Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2007/10/26
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 02:17 AM 10/26/2007, Mark Rabiner wrote: >I agree where Slobodan is coming from I think but to avoid ongoing purely >philosophical pointless verbal points when talking about a visual art form >why not have a URL at the end of your emails, Marty like most of us do now >in this day and age (of walk the walk as well as talk the talk), pointing >to >website gallery stuff. Uploads. Texas Tea. Swimming pools, movie stars. > Stuff we can look at other than Times new roman to see if the writer > knows >what a properly balanced image looks like? I'm sure Marty does but I'd just >like to see so I have a ground of reference while reading emails. Something >to click on when the words get thick. Dear heavens, Mark! How deeply I disagree. Allow me to point out some things. First, I haven't the foggiest idea of how to set up a website and I really doubt that I'd be interested in doing so if I knew. I might, but, then, I probably would not. I spent a half hour n the telephone this evening with my son trying to convince me to use Craig's List to sell a sofa, as he had done. He probably could tell me how to set up a website but to what end? That would just cut into the time I am now going to have to spend on Craig's List, and this after I have finally managed to quit paying attention to eBay. Gimme a break: I may be retired but I am trying to apply some more "Times New Roman" script to a few books I am back at writing. Second, I just do not see photography as some sort of gushing display of perfection intended for public consumption. I take pictures for my own pleasure not for the delectation of complete strangers. This is my work. It is not a public art form. My wife paints but she does not put on shows and she does not do murals on large public buildings. She paints and she shows her paintings to a select group of friends and family. And that is it. She is happy. I take pictures. Over the past twenty years, I have taken a lot of pictures. This is my work, and I really do not care if anyone else feels that I have achieved some sort of mystical "properly balanced image". My only critics on this work are a very select number and that number is often just me: some of the shots I have made which my wife or my son dislike are ones I like, and so be it. I am a majority of one. I shall never win the Pulitzer Prize but that is my choice. Third, I have taken very few pictures over the past six or seven years and almost all of those shot within that time are documentary shots of camera details for researchers or of items for sale or the like. For that matter, I have about ten or fifteen rolls of film stacked up to get processed someday, and I've just not had the urge to take care of this. At the same time, I have a huge archive of shots taken before this, most during the 1990's. Many are on slides, and more are in black and white or C-41 prints. Going through these is an unholy bitch: it took me until five in the AM the other night to go through the first box I opened, one of twenty boxes or so of chromes. (Almost all are happy snaps of family affairs -- my son must have grown up thinking that I had a camera lens instead of eyes.) It took me a LONG time and I didn't find a shot there that I see as having anything save transient value to those involved -- I have a shot of Ron Salmons working a Roanoke camera show, and a picture of Pati Timmermann swimming at Cave Mountain Lake and the like, but why would you folks give a hoot? I have box after box beyond this to investigate but almost all will be the same. How many of you really want to see my son bobbing about with his mask and fins on at age 12? He is 25 now possibly would want the shot destroyed. It has no artistic value. I do a very small number of shots beyond this but almost all are of camera gear for researchers -- as I have suggested before, those who are REALLY interested in reviewing those parts of my photographic work which I find most satisfactory should buy my books, as I took most of the pictures in THE ZEISS COMPENDIUM and all but a very few in A 39mm DIVERSITY. Or come and visit me: if I like you, I may dig out some framed shots of which I am especially happy. Mark, I know you and like you, and so, when you come, I certainly will share a few shots with you. Hell, you can see them all, if you want to spend five or six days prowling through boxes of slides or unprinted negatives. Just do not expect me to go to the effort of scanning this archive of shots meaningless to those outside my circle and then sharing them with those to whom they must just be so much boring tripe.. Fourth, it has been said that only close friends really know how to eat their own dead. A lot of you do this and in spades. Someone posts a shot to some site. One of two things happens. Either we get 49 gushy, "great shot, George" responses or we get 174 messages tearing the picture down without providing a lot of helpful commentary. The helpful level of either set of responses is generally pretty low. Fifth, I am one of those you deride for talking through "Times New Roman" instead of by showing you my pictures. Shucks, would you be happier if I used some other font? I have hundreds from which to choose, but I just happen to like Times New Roman. In the end, I am a word person interested in photography and its processes and history and quirks. That fits me and those like me into this List, whether or not we choose to share our pictures to the rest of the world. And, yes, Times New Roman is the font with which I am writing my future books ... and, if I get around to finishing my book on the history of the Leica M, I will probably take a lot of the pictures myself and will thus share this small part of my photo heritage with a broader world, those few who would buy the book. Marc msmall@aya.yale.edu Cha robh b?s fir gun ghr?s fir!