It just occurred to me that never, not in a million years, would I have imagined that I would be doing the sort of professional research I find myself doing for my photography. I'm thinking about branching out into more pin-up and possibly artistic nudes and so I've spend maybe 20 hours in the past week surfing nude and pin up sites on the web :)
Life is strange huh?
BTW: My research used to consist of buying and studying fashion mags every month, perusing agency portfolio pages, and reading nice literature. Thankfully, I can still return to these efforts once and a while :)
and if you're interested in some of the more interesting sites I've stumbled across in my current research, check out my latest posting in another of my blogs... Nude and pinup reveiw
Saturday, August 4, 2007
On Mediocrity
"The average person thinks he isn’t."
- Father Larry Lorenzoni
Today I was thinking about mediocrity... well I was inspired to consider mediocrity by a very strange site I ran across while researching pin-up art (warning this is explicit stuff) the site is called Midbrow art.
Anyway, I was looking at this photographer's work and thinking... you know, there might be some sort of interesting premise here, but it's really not done very well. I felt that the images were really washed out and not very appealing.
Then I was thinking about how, having named his site midbrow art, the artist may have actually been aiming for mediocrity.
The thing is, for me, that mediocrity is one of the things I fear most. I would be happy to be loved or hated; I would hate to be uninspiring. And maybe, in his way, this photographer did inspire me... He did get me wondering how I would have done it better :) but I would not be happy being that kind of inspiration either. I've always wanted to do the best in whatever I undertook. I know I probably can't be "the best" fashion photographer or writer... there's not really one best person. I want to be among the best though, if I'm going to do it at all :)
So I've never claimed to be without vanity ;)
One of my worst memories of any class I've ever taken was in a photography class. It was photo 2, and I didn't much like the teacher (he was one of those guys who gave As only to tall skinny girls), and furthermore found his work boring (though I never told him that). In photo 1, my teacher loved my work. She told me I was one of the best natural photographers she'd ever seen, and really encouraged me. So I was kinda unprepared to encounter a teacher who really disliked my style. He was a very technically oriented photographer (which I am not) and we simply did not appreciate each others' work. Well, one day, in the darkroom, he was looking at my work and told me "I don't know why you're so excited about doing this photography, you're a mediocre photographer at best."
I'd never cried in a class, and I did not cry in front of him, but I left the room and cried. If he would have said I was a terrible photographer I would have been ok (I think), if he said he hated my work it would have been ok... but mediocre? to me that is the worst possible insult he could have given me.
Well, I am going to have to accept that there are going to be people who feel that I am a mediocre photographer/writer/artist. That's just the way it goes. Hopefully they won't tell me that to my face, and if they do... hopefully I won't cry about it :)
- Father Larry Lorenzoni
Today I was thinking about mediocrity... well I was inspired to consider mediocrity by a very strange site I ran across while researching pin-up art (warning this is explicit stuff) the site is called Midbrow art.
Anyway, I was looking at this photographer's work and thinking... you know, there might be some sort of interesting premise here, but it's really not done very well. I felt that the images were really washed out and not very appealing.
Then I was thinking about how, having named his site midbrow art, the artist may have actually been aiming for mediocrity.
The thing is, for me, that mediocrity is one of the things I fear most. I would be happy to be loved or hated; I would hate to be uninspiring. And maybe, in his way, this photographer did inspire me... He did get me wondering how I would have done it better :) but I would not be happy being that kind of inspiration either. I've always wanted to do the best in whatever I undertook. I know I probably can't be "the best" fashion photographer or writer... there's not really one best person. I want to be among the best though, if I'm going to do it at all :)
So I've never claimed to be without vanity ;)
One of my worst memories of any class I've ever taken was in a photography class. It was photo 2, and I didn't much like the teacher (he was one of those guys who gave As only to tall skinny girls), and furthermore found his work boring (though I never told him that). In photo 1, my teacher loved my work. She told me I was one of the best natural photographers she'd ever seen, and really encouraged me. So I was kinda unprepared to encounter a teacher who really disliked my style. He was a very technically oriented photographer (which I am not) and we simply did not appreciate each others' work. Well, one day, in the darkroom, he was looking at my work and told me "I don't know why you're so excited about doing this photography, you're a mediocre photographer at best."
I'd never cried in a class, and I did not cry in front of him, but I left the room and cried. If he would have said I was a terrible photographer I would have been ok (I think), if he said he hated my work it would have been ok... but mediocre? to me that is the worst possible insult he could have given me.
Well, I am going to have to accept that there are going to be people who feel that I am a mediocre photographer/writer/artist. That's just the way it goes. Hopefully they won't tell me that to my face, and if they do... hopefully I won't cry about it :)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
The Right and Left
Once, when I was a teenager, I went to a family Christmas party with one of my friends. As I sat on a sofa in a living room, surrounded by strangers, I was raptly fascinated by the scenes unfolding around me. There were, perhaps, 20 people, all related except for me, in conversational pairs. They spoke and spoke to each other, quickly becoming more and more frustrated until they turned to another person and began the whole process over again.
What made this scene so fascinating to me was that each pair of conversationalists were having completely unrelated conversations with each other. One example: "I'm so glad we can all get together for Christmas this year." from a lady, to which the other lady responds "Yes, I liked the blue one the best too." and then each of them would look at each other, baffled, and instead of clarifying the conversational subject matter they would each continue upon their own streams of thought, never even approaching each other in their communication.
I have to admit that I have never seen anything quite so strange in all of the years I've lived since then, and I have occasionally revisited the experience to ponder the family dynamics which yielded such amazing lack of interpersonal communication ability, but have lately been reminded of that odd situation whenever I hear political "righties" and "lefties" talk about each other.
I don't consider myself to be on either side of that continuum. I would, in fact, generally call myself a-political about politics. Since I am not invested in either side I find myself listening to both and often wondering what any of them are talking about.
It seems to me that both the right and left are constantly constructing straw man arguments against the other side, neither really listen to each other, both make faulty assumptions at every turn, and generally show neither good communication or reasoning abilities when confronted with the "evil specter" of the other side.
Generally I would find such a situation more intriguing and amusing than anything else, but the thing is that feelings have escalated to a point that I find truly disturbing. It is not uncommon to find people on either side of that line spitting venomous epithets at people who disagree with them, asserting that "x's should be sterilized" or silenced, and even sometimes that they should be done away with. It is this irrational hate that disturbs, and even frightens, me. How, in a land where we all profess to desire and value freedom, can any of us justify calls to silence anyone's opinion?
Admittedly, the vast majority of people on both sides of any given issue are not spouting such ideas. Most of us are reasonably rational and fair people; it's just that the unreasonable fanatics are often the loudest of any of us.
My personal observations about the right and left: Both sides are composed of individuals who want to live their lives in peace, be free to raise their families as they want, want to find happiness in what they do, are generally friendly to individual people even when they "hate" some groups of people (and this applies equally to both sides of the fence), in fact I'd say that mostly they share the same core values; kindness, respect, honesty, generosity, responsibility, hope and gentleness... they just take different routes to get there sometimes.
What really amuses me sometimes is that people can be so divided from each other and set on disagreeing with "the other side" that they can't recognize when they are both arguing for the same thing... and wonder why they aren't getting anywhere :)
What made this scene so fascinating to me was that each pair of conversationalists were having completely unrelated conversations with each other. One example: "I'm so glad we can all get together for Christmas this year." from a lady, to which the other lady responds "Yes, I liked the blue one the best too." and then each of them would look at each other, baffled, and instead of clarifying the conversational subject matter they would each continue upon their own streams of thought, never even approaching each other in their communication.
I have to admit that I have never seen anything quite so strange in all of the years I've lived since then, and I have occasionally revisited the experience to ponder the family dynamics which yielded such amazing lack of interpersonal communication ability, but have lately been reminded of that odd situation whenever I hear political "righties" and "lefties" talk about each other.
I don't consider myself to be on either side of that continuum. I would, in fact, generally call myself a-political about politics. Since I am not invested in either side I find myself listening to both and often wondering what any of them are talking about.
It seems to me that both the right and left are constantly constructing straw man arguments against the other side, neither really listen to each other, both make faulty assumptions at every turn, and generally show neither good communication or reasoning abilities when confronted with the "evil specter" of the other side.
Generally I would find such a situation more intriguing and amusing than anything else, but the thing is that feelings have escalated to a point that I find truly disturbing. It is not uncommon to find people on either side of that line spitting venomous epithets at people who disagree with them, asserting that "x's should be sterilized" or silenced, and even sometimes that they should be done away with. It is this irrational hate that disturbs, and even frightens, me. How, in a land where we all profess to desire and value freedom, can any of us justify calls to silence anyone's opinion?
Admittedly, the vast majority of people on both sides of any given issue are not spouting such ideas. Most of us are reasonably rational and fair people; it's just that the unreasonable fanatics are often the loudest of any of us.
My personal observations about the right and left: Both sides are composed of individuals who want to live their lives in peace, be free to raise their families as they want, want to find happiness in what they do, are generally friendly to individual people even when they "hate" some groups of people (and this applies equally to both sides of the fence), in fact I'd say that mostly they share the same core values; kindness, respect, honesty, generosity, responsibility, hope and gentleness... they just take different routes to get there sometimes.
What really amuses me sometimes is that people can be so divided from each other and set on disagreeing with "the other side" that they can't recognize when they are both arguing for the same thing... and wonder why they aren't getting anywhere :)
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