Words

As much as we are photographers and "see" the world in terms of images, words are still important and still come into play.

This week I had the great opportunity to hear from two sides of how photographers express themselves in words.

Lynnette Taugher, a local photographer, let me read a presentation she was giving on photography to a 4-H group. And the words that stuck with me were "  As a photographer, it is important that you try to look at the world in a different way… YOUR way! "

True, isn't it. Well, at least it should be. There are times I think that I'm just shooting to please a client and pay the bills instead of shooting as I would if I were shooting it "my way".  But that's business. Of course, if you do it right, you can shoot it both ways so you can still express yourself.

And then comes an exploration into the Fred Miranda forums.  I know several photographers that are members so I thought I would check out what the forums had to offer. 

What I found in the words of other photographers would probably take the smile from Lynnette's 4-H photographers drive them back to video games. 

I browsed through a great gallery of basketball photos, only to find once the comments started that everything was negative.

By my standards, these were exceptional photos. And the so-called experts picked them apart for the littlest reasons.

The corker, as they say, came after I checked out a photographer who kept cropping up in the forums adding his two cents (or would that be minus two cents) to each entry. The final entry I read included a very detailed trashing of some OK photos of a gymnastic event. 

Always curious, I thought it would be interesting to check on "Russ's" background to understand where all of his experience came from. A quick Google to his website left my laughing at what I found. Mr. "expert", who was knocking down so many photographers just trying to look at the world in their own way, displayed a portfolio with what could only be described as snapshots. A portrait section contained several amateurish images shot with on-camera flash. The composition was boring. The post production almost non-existant. 

And this was the "expert".

For my money, I'll follow Lynnette's advice and try to keep looking at the world in "my way". :-)