Jeff: > I always hear these things but I have yet to see anyone presenting anything > seriously that was done this way. It's no more than the same thing kids > have always done, and it's healthy and good for them. Squelching it > squelches their natural inquisitiveness and willingness to try anything, > just like school often does. I have no problem with the kids doing it for the kids sake. Much as Andy's posts some time back re photographers personal visions of the future foretold of autofocus and autoexposure making imaging easier for the masses. there's no way I'd deprive them of that either! photography as I've said is many things to many people. years of experience and work learning skills that are hard to master compared to digicreations? They are not the same. some paintings hold great value not so much for the image they portray but rather for some unique, difficult to attain skill used to produce them or because they were made by a particular artist. Were that image to be reproduced as a mass manufactured poster, the image it's self declines in value and if often viewed as commercial (and often trashed for it). who is to tell whether a carefully crafted darkroom success is a one off or one of many? How can one trusts that they are seeing anything as individual as opposed to just one of thousands, lining budgie cages around the world. I have a relative who collects broken colourful shards of glass - many see her as mad as it's just junk, but in her eyes it's all beautiful and precious. to others it's common and worthless. yet uglier things are held close to the hearts of many as being more valuable, more worthy of praise and appreciation that those cast-offs of the modern world. She's lucky- she can obtain and keep these wondrous objects all for free, but then no one has put any effort into their creation so it's all fine. The folk that dig the earth to retrieve and cut the sapphires that adorn many rings and necklaces ARE however suitably rewarded for their efforts.. but what if the sapphires and the blue glass were seen as one and the same eventually? would anyone bother with the sapphires - the effort required to produce them - or would blue glass suffice? k
