this weekend past in Jersey City, NJ ~ (embiggenable)
this weekend past in Jersey City, NJ ~ (embiggenable)
this weekend past in Jersey City, NJ ~ (embiggenable)
IT COMES AS NO SURPRISE TO ME TO READ a blog entry-from a dedicated gear head-that expresses a sense of (non-commercial) photo making ennui. It would seem that an equipment fetish is not particularly conducive to the making of good photographs.
While it would me very easy for me to heap a bunch of no-shit-Sherlock on the author, I thought that I would instead-for instructive purposes only-intersperse a few Brooks Jensen quotes-from his Things I’ve Learned About Photography-together with a few excerpts from the blog entry in question:
excerpt: All I can manage to say for the photographic process now is that it gets one out of the house…But without a spark behind the process all the trappings of the craft are mostly rendered meaningless and banal….old duffers like me wandering around with wonderful gear in a vain attempt to re-capture the magic we felt when taking photographs in our youth….
The more gear you carry the less likely you are to make a good photograph. ~ BJ
excerpt:…Almost as though we've all concluded that with the endless torrent of images being constantly shared everywhere that no individual shot or selection of shots matters anymore….I felt a certain sense of futility…Another futile attempt to carve out some sort of alternate viewpoint.
…every photographer who sticks with it long enough arrives at a technical plateau where production of a technically good photograph is relatively easy. It is here that real photography starts and most photographers quit. ~ BJ
Now I am not suggesting that the author is about to give up making non-commercial pictures but, if he were to do so, it would not be much of loss to fine art photo world cuz one should…
Never ask a person who collects cameras if you can see his photographs. ~ BJ
PS
You would never know it by looking at the photographic press [ed. gear focused blogs], but there are an amazing number of creative people engaged in photography who couldn’t care less about equipment but who love photographs. ~ BJ