gdanmitchell Online Upload & Sell: Off
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While I don't directly blame photographers for this particular incident, I think that we might all reconsider the specificity with which we describe some of the locations of our photographs. I'll try to keep this somewhat short, since I've gone on about it at great length here before.
In the pre-Internet era, there was little harm in sharing certain details about most places where we might do photography. Sharing typically meant telling those looking at your prints about where you shot them, or perhaps mentioning this at your local photo club, or possibly discussing these places with a friend or two that you knew and could trust.
Unfortunately, today even the most innocent sharing of unnecessary details reaches a much, much wider audience. The information is captured, collated, tagged, sorted, key-worded, and archived by search engines. While we {i]feel like our sharing is not different from what it was 20 years ago... it is. The internet has changed everything.
Friends of mine convinced me to change my tune - at least for the most part - a few years back. (One story is found here: http://www.gdanmitchell.com/2010/07/03/how-much-information-is-too-much-information) Shortly after that, I shared a photograph of a particular formation along with the name and general location information, and I was dismayed when someone who saw it shared with me a photograph of someone standing atop this fragile thing as if it were a carnival ride.
Other photographer friends have pointed out that in many cases the specific identification of the place is not what makes the image a good photograph or not. The photograph possesses whatever intrinsic beauty or power it possesses whether we name it or reveal the details of the location or not. (There are a few exceptions.) Why name the place or tell how to find it?
I realized that for me, the answer to that question was, to a certain extent, ego and not photographic. I liked to show my authority and knowledge and experience by telling about the places where I had shot. (I still do - I love to tell stories - can't help myself! ;-) But if my photographs "work" for those who see them, they should work as photographs, whether or not you know which lake or which mountain is in the frame.
I don't claim perfection, and I admit there are gray areas. A bit more than a week ago I shot for the better part of a week in Death Valley, as I do once or twice very year. I'll name the locations of some of the photographs if they are places that are already so well known that I'm not really changing anything by doing so and the name of the spot is important to understanding the photograph. On the other hand, my photograph of a specific location should be just as effective - perhaps even more effective - if I simply call it "Sandstorm and Dunes" rather than naming the dunes or telling people how to find them.
Also during my Death Valley trip I drove into some relatively remote places where only a small percentage of the park's visitors are likely to go. I am always on the lookout for things like petroglyphs, and I found several. But in each instance I also found more contemporary scratchings by morons who feel that it is funny or something to scratch the immortal word "John" into the rock next to something created centuries ago by peoples we can't even quite identify.
Some discretion is in order.
Thanks,
Dan
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