[Leica] Interesting MP

[bdcolen at earthlink.net (B. D. Colen)]

Or to put all this another way, Mark - Collecting cameras no more makes
one a photographer than collecting toy trains makes one a railroader.
And to take it a step further, collecting pens has to do with writing.
;-) There are some writers who are pen collectors, just as there are
some photographers who are camera collectors - but being one does not
make one the other.

B. D.

-----Original Message-----
From: lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org
[mailto:lug-bounces+bdcolen=earthlink.net@leica-users.org] On Behalf Of
Mark Rabiner
Sent: Sunday, November 21, 2004 7:46 PM
To: Leica Users Group
Subject: Re: [Leica] Interesting MP


On 11/21/04 11:44 AM, "Feli di Giorgio" <feli2@earthlink.net> typed:

> 
> Just think about all the Tri-X you could buy for $30,000. AND plane 
> tickets!
> ;-)
> 
> feli
> 

Let me repeat my story I've not posted in a few years about the time I
almost bought an early Nikon which had a 24x34 not 24x36 format.

When the guy found out I was planning on SHOOTING PICTURES with it, and
I had mt money on the table, he flat out refused to sell it to me.

This would have been an affront to everything he held dear.

There is no reason why the camera collecting mindset and the camera
using or "photography" mindset should be mutually exclusive. Yet it is
rarely the case when they are not.

The kind of thinking and lifestyle which wants to line up rare and
expensive TOOLS on the shelf behind glass is almost never the kind of
thinking and lifestyle which inspires one to USE similar tools. By
similar I mean "non collector" versions or these tools. As in cameras
you buy new in a camera store to make it simple. Not ones in which you
loose a thousand dollars for every roll of film which puts wear on the
rails.

I'm trying to think of someone who is as good at making a Cibachrome
20x24 print as they are in at knowing why a lens shade should cost
30,000 USD or even might even own one and at the top of my head I'm not
coming up with one. I'm sure they're out there though. Lurking.

I've got nothing really big against collecting.
I don't happen to think it's what the LUG is all about.
I have things which bug me a lot more.

1. people who buy and sell without even collecting.
They trade. They play with money. The cameras become in effect this
money. Camera gear is just another form of commodity or asset. Like pork
bellies perhaps. I have no clue what that's all about are there pork
bellies with red dots?

What's the current market value of hammers and saws?

2. The other thing which bugs me a lot more than collecting and
collecting really doesn't really bug me at all is the act of collecting
but calling it "photography". People who confuse the "amassing" with the
"doing". I meet a lot of those.

As much of photography itself is in a sense "accumulating" as one clicks
away adding to ones body of work this could in some sense be
understandable.

In the darkroom perhaps is when one "gives back".

Mark Rabiner
Photography
Portland Oregon
http://rabinergroup.com/




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