Re: [Leica] Winogrand/blind shooting

[ted grant <75501.3002@compuserve.com>]

Folks,

I've seen photographers do this "blind shooting" and always wondered what
the hell they are doing...shooting wild like that? 

As it seems there are a number of "renowned photographers" who shoot in
this fashion, I thought I'd give it a go.:)

Well either I'm blind in both eyes or there are a bunch of people who 
don't have the guts to hold the camera to their eye, focus and shoot the
subject properly framed and composed.

I shot a pile of rolls strolling around and plinking here and there at
things I thought, "geez look at that!"  click, "throw that one away after
development. When I knew damn well, if I'd have shot like a "real
photographer" putting the camera at my eye, I'd have had one hell of a good
photograph. 

Either shooting wildly at the world is a very special technique with a ten
million dollar amount of BS luck, or I'm the stupidest Leica photographer
around.

Roll after roll just went into file 13 (garbage) as there wasn't anything
but weird angles of the kind that for years I've concluded shot by gutless
photographers afraid to face the subject quickly, quietly and unobserved. 
Remeber we are talking about using "near silent" M cameras!

You see, I think any idiot can walk around with a 28mm lens set at f22 and
never look through the view finder and get a great collection of weird
angled pictures that are virtually meaningless, unless some wordsmith puts
sweet talking words to them saying how great they are. Which in turn makes
a lot of photographers believe "hey if it's good for Willy Wonkie to shoot
like that and get books published, I guess I better start shooting in that
fashion also."  Wrong!!!!!!!!

Quite frankly, to hell with this shooting blindly stuff! If you don't have
the balls to put the camera to your eye and shoot, "learn how!"

Jeeeeeesh, I know I'm in trouble again! :) oh well what the hell, I'm
sounding like an old grouch this morning.:) Merry Christmas everyone! :)

ted