Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2002/04/29
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]Allan >>>>>> Scott, help me out here. If I understand correctly, you are a 34 year old graduate student with fire in his belly to go to Romania and photograph homeless people? If that's correct, could you give me a sense of why Romania? Why not, for example, Paterson, NJ? Is it for the travel? What does Romania offer as a photographic venue that Paterson does not? What is it you are champing at the bit for? Is it to overwhelm the portfolios of your classmates with a National Geographic location? I know you state that the project is going to be big. What does "big" mean here? Big change for the people of Romania? Big help for your career plans? I just don't know what big means in this context. >>>>>> Allan, do you actually _do_ documentary photography? Do you know what it's like to have an idea and think about it to the point that whenever you hear the word "Romania", for instance, on the news or come across it in a bookstore, you feel sick inside because you're not there doing your project? You feel obsessed and frustrated, nothing else is remotely as interesting. You get into stupid arguments with your wife, you're bad tempered. Your family is sick of hearing you talk about this thing that has nothing to do with their lives. By the time you get there, you've already taken all the pictures in your head, then you find it's all completely different from how you imagined it and how it was described to you. Everything you put together in your head is useless. You feel scared and exhilarated. You probably even take a couple of days getting up the courage to go and start working. Then you push yourself off and get stuck into it, feeling totally inadequate to the task. But you are totally focussed and driven to to do that one thing - you don't even take an afternoon off to go look at the museums or whatever. Then when you meet NGO people who tell you they can't talk to you today because it's Sunday and Sunday's their day off, your mouth hangs open with amazement that anyone would want to take a day off! And the fact is, that while there are millions of worthy stories to be doing, it's the ones the photographer has that kind of feeling about that result in the best photography. Whether they're in his backyard or someone else's. I don't think anyone here has the right to criticise or question Scott's urge to do this story. If he really wants to do it, he'll find a way with or without the LUG, I believe. It might not be this year, but next year. But sniping at him because of your ideas about what's appropriate in some abstract sense... Do you think, I don't know, a photographer or journalist who goes to Afghanistan and risks his life to tell a story does it for money, or thinking of his career? Well, either he's really stupid, or he does it because it's the thing he wants to do more than anything else at that time in his life. He can't _not_ do it. It's "big". That's what having a fire in your belly means, and that can't be criticised or questioned. PS - if anyone wants to fund me to take pictures, I have a list of projects as long as my arm... ;-) - -- Rob http://www.robertappleby.com Mobile: (+39) 348 336 7990 Tel: (+39) 059 303436 See City of Crows online at The Digital Journalist: http://digitaljournalist.org/issue0204/city_intro.htm - -- To unsubscribe, see http://mejac.palo-alto.ca.us/leica-users/unsub.html