[Leica] Regarding those snaps of a few days ago

[afirkin at afirkin.com (Alastair Firkin)]

Bob, I for one think I understand. PHotograhpy should not be easy snaps 
really, it should be pushing you, and sometimes you do shoot just to "stay 
in form". No harm in it, but no real point to it either. Its one of the 
reasons I think this group could use a good hard driven project. We need to 
do more than snap a flower out the back window. We all need to be trying to 
say "something" in our real photographic work. Sadly only about 50 have 
signed on for it, and that is not going to be enough to sustain a big 5 year 
project. 

Keep thinking: that's where the best start is. Why do I photograph and what 
am I trying to tell or express to those who look at the image. What would 
create "interest" for others.

Cheers

Alastair

--- rpalmier@depaul.edu wrote:

From: bob palmieri <rpalmier@depaul.edu>
To: lug@leica-users.org
Subject: [Leica] Regarding those snaps of a few days ago
Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2009 16:41:53 -0600

Folks -

Thanks for all the on & off-list comments on the handful of images I  
threw up recently.(???!!) Because of the nature of these comments  
(pretty positive),  I'm gonna take a leap and say what I think about  
them.

They're fine.  They're OK. I think I have a pretty good handle on how  
to make stuff work within a rectangle (like so many others on the  
LUG.).  You know; simplify forms, help make the viewing easy on the  
eye movements, a little visual rhyming, throw in some geometry and  
sometimes a bit of chiaroscuro dramatics and you get something that  
looks like a pretty good snap.

Truth is, it's all seeming kindof cheap & facile to me these days.   
Sometimes I think that I just do this stuff to sharpen my hunting  
skills,  in case I actually need to shoot something of real value.

Could be one of those midlife things, but having some control of the  
elements of visual vocabulary was supposed to be an intermediate  
step, and I'm feeling like the next step is gonna involve a lot of  
personal work to figure out if I have anything I really want to say  
with shooting.

Maybe it's just another version of the "sharp picture of a fuzzy  
concept" thing.  More like "well arranged graphically functional  
pictures of fuzzy concepts."

Does this make sense??

Bob Palmieri




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