gdanmitchell
Offline
• • • • • • •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
Geoff D F wrote:
The reference to him asking his assistant to destroy his 'substandard' prints was in a made for TV documentary about him, where the assistant, a fairly elderly women, was interviewed. It made an impression on me.
Phylis Donohue maybe?
Possibly this documentary? https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/ansel/#film_description
too am guilty of showing too many substandard works. I think his ethos about if he managed to produce a dozen good photographs a year then it was a good year is a really good one for creatives. I have heard this story too.
My academic training (and career) were in music, where practice (daily, for hours) is a main thing. I believe that is true of photography, too. So two decades ago, when I started posting stuff on the web, I decided to try to exemplify that notion of "daily practice" by posting a new photograph every day. Needless to say, there's a lot of quite average stuff (from my perspective) that got posted, and my approach has evolved over the years. But the idea to some traction, and at least one photographer (another Ansel protege) was using that aspect of my site in his workshops for years.
If one has artistic aims then photography becomes about the exceptions, not the averages.
The truly good work is, indeed, an exception. You can do what I regard as decent, credible work daily, but too many things, some of them nearly imponderable, need to come together for the great work to occur. In between there's a lot of "practice" — doing the work, chasing after your subject, failing, learning, experimenting, taking detours, and more. All of this is part of being in the zone a prepared when the opportunities for the great stuff arrive. You can, as some like to say, improve the odds a great deal.
A lot of folks get into photography because it is "fun." There's nothing wrong with that, of course. But doing exceptional work takes... work. And sometimes it isn't super-pleasant or immediately rewarding.
As to the gear question, I get that your perspective is that using the best gear is critical and that a particular format provides that best gear. I hear and understand what you are saying.
I don't disagree at all about good gear, but my definition of "best" fear is broader than greatest dynamic range or highest resolution. Sometimes those things could be extremely important. But there are plenty of situations, including in landscape photography, where other aspects determine whether gear is the best. If that were not the case, every serious landscape photographer would choose to use that same format, yet a whole bunch of truly excellent photographers who could make that choice make a difference tone.
YMMV.
|
