Actually I was replying to both of you and everyone else on the list
who hesitates to let us know what thoughts they had.
To me, this discussion group has the potential to be a wide-ranging
conversation about matters of interest to some or all of us. If
those of us who had thoughts about the gallery offerings each week
put them out there, we would simultaneously get to know each other
better and get to see how many ways there are to respond to the
pieces on the virtual wall.
The sad truth is that some on the list seem to think either that
their opinions aren't "good enough" for the rest of us, or aren't
"nice" and will make others angry at them. Some on the list are even
afraid that their own photographs aren't "good enough" to expose to
the rest of us.
People speak of getting up the "courage" to submit images - as though
their work can't possibly be OK.
Photography, to me, is unique among the visual stimuli in that it has
a burden of literalness which for more than 150 years now has
persistenly been equated with "truth". But of all those who
understand anything about "truth", photographers are best suited to
realizing that the only truth out there is ones own and as soon as
you express your opinion that it's "the" truth, someone will come
along and query how that can be, because it doesn't jibe with "their"
truth.
So reviews are opinions and their biggest liability is that it takes
time to formulate an opinion, even an ill-informed one.
What I'd like from this list, what I don't find on any of my other
lists, is opinions - about my work, about work that I look at and see
only from my perspective.
To me it's only time, not "being OK", not " being good enough", not
"being accepted". Making the time is the big part, the time to scan
a new photo, color correct and spot it, save it as a jpeg of
approximately the usable size, email it off to the gallery, check out
the gallery from the very convenient link on Andy's weekly message,
look over the offerings, formulate an opinion and type it into an
email.
I agree, making the time is a problem for many who lurk and I wish
more would. But being hindered by feelings of not being good enough?
It would be nice to eliminate that part of it.
--
Emily L. Ferguson
mailto:elf@xxxxxxxx
508-563-6822
New England landscapes, wooden boats and races, press photography
http://www.vsu.cape.com/~elf/
