Photography and Death
I didn’t take that picture!! Have I got your attention? Wondering why I’ve posted that terrible flower picture in my blog? Well, I’m thinking about starting up an online photography magazine. You may think that’s the last thing the world needs but I’m fed up of looking at the dross but more than that, I’m fed up of looking at pictures of flowers* in photo blogs. Bad excuse? Well, to tell the truth, I bought a new camera and this was the easiest thing to try it out on (now you understand why there’s so much of it in the blogging world).
However, If I get enough good suggestions for the photo-mag I might actually do something about it.
*OK, I know it’s possible to make good pictures of flowers, it’s just that I never see them.
And even if you saw “good” flower pictures, would you care? (I suspect Chromasia would be a good place to look.)
I remember being told that in terms of technique, Poe was a brilliant poet. Yet who reads him for his poetry? Similarly, Paul Hindemith is a brilliant technician, and although I love his music, very few people do.
I like to think I’d be forced to care. Of course, it may be a world that I simply don’t understand, but honestly, I really think that there’s a lot of it because it’s easy to do (badly, mostly) and not unpleasant to look at (being positive here). Because there is so much of it, the high percentage of rubbish makes it hard to see and understand anything that might be trying to be “good”.
I did flip through Lee Freidlander’s Stems (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1891024752) which was interesting, but in this context, funny that he only took up photographing the flowers because he couldn’t walk at the time.
Isn’t my lily lovely though, ay? And those wings, oh so fine and delicate.
Didn’t Friedlander also say he shot stems for about six months before getting anywhere interesting?
Flowers: The favorite subject of the bored and uninspired photoblogger
Cats and babies are next.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Friedlander spent a long time before it got to be a book. Anyway, in the six *minutes* that I spent on it, it seemed to be more about the distortion caused by the glass vase and water (certainly not much to do with flowers) and the cover picture was my favourite, being to me, very different from the rest.
Nantel - fortunately I haven’t noticed the cats and babies in blogs. I think I have a filter set somewhere.