called for assistance the whole army. Very soon after he started all was kicked out and he locked himself in until HE declared “my work is done”.
So in case of collective photography who declare “work is done”?
Camera-worker?
Printer?
Or someone else…..
And usually work is actually never done, but camera-worker is a photographer. Hex man.

One that like just to shoot has something predatory inside him and use camera for a silent attack which make him feel fine, and I am just repeating what is generally known.

www.Leica-R.com

donald

when i became a parent 6+ years ago, my priorities changed from shooting-processing-printing to shoooting+processing ( or if it was chrome or color negative film- just shooting+lab'ing ).

after 6+ years i see better, and know my equipment better process my film better and i am finally at the point where i say to myself "its just film" ...

john

Rfshootist
can you please cool down and identify yourself not as WE or ALL OTHER PHOTOGRAPHRS. What you write and think is your personal and you have your name which is not WE..

As you posted: “I cannot see, why all the historical changes in technology should force us now to think about the role of the person behind the camera,…”

If –YOU- cannot see it does not means no one can see. Get a grip with it. If Y-O-U disagree it is fine too. Sorry just could not resist.

www.Leica-R.com

Donald Miller said:

My priority now seems to be involved with seeing and exposing film as a departure from making prints. The adventure lies in seeing for me. Has anyone else observed this tendency?

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I can easily see how changing your priorities has helped to refine your work as a photographer. Both aspects (image-making and print-making) are important, but the degree that one has more importance over the other is an individual thing and has nothing to do with whether one is a "real photographer" or not. There will be a point when translating what you see for others to understand rises in relative importance.

We each bring and take from the medium of photography what we each need. For me, it is the seeing, and the learning to see, that is the main driving source of my photography. It has been this way for me since a photo class I had with Thomas Joshua Cooper over 25 years ago. I have reached a point where a camera is not required 100% of the time -- just the joy of seeing can now over-ride any disappointment of not being able to photograph a particular light on the landscape.

For myself, producing the hand-made print is only slightly behind the actual camera-use...they are almost equal. Prints are the way I share what I have learned about seeing with others. The prints are also the feedback I receive to establish benchmarks along the my path of learning. Selling prints is an ego-boost, of course, and the sales helps to by more film and printing supplies.

I am not too worried about the lables (photographer/camera worker/artist, etc). Such lables have nothing to do with why and how I work -- and only slight importance to my relationship to others. Calling them photographs or prints or photographic prints is just a sematic exercise. As long as one can communicate, the actual words used are not that important to me.

Vaughn

SO, Donald, after several months, do you feel the same?

I agree with the sentiment that started this thread. I hardly get to print anyhing, now that i am without an exposure unit and a viable means to process my negs one would wonder why I bother, but the act of setting up the camera and to maybe record what I SEE makes me go out and do it more. I love the actively seeing part.

Too bad i can't afford to have my BW negs processed and printed. Ah well that is what storage envelopes are for.

mark said:

SO, Donald, after several months, do you feel the same?

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Dang...is this tread months old?! Bouncing between the English way of writing dates dd/mm/yy and the Americam way of using mm/dd/yy, I can never be sure. My fault, though -- I did not look closely enough at the year either!

But it would be nice to hear a progress report from Donald!

Vaughn

Donald is out of the US for the month of January.

lee\c

So, he can't take the time to log onto APUG? WHere are the man's priorities?
I hope he has a wonderful time.

mark said:

SO, Donald, after several months, do you feel the same?

I agree with the sentiment that started this thread. I hardly get to print anyhing, now that i am without an exposure unit and a viable means to process my negs one would wonder why I bother, but the act of setting up the camera and to maybe record what I SEE makes me go out and do it more. I love the actively seeing part.

Too bad i can't afford to have my BW negs processed and printed. Ah well that is what storage envelopes are for.

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Mark,

Sorry to be so slow in replying. Access these days is via occasional internet cafes here.

Yes, I feel the same way about this. In the past several weeks here in the Phillipines I have been upping my normal production substantially since I have been shooting 35 mm exclusively.

My recent work has been at a total departure from my normal LF work. Much more spontaneous and fluid. I will post some of this work when I return to the US in the first week of February.

Donald Miller said:

Art is a step from what is obvious and well-known toward what is arcane and concealed.

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Donald, say "Hi" to Art Bell while you're over there in the Phillipines!

Kirk Keyes said:

Donald, say "Hi" to Art Bell while you're over there in the Phillipines!

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where exactly would one find him?

Art's back in the US now - back at his compound (as ABC called it) in Parumph, Nevada, in the great American Southwest - near to Area 51.
juan

juan said:

Art's back in the US now - back at his compound (as ABC called it) in Parumph, Nevada, in the great American Southwest - near to Area 51.
juan

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Maybe Galli knows him personally...