The Beginners Questions Area

This thread is yet another example of why DPRevived needs an FAQ area where quality content won't be clouded by endless juvenile bickering.

Might be a good idea for one or more threads here. Who picks up the challenge?

Sadly, this forum is already turning into another p*ssing contest for theorists showing who "knows" the most science and is having no appeal whatsoever to actual photographers. I was hoping for better, but sadly not.

The vast majority of this site is working properly and is a credit to its founders. Approximately 3395 people are happily posting images, chatting about photography and obsessing about gear. The remaining six, however…. We are fortunate to have some unquestioned experts in the field of digital imaging - but they shouldn’t be let anywhere near anything with ‘beginner’ in the title! 😀

I agree, and it would be a shame if those half a dozen sink the whole thing.......

Oh I get that and I admire you setting this place up. But as the founder you set the tone. Do you want this to be a pi**ing contest for scientists or a great place for photographers of all abilities?

I once made a financial presentation to a nonprofit board. Afterwards, someone congratulated me on understanding the financial position of the institution so well. I told her that I hoped that now she did, too. She said, “Oh, no, I’m not a numbers person.” I told her that I understood that it was difficult to look at dense columns of numbers and gain meaning, and that’s why I presented most of the material as graphs. She smiled at me, and said “I don’t do graphs, either.” There was no sense that she regarded her rejection of a quantitative understanding of the world as any kind of impediment at all. In fact, there seem to be a dismissive attitude toward numbers and the people who employed them.

I’ve encountered this attitude often, although not usually in such striking form. I’ve never seen its opposite: an embracing of numeric analysis and rejection of qualitative understanding. No one has ever said to me, “I’m just not a words person.”

I know that not everyone is equally comfortable and competent in both worlds. Engineers, for example, are by reputation -- and sometimes in actuality – deficient in their ability to write and speak clearly and persuasively. When I was running engineering at Rolm, I noticed that internal memos and reports were not as clear or pleasant to read as they could have been, so I started to hand out copies of Strunk and White to all newly-promoted engineers. No one ever said, “We don’t need no stinking style book.” Maybe they were just too polite. I never encountered an engineer who was proud of having only rudimentary language skills.

What’s all this got to do with photography? The same attitudes are in play there. Photography is a technical pursuit, and, for many, it’s an artistic activity. Some people get carried away with their love of the technology, and produce mundane art, or, occasionally, no art at all. Some reject the technology even as they employ it, and sometimes their art suffers for that dismissal. This is not a new phenomenon; it was with us in the film era. There were photographers who eschewed light meters, uncapping the lens until they felt enough light enter the camera. There were people who said that Ansel Adams’ Zone system was unnecessarily technical, useless nonsense; all a photographer had to do was expose for the shadows and develop for the highlights, and that any photographer worth his salt could do that without resorting to numbers.

On the ‘net’s photographic fora people have occasionally complained that postings with what they considered to be overly technical content have ruined their enjoyment. Rather than just pass by the posts that they consider uninteresting, they protest their existence. Just as in the larger world, no one seems to do the opposite

Jim,

I've posted this today on another thread, but I'll post it here, too.

Try participating in a music-oriented forum, especially a guitar forum and mention Music Theory.

Wear a hard hat.

Rich

Jim
The fact that you said "Photography is a technical pursuit, and, for many, it’s an artistic activity" nails it on the head once and for all why I will always respect you for your tech knowledge, but also why I can never even remotely agree with your philosophy.

Photography IS ART. It should never be any less. If you think it's a technical pursuit you're just simply trying to photocopy what's in front of you. And THAT is why I can never agree with you.

I thoroughly respect your knowledge technically, but as an artist myself you've literally confirmed what I already suspected, that you don't think that way at all!

It all makes sense now :)

There are plenty of non artistic photographs. Catalog shots. Illustrations for manuals. Most photojournalism. Saying photography IS ART, is like saying that writing is art, or putting one foot in front of the other is art, or plucking the strings of an instrument is art, or blowing air through a tube is art, or opening your mouth and exercising your vocal chords is art, or daubing paint on canvas is art, or shaping and assembling wood is art. All those things can be art. None of then are inherently art.

Music theory seems to get a lot of respect on Steve Stine's FB group.

Have a look:

www.kasson.com/gallery/