MomAlwaysLikedMeBest's photostream  

I'm someone who got interested in photography in my early teens mostly after watching the movie Blow-Up on TV (but not because of the naked romp with the models in the rolls of no-seam paper...;) Actually, it was the calmness in the park where the lead character took his photos and the darkroom where he kept making larger and larger prints that got to me. It appealed to the photo nerd in me and my shyness.

Then, in my early 20's as a photographers assistant to the Toronto fashion photographer Jim Allen that I stopped discussing and comparing camera features and lens sharpness, film grain and developers ever again. Jim had me pick up some images from his show at an art gallery for him and while I waited, I examined a B&W fashion photo by Richard Avedon taken in the late 1950's of some models standing on a photo set. The detail, sharpness, contrast, composure, lighting, everything about this print (platinum) was so freakishly amazing to me. Then I thought of the fact that we were some 30 years further ahead in photo technology and everything we had to work with (camera, lenses, lights, film, paper, chemicals, training) was so much more advanced that our quality of image should be easily as good as, or better than what he was able to produce at the time, and how it was far from the truth!

We all complained about our film grain, lack of the displayable range in tonal values in the paper, the touchiness of chemical temperature ranges, how there was not enough sharpness, it was amazing how many excuses we could come up with. And still, we were striving for the quality of images like the one I saw. Had we gone backwards? No! We kept believing that a new feature, a new camera body, another make of lens was the solution to get us from our garbage to greatness.

Well, I'm ranting but suffice to say that if you have a developed eye for photos, you should be able to get the photo with even the cheapest camera around (more or less) and some new feature or camera upgrade wasn't necessary. (There is a need for longevity for pro photos of course and that can cost money)

Then again, my HDR photos certainly seem better than they would have been if unprocessed so I guess I'm as guilty as most everyone else, eh? (I'm Canadian)

If only I had 20 mega-pixels...

Have any of you noticed the massive increase in non-awards being given to everyone these days? Those groups who's sole purpose is to give each other 'awards' as a requirement to posting to the group? I welcome more viewers but it's all become way too much in my opinion. Like giving out awards to all the kids at a competition and not just the winners so no one feels bad and is horribly scarred for life. I have a few of these, but I won't be posting to such groups ever again!

I don't want an award just for the sake of getting one. I want comments, not pre-formatted text strings with logo/icons! If you want to give an award, fine but I won't accept one given as a requirement of a group.