diptych # 128 ~ Halloween pumpkin 5 months later
Friday, April 10, 2015 at 02:05PM 
Halloween pumpkin - day before recent snow / day after snow ~ Au Sable Forks, NY - in the Adirondack PARK • click to embiggen
... I can always identify the photographer(s) in the crowd because they're the ones sticking their noses 3 inches from the surface of a print. Or, if not observed doing that, their conversation with me seems to always begin with, "What camera are you using?" or some other irrelevant observation / comment. To date, I have managed to avoided responding with, "It's not about the camera, moron, it's about the pictures. The answer to his first question - "Why not take the photographers question in the best spirit possible"? - is, regardless of the spirit in which I take the question, I alway answer the question with the nomenclature of my camera / gear. If gear-related questioning persists, I answer accordingly but, before it gets totally out of hand, I will direct the conversation to the pictures themselves. This usually gets the conversation on the right course. The answer to his second question - "Now that you are no longer interested in showing your work to photographers, does that mean you are also no longer interested in viewing the work of other photographers?" - is simple. I like looking at pictures made by others - photographers one and all - and do so on a daily basis via the web. During virtually every trip to NYC, I spend a day photo gallery hopping (usually in Chelsea because of the concentration of galleries). And, of course I continue to add to my collection of monograph picture books. So it's not that I don't like photographers, it's just that the one's I enjoy spending time with the most are those who also like to look at and talk about pictures, not talking about cameras / gear. I understand fully why newbie picture makers who harbor intentions of making pictures beyond family / friends / travel snapshots would be interested in knowing about the cameras / gear used by picture makers who's pictures and vision they admire or aspire to emulate. And, with very few exceptions, those pictures are indeed made with equipment and techniques which suit the picture maker's ability to implement their vision. However, IMO, the first thing a "serious" picture maker needs to find is their vision. In doing so, the tools necessary to express that vision will most likely become self-evident. Consequently, it is my belief that a much better question to ask a picture maker at an exhibition of his/her work would be, "Why did you make these pictures?", not "how?" Learning about the why - in a sense, getting inside a picture maker's head, not his/her camera bag - would be much more advantageous in the cause of finding one's own vision. In other words, learning how a successful picture maker thinks is much more important than learning about his/her gear.
Reader Comments (1)
You might be interested in Brooks Jensen's new project at Lenswork, "Kokoro", which is intended to bring his photography to civilians in the hope that they will only care about the pictures, not the methodology. There is a blog post about it and links to s few issues half way down this page
http://daily.lenswork.com/