TomSchriefer
Offline
• •
Upload & Sell: Off
|
 p.2 #2 · Wishful thoughts and reminiscing | |
Pixelpuffin wrote:
I get the impression the majority of members here don’t upload photos.. why?? Could be that like me they haven’t paid the annual subscription to do so?
Back to the point in hand… I’d estimate virtually all my photos are family related either son, partner, friends or taken in and around my home. Why would I want to upload personal private photos onto a public forum? I’m not even on Facebook and the likes. My private live is just that private.
The random shots I take are 9/10 deleted same as a fisherman who catches and returns. I’ve no desire to hoard random photos that are meaningless to me.. I think the term is cliché
The lone tree, blurred water, flowers (Christ bloody flowers) a winding path, a winding road, a straight road, a park bench, a lone park bench, a zoo animal, a picture of a window, a picture of a doorway, a bird, a dog, a cat, a train, a car, a plane… etc etc etc then we enter the murky waters of smut disguised as art, young women (always young, always thin and almost always scantily clad) basically just pervs using photography as a smokescreen to leer!!
They have all been done to death. My take on any of the above is just that…a random take that’s meaningless and will never be displayed on the shelf , but will languish forever on drives and card.
Hence virtually all random stuff is deleted. What’s the point of keeping a snap of something that’s totally irrelevant to my life and certainly to those around me who wiuld have to trawl through 1’000’s of files of random meaningless shots in case there was a picture of family buried someplace.
Can I tell you a story
Last year we visited an old factory/workshop it had been converted into a trendy hipster style antique parlour where you could walk in look round , buy a drink or food. The stock was the usual stuff
What caught my eye and totally threw me was a huge acrylic bauble on a floor stand. Huge… must have been 4 ft in diameter
A large hole say 18” was just off centre at the top. It was filled with slides… loose!!
Tens of 1000’s of colour slides . I spent 10 mins looking at them. They were shots just like we all take today.. just random stuff… totally meaningless to almost everybody but the person that took them. All I could think of was the waste, the waste of money, the waste of time, the waste of materials, the pollution those unwanted, unloved slides had created…. And for what… for absolutely no reason whatsoever.
I then realised I was right to do as I do. Because once I’m gone nobody will give a toss about the random snaps, they probably won’t give a toss about the many many family pictures either
Hence I now create photo books
I’ve only done 3
Just currently doing another
The books will probably stay in my sons entire life, maybe possibly his kids (should he have any) then they will undoubtedly be lost, thrown or like the slides end up in a antique parlour where they are ignored by everyone.
Pointless
I enjoy messing around with combinations of bodies and lenses, seeing the different effects. The upside is when I’m dead and gone it should raise enough to buy a car or take a few holidays. Or I might sell myself later in life
But for now I just enjoy playing
I never declared myself to be a master photographer…
...Show more →
Pixelpuffin,
We must be related, somehow. I agree with you 100%. None of my photos were ever meant for public consumption. Well, that is a lie; I tried that in the '70s. Every shot I took that did not include family, pets, and/or friends left me feeling like I had wasted film. "This (insert whatever) has been photographed 14 bazillion times. I am adding nothing here." So, I went back to photographing things I care about. The result? I get lots of photos that mean something to me, and to the people around me. My photos preserve and maintain precious memories. In the end, that is all you leave in this world.
I do not strive to 'tell a story' with any photo. My shots mean something to me. A goodly portion of them are not even technically good photos. A few years back, I was testing an E-Bay purchased Brownie Hawkeye (a copy of my first camera) in my back yard. One of the photos was of our dog, Scruffy. It was crooked, Scruffy was slightly out of focus, and slightly blurred due to the fixed 1/60 shutter speed. I cried when I saw the print. Not because it was such a crappy shot. Because it was the last shot I got of our old girl. She died before I got the prints back. That shot is on my digital photo player. I love it. My wife loves it. My daughter loves it. I don't give a FFA what anyone else thinks of it.
I have bought and sold a ton of photography gear, mostly just to play with it. 645, old 6x6 cameras like the Brownie, some range-finders, 35mm and 120 folders, 110 snappers, and others. The Mamiya 6 ivB, as far as know, is the only camera that moves the film to focus. No lens movement, it is all done by adjusting the film plane. It is also the only camera made in the 1940s that I used my collection of 580EX II flash units with. My original Pentax 645 was the first camera I ever owned that could be used, Av, Tv, and M. And it didn't even have a mode dial. I like playing with gear. I like the process of photography, as well as the results.
|
