It would be interesting, fun too, if pictures posted in the Galleries would be accompanied, not by the uninteresting technical details (who really cares about what f-stop was used???), but by a motivation, an explanation of why the particular picture was made to begin with, why it was made to look the way it does, and why any viewer might/should care about it and not just ignore it.
Absolutely nothing. But I enjoy it and for the most part it makes me happy (except for those few times when I review my negs and wonder why I ever bothered to pick up a camera in the first place).
Try to explain the urge to breathe and the urge to eat. Urges are what drives us.
Photography remains as natural as getting out of bed to me. I just do it.
That's what i ask myself every time i even think about picking up a camera.
It's what i ask about all those millions of pictures created every day. Why would they need to be? Why would i have to look at them?
The answer all too often is that there is no reason. Just more of the tired old same.
In fact, it has become a bit of a long running project of mine to try to figure out why people feel the urge to add yet more to the already too many.
It's not just photography, but applies equally to every 'creative' field.
And the answer is not in the 'products' of creativity. It's the urge. The photographs (and music, books, etc.) have to be made, because people feel an urge to do so. After that, they would better be burned, stored away where they will never be seen, etc. The last thing to do is bother other people with them.
It would be interesting, fun too, if pictures posted in the Galleries would be accompanied, not by the uninteresting technical details (who really cares about what f-stop was used???), but by a motivation, an explanation of why the particular picture was made to begin with, why it was made to look the way it does, and why any viewer might/should care about it and not just ignore it.
As far as "the urge" Q.G. is talking about...well, it is true but on the other hand, nobody is bothering anyone. If you don't like the music, don't buy it. If you don't like an image, pass. It's not like anyone is imposing on others to look, buy, or critique worthless images.
It's just like a bad sense of humor: you can't read any of the threads here without coming across the 'usual suspects' spouting their nonsense, doing their best to turn anything into a display of their urges.
I find some of the most vocal people here have the least photographically to show for it.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
I find some of the most vocal people here have the least photographically to show for it.
Put that in your pipe and smoke it.
Well, yes and no.
In this case, the urge that is extremely difficult to avoid running into isn't a photographic one. (Just like my point about urges wasn't restricted to photographic ones).
You're absolutely right about the willy-nilly posting of photos. Very 'restrained' behaviour here, much worse in other places.
It generally is very hard to avoid the incessant stream of 'creations' without becoming a recluse, locking yourself up in a cell without any contact with the world outside. And i don't believe we would or should want to.
Yet, keeping ourselves 'open' to whatever our fellow human beings do and produce, i (at least) can't help noticing that the vast majority of 'creative products' aren't worth the time it takes to even acknowledge they exist (and that includes my own). They may be important, as a 'release of creative tension', the giving in to an urge, an itch you have to scratch. But that doesn't necessarily make them worth anything to anyone else. And only very few are.
But still, Max, they are almost all 'thrust upon us'.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?