[Leica] The beautiful backs of Limerick - comment and comparisons

[rcmphoto at yahoo.com (R. Clayton McKee)]

--- On Sun, 12/12/10, Douglas Sharp <douglas.sharp at gmx.de> wrote:


> The world, at least my world, is not (generally) tilted, so
> why go around tilting it on purpose?
> 
> This bloke has had a chance to get some really gritty stuff
> across to the viewers and has cocked it up completely with
> his stupidly - and unnecessarily - tilted camera angles.
> 
> It could so easily have been a wonderful photographic essay
> about a depressed area, but he made it into a
> "swinging-sixties"-style snapshot album.
> 
> That said, when he does actually manage to hold his camera
> more or less straight, he shoots some pretty mean stuff.


The difference between the tilty stuff and the straight reportage isn't 
necessarily esthetic; it's economic.  The web and the world are awash in 
exquisitely done straight reportage, all of it well-meaning and the vast 
majority of it lost in the noise unless it hits a reflector which may give 
it another dozen viewers.  It's pretty depressing to shoot and work your 
heart out on something, post it, promote it, and at the end of a month 
you've gotten six responses, five of which are pure spam and the sixth is 
hybrid, and your stats show that with your best promo you got 46 hits on day 
1, 12 on day 2, and 1 on day 15 because someone was searching for "Naked 
Irish Girls" and got a hit on "Irish."

If you want to get your work out with something more than your personal 
website and viral marketing, maybe even something that helps fund it, the 
market wants "an individual vision."  That usually translates to odd tilts, 
bizarre perspectives, HDR, weird tonings... all that stylistic crap that 
most of us detest and despise and won't do... because otherwise there ain't 
much there in terms of publication.

Sure, it's weird... but I doubt it's careless and it MIGHT get published in 
one of the gazillion "young and hip" rags that pop up for a couple of issues 
and then die... and the guy who shot it might get enough cash to at least 
pay to recharge his camera batteries, maybe even get another flash card.



R. Clayton McKee
PhotoJournalist
from somewhere just south of somewhere else...