Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2004/08/05
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]My point is a bit different, Daniel, although my leaving photography early in my professional life was not unlike your story. (I kept looking at the photographers who were then my heroes - Avedon, Bert Stern, Halsman - believe it or not! ;-) - and thought, 'I'll NEVER be that good, so what's the point?' and ended up writing instead, only coming back to photography in a serious way about a half-dozen years ago. But my point had more to do with recognizing that different photographers are driven by different interests, and have different contributions to make - and that specializing in the photographing of the 'mundane' flow of daily life may ultimately be just as important, albeit it garners far less attention, than photographing the raw and dramatic in the world around us. 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 Daniel Ridings Sent: Thursday, August 05, 2004 4:53 AM To: Leica Users Group Subject: RE: [Leica] Born At Risk... BD wrote: > ---) I looked at them and thought, 'I'm NOT Gene Richards; I don't > want to spend a year living with crack addicts; THIS is what I do - > and it has real value. I had a similar experience in the mid seventies. I was a struggling journalist, left the states to go to some of the hot-spots ... Israel, Africa. In London I landed a contract to go to what was then Rhodesia. It was a little hot there at the time. I thought: "Hey, my pictures are ok, but what's the catch? I go into a (South African) news service, show my stuff and get signed up to go to Rhodesia for them. They don't know me!" As it turned out, I decided that I didn't want to go under the auspices of the losing side (they were getting shot too much) and realized that I wasn't going to be the next XXX war correspondent. That realization was an eye-opener. So I chickened out for classical languages, moved on to computational linguistics and have been working in today's Zimbabwe since 1992 (peacefully). So I just point my Leicas around me and I have a boring life. Boring pictures might be interesting some day, who knows. Daniel _______________________________________________ Leica Users Group. See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information