Dear Colleagues,
Bob Talbot wrote:
Who cares what the photographer was thinking?The public do! Imagine if the very same image were taken by two photographers, one accidentally, the other with a framed pourpose in mind. It is immediately and inuitively obvious that one of these works is something to be taked seriously, to be contemplated, perhaps even hung on the walls of our esteemed gallery. The other is probably just crap!
And if you note my carefully crafted statements when _I_ have submitted work for my peers to consider, would they be the same earth shatteringly great images if I did not provide all those details?
The list of technical considerations, for learning photographers, isThe Practice is a fine American TV series, but I hardly think that this form would make us think of it?
actually quite good. If we all read those before submitting to the
gallery just maybe there would be less nits to pick each week. But
maybe too we would focus too strongly on the "Practice" and not enough
on aesthetics and impact.
Ah, it is lucky that I am such a fine scolar! I read your paragraph twice. The first time I thought your "we" who would suffer less head lice if they read this "before submitting" refered to the reviewers. Clearly, if it applied to the gallery photographers, your point is that they would consider these points prior to submission and choose differently -- or indeed choose not to submit.
Taking my Rosenable hat off for a minute. I'm writing this while preparing all the images from the 3 day wedding I referred to earlier. And looking back over other weddings, I am constantly amazed that "the public" quite often will really like some absolutely crap images. My practice is to give proofs of *all* printable frames to the client. I seperate the good shots from the not-so good shots, but the feedback I get is that people sometimes often don't notice the flaws (and some are *huge* flaws). Just one example -- one of my cameras decided to slightly misalign the focus screen during a wedding. Shots taken with it using longer lenses and wide apertures were noticably out of focus. The feedback was all about how "crisp and clear" these images were! Technically they were uniformly crap (and that's not Bob T's CRAP either!). I guess my point is that while I can argue that an image can be good dispite some technical flaws, there are a *large* number of people out there who will think an image is great even with the most glaring technical flaws. I think the great opportunity that the photoforum gallery offers is the chance to get a large number of opinions. Personally, I value all reviews equally. Often, the only people who review my work are myself and my wife. The promise of photoforum is that you'll get a large nuber of reviews, sadly that's not the case. How can we get more people to review the gallery? I think this paragraph has rambled far enough. Back on with the Rosenable hat.
Clearly question C1 encourages the student to think about what the photographer's statement would be, and C2 positively encourages them to seek it out.Bob
PS: not one comment in the form about the artist's statement and as to how it supported the image ;o)
The impact of some images makes people ask (rhetorically) "What were they thinking?". And it is rhetorical because the viewers conclusions are their own. The intent of an artist's statement is clearly to free the public from the shackles of having to think for themselves! And this is what the public demand!!!
Best, UnBob
