civilized ku # 2361 ~ resuscitating a dead horse, aka: Pucky
Monday, October 1, 2012 at 11:07AM ;)
Food / Ice Cream / Sunoco ~ near Keeseville, NY - in the Adirondack Park • click to embiggenThere are those who think - quite obviously using the left side of their statistician besotted brain - that by posting the 10-millionth camera-club / calandar-art, sunup/down version of a tourist-trampled picturing hot spot, they are making the case that "it's the light, stupid". Whereas, right-thinking (literally and figuratively) picture makers know, as Brooks Jensen wrote:
There is no such thing as “good” or “bad” photographic light. There is just light.
Or, as CSN&Y ventured:
...if you can't be with the one you love (light wise) ... love the one you're with (light wise) ...
Light - in all of its many guises - is, after all, what a picture maker makes of it. And, IMO, it's much better to control the light (make the most of whatever light one encounters) rather than letting "the light" control you.
I mean, really, I just don't get the point of running / spinning around like a monkey chasing its own tail, even if the tail is "the light", out West somewhere, on a "nice" pile of rocks.
gravitas et nugalis
BTW, relative to the "10-millionth camera-club / calandar-art, sunup/down version of a tourist-trampled hot spot" notion, Pep Ventosa, in his The Collective Snapshot body of work, has created a visually and intellectually (if you chose to go there) look at tourist pictures of famous landmarks / tourist-trampled picturing hot spots. Ventosa's pictures are comprised of 100s of overlapping tourist pictures (all found on the web and made from very similar picture making vantage points) of popular tourist picture making locations.
To my eye and sensibilities, Ventosa's pictures are visually interesting and suggestive of the fact that, if one were to view all of the individual pictures which make up one of his pictures, the effect/affect would be a vision-blurring and mind-numbing repetitiveness to the viewing experience. Not to mention the resultant boredom of seeing essentially the same thing over and over and over again.
IMO, and setting aside the perfectly legitimate activity of personal memory picture making, if the results of most your picture making endeavors could fit into one or more of Venturso's overlapping templates, perhaps (if all else fails) a psychoactive Psilocybin fungi induced trip or two might be beneficial in loosening up your un-imaginative picture making oeuvre - FYI, I hear tell, if you're out West, a visit to the Dakota Badlands in search of the mushrooms which grow out of / in buffalo dung is well worth the trip.
Reader Comments (6)
Thanks for the Ventosa link. His aggregation of endless repetition is interesting, inviting to look and think - and in that way the thousands of cliché shots that were the building grains of his image serve a good purpose. They were surely not taken in vain...
OMG the Ventosa images leave me without anything to say love the work, thanks Mark
If you are into photographing the "tourist-trampled picturing hot spots", then part of the job spec involves a) capturing all the fine details or b) having a sunrise / sunset as a backdrop. This limits the times of the year / day that you can photograph.
I don't photograph icons when I travel - I just buy postcards of them.
But seriously, does anyone of these saturation junkies really care about natural light - good or bad? Seems to me that most of them just create whatever light they fancy in Lightroom/Photoshop.
Do you really mean "buffalo pucky" instead of "buffalo dung"? Or am I misunderstanding the whole pucky business?
Must be that Adirondack air (or the altitude) fogging up your brain. Since you referenced my post I can only assume that your remarks are pointed at me. If that's the case, then you've made some (typical) errors. Where in there does it say that I'm chasing anything? Where does it say that I only make pictures of "tourist trampled picturing hotspots"? Out west or anywhere else?
Aside from all that, you actually think your images are more "imaginative"? Doubtful. And it has nothing to do with the light you tend to select 90% of the time. Even "good" light wouldn't help.......
While I greatly respect Brooks Jensen and his viewpoints, I don't agree with that particular quote. To say that there is no qualitative interpretation of light means that light is neutral with respect to photographs. If it's not good or bad, then it's fair to conclude that it absolutely doesn't matter. Tell that to all the photographers who have contributed to "Lenswork". Or to "National Geographic".