Luminous Landscape Forum
The Art of Photography => User Critiques => Topic started by: RSL on September 15, 2012, 12:38:52 pm
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I am glad to see that cow is getting plenty to eat; I wouldn't want it to wonder off and spoil such a perfect set up.
Bruce
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I have a fondness for these "dubious art within a a photograph" things, a form which seems to have risen and fallen quickly. I'm not sure what to make of this one, but I am taking time with it, which is promising.
If you're convinced that some visual art is saying something, but persistently unable to place your finger on what on earth it's saying, I think that the visual art has achieved a kind of purity, in some direction. After all, if you can say it in words, why wouldn't you just use words? In some sense.
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I like it. I also like Friedlander's stuff. It's fun to look for good subjects and fun to compose them so that they look more casual than they really are.
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Very well seen, Russ!
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Has no one else noticed the cow lying there, staring at the bucket and asking, 'What? You expect me to milk myself?'
Mike.
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Never mind the obvious cow, thats's just a blind; what about the two Village People up on the roof?
Rob C
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Never mind the obvious cow, thas's just a BLIND; what about the two Village People up on the roof?
Rob C
I couldn't find the Village People to ask them, but looking for them I noticed that the lines against the sky are complex. The high lines seem to be in the process of being strung and are semi-slack in different ways; which fits with the Christmas lights if not the rebar.
The judicious but effective way we see beyond the central blind is winning.
Bruce
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Russ, this really stands out above the work I've seen of yours in my short time here thus far. I'm sorry I can't offer much critique. Just praise. Well done.
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Thanks, Robbie. I think that's a compliment.
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I just re-read my post after reading your response and caught my condescending tone and poor choice of words. I hold your work that you posted on here and on your personal website with high regard. It's well executed, thoughtful and interesting. This latest piece speaks simply speaks more to me.
Apologies for the miscommunication on my part.
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Hey, no sweat my friend. I really did take it as a compliment. As somebody suggested, I guess I should use "emoticons," when I'm doing tongue-in-cheek, but I've never really seen the need for a silly face to make a point.
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Thanks, Robbie. I think that's a compliment.
Hi praise indeed from a bloke who boasts of not thinking. ;D ;D
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That's right, Walter. When you're faced with a scene like this, thinking always screws things up. If you want a good picture don't think, react. As I have before, I'll paraphrase a line from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" by Tuco, the "Ugly," when he was lying in a bubble bath and a guy who'd come to blow him away launched into a long spiel. After the Tuco popped the talker with the gun he had in the tub he said: "When it's time to shoot, shoot, don't talk." With a camera, when it's time to shoot, shoot, don't think.
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That's right, Walter. When you're faced with a scene like this, thinking always screws things up. If you want a good picture don't think, react. As I have before, I'll paraphrase a line from "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" by Tuco, the "Ugly," when he was lying in a bubble bath and a guy who'd come to blow him away launched into a long spiel. After the Tuco popped the talker with the gun he had in the tub he said: "When it's time to shoot, shoot, don't talk." With a camera, when it's time to shoot, shoot, don't think.
Russ,
Firstly, my comment directed at Robbie was with regard to your comment that you think what he said was a compliment.
But, since you have diverted my remarks to more quotable quotes relating to this snap you posted I'll address that.
I could not disagree more vehemently with your expressed sentiments of thinking. Hitherto I have refrained from commenting on this picture because I tend towards the notion that if you can say noting nice, then say nothing. Now that the stable door is opened, however, the horse will bolt (as they do). This picture contains a wonderful motif. It was a good (if not glaringly obvious) find. By NOT thinking it is a snap shot of a curiosity - nothing more, nothing less - that could well do with some more attention to detail both before and after capture.
Cheers,
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Relationships have been noted in research to take 9 times longer to build over computers. I'm still quite new here and should take a little more time to make sure my messages get across with more clarity. No smilies needed.
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I could not disagree more vehemently with your expressed sentiments of thinking. Hitherto I have refrained from commenting on this picture because I tend towards the notion that if you can say noting nice, then say nothing. Now that the stable door is opened, however, the horse will bolt (as they do). This picture contains a wonderful motif. It was a good (if not glaringly obvious) find. By NOT thinking it is a snap shot of a curiosity - nothing more, nothing less - that could well do with some more attention to detail both before and after capture.
Walter, you don't post a link to a web site, and I can't recall a picture you've posted here, so I have no way of knowing what kind of photography you do, but from what you say, I'd be willing to bet it isn't this kind of photography. You probably need to learn a bit more about street photography and its outliers -- like some of the stuff Friedlander does -- before you go too far out on a limb.
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Russ,
You don't need to know about me or what I do or where I am. This site is (hopefully) about photography and not the assembled multitude. I have posted several images here on Lu_la.
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I was flipping through the new edition of American Photographs and came across Evans' picture of the painted bull's head (an ad on a wall for, I think, a butcher) and the cow caught my eye. Of course it's a superficial resemblance, a single common motif, but I couldn't help but think of this one here at the top of the thread.
Is that how Friedlander works? It looks like something, but you don't know what, but it keeps popping up in your mind?
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I have posted several images here on Lu_la.
No you haven't.
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You don't need to know about me or what I do or where I am. This site is (hopefully) about photography and not the assembled multitude.
We know all about you. You are Australian. You are cranky and think digital ruined everything. You think little of internet fora in general, and have a prticular distaste for this site.
You're a pen pal of Rob C's and have said if you stopped visiting the forum, you would have to go back to emailing him.
Maybe you could post an image or two.
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No you haven't.
Jeremy,
You can do and say all sorts of things, as you do, but don't ever call me a liar. It is an indignity that I will not accept readily. Ignorance is no plea. The fact that you might not be aware of what I have posted does not in any way alter the fact that I have.
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Truth to be told, Walter did post here (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=69811.msg553449#msg553449) (reply #17)... though I wish he did not :P
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Truth to be told, Walter did post here (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=69811.msg553449#msg553449) (reply #17)... though I wish he did not :P
Yikes. There ya go!
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You can do and say all sorts of things, as you do, but don't ever call me a liar. It is an indignity that I will not accept readily. Ignorance is no plea. The fact that you might not be aware of what I have posted does not in any way alter the fact that I have.
Good for you, Walter. Refuse to accept the indignity ... along with digital imaging. It is your right.
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Truth to be told, Walter did post here (http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/index.php?topic=69811.msg553449#msg553449) (reply #17)... though I wish he did not :P
Thanks, Slobodan, I went through a bunch of Walter's earlier posts and finally gave up. The reference you dug up makes it clear I was right when I said I suspected his kind of photography isn't this kind of photography.
I'm sure your kind of photography takes a lot of thought, Walter, and it illustrates vividly what I said: thinking tends to screw up photography.
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I was flipping through the new edition of American Photographs and came across Evans' picture of the painted bull's head (an ad on a wall for, I think, a butcher) and the cow caught my eye. Of course it's a superficial resemblance, a single common motif, but I couldn't help but think of this one here at the top of the thread.
Is that how Friedlander works? It looks like something, but you don't know what, but it keeps popping up in your mind?
Andrew, I think Friedlander, Cartier-Bresson, Winogrand, Frank, Levitt, and Vivian Maier all go down the street throwing frames around things. When something works, they lift (or look into) the camera and trip the shutter. I doubt any of them think about the shot at the time they make it. I'm sure that's not always true, but I suspect it's true for most of their best work. I see HCB reacting in his street shots, and I see him thinking in his photojournalism, the kind of work he did for, say, The People of Moscow. To me the photojournalism includes his usual fine geometric composition, but lacks the intuitive thrust of his street work. I think Walker Evans, on the other hand, had two personalities: the stand camera personality and the hand camera personality. He had to think with the view camera, but I think he reacted with the hand camera, just like the rest of them. Elliott Erwitt is an interesting cross between the two things. He sees a setup and thinks about it, but then he starts reacting as the situation develops, and, usually, follows it to its end. What he gets is a series of street shots, but they're based on a prior expectation. I'd love to have been there to see him get that picture of the dog leaning over the back of the restaurant booth.
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it illustrates vividly what I said: thinking tends to screw up photography.
As so often happens you have neglected to add the courteous disc claimed: "In my opinion."
We are all different and hold different preferences. You may think that what I choose to do is screwed up just as I think your output is not my cup of tea.
The other great failing in the minds of forum contributors the world over is that there is a strong tendency to play the man and not the topic.
By the way, there are other posts from me.
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"In my opinion," besides the one that SB pointed out, Walter has also posted images in the threads on "Love those vehicles" (several), "Without prejudice" (several), and "Flying" (one.)
Just to add some truthiness to the discussion.
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Thank you Eric,
Your efforts are appreciated.
Cheers,
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Just to add some perspective:
Walter has posted pictures here, as I know perfectly well, and it's only his refusal to be goaded into a display of excellence that stops him from killing some of you people in your tracks.
Walter has an enviable magazine photography (as well as commercial photography) record that would close most people here down.
Because someone chooses to keep a modest profile, showing only personal work that interests/amuses him isn't reason for a mob lynching. If there's a moral, it's keep your traps closed unless you really know of what you speak or, in this case, write.
If anything, kudos to Walter for being able to grin, mostly ignore and refrain from making people feel small.
Rob C
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Thanks Rob,
I may need to bring you out of retirement to rep for me.
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Thanks Rob,
I may need to bring you out of retirement to rep for me.
But who the hell's gonna rep for me?
I must get up off this instrument of torture, stretch some circulation back into the legs and make a coffee.
;-)
Rob C
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The quality of Walter's work is not really at issue, Russ just remarked that he didn't know what Walter's preferred style was, and that Russ's work is best done with a certain mindset. Since Walter brought it up, I will note that he never seems to supply a courteous "in my opinion" even when he says quite nasty things.
Russ, I had just recently noticed that about Walker Evans, there was a moment of "these photos are different, I like them more, they're looser and more interesting.. And also skinnier. oooh!" which makes a great deal of sense.
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The quality of Walter's work is not really at issue, Russ just remarked that he didn't know what Walter's preferred style was, and that Russ's work is best done with a certain mindset. Since Walter brought it up, I will note that he never seems to supply a courteous "in my opinion" even when he says quite nasty things.
Russ, I had just recently noticed that about Walker Evans, there was a moment of "these photos are different, I like them more, they're looser and more interesting.. And also skinnier. oooh!" which makes a great deal of sense.
I'm willing to agree that, for him, it might well have made sense. For me, however, it makes little or none as I'm not aware of his context at the time of the pronouncement. It appears that some photographers attain biblical status - entire libraries are offered up to them in acts of worship. Anyway, it always helps when they are safely dead, though, as they find it a little difficult to contradict or set the record straight. Biographers must love this.
Of such is myth and the life of the snapper.
Rob C
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. . . it's only his refusal to be goaded into a display of excellence that stops him from killing some of you people in your tracks.
Rob, I'm not afraid of dying, so how about goading Walter into making his "display of excellence." I gather the display would be a different kind of photography from the kind he's displayed here so far.
One of the things our discussions haven't much addressed is the huge disconnect between commercial photography and fine art photography. They're very different things, and I suspect that someone who's developed a deep appreciation for one genre may have trouble grasping significance within the other.
Frankly, I plead guilty to that shortcoming. What I'm after when I look at a photograph is a kind of transcendental experience -- something I can't put into words, and I know that that's almost the reverse of what commercial outlets look for: instantly apprehensible imagery.
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As so often happens you have neglected to add the courteous disc claimed: "In my opinion."
You're right, Walter, and I apologize. But here's a blanket disclaimer: You always can assume anything I say is "in my opinion" unless I add a reference to another source.
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What I'm after when I look at a photograph is a kind of transcendental experience -- something I can't put into words, and I know that that's almost the reverse of what commercial outlets look for: instantly apprehensible imagery.
What a great point. I spend a lot of time thinking about the commonalities of commercial and fine art work, but I never really thought about how they're inherently different, at this level.
One of the few virtues of being a dilettante, like myself, is that you are not too locked in to any one thing. If you're very good at one thing, especially if you earn your bread doing that one thing (or small set of things) it is almost inevitable that you will begin to equate "good" with "looks like this one thing". After all, you presumably like the work you are doing, AND it is demonstrably good because people will pay you for it. I think it takes a real effort of will to see the good in work that is radically different.
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What a great point. I spend a lot of time thinking about the commonalities of commercial and fine art work, but I never really thought about how they're inherently different, at this level.
One of the few virtues of being a dilettante, like myself, is that you are not too locked in to any one thing. If you're very good at one thing, especially if you earn your bread doing that one thing (or small set of things) it is almost inevitable that you will begin to equate "good" with "looks like this one thing". After all, you presumably like the work you are doing, AND it is demonstrably good because people will pay you for it. I think it takes a real effort of will to see the good in work that is radically different.
On the face of it, your argument is sound. Unfortunately, it doesn't hold water. And the reason why it leaks is that you are working on the assumption that people are one or the other. Not so; many pros are perfectly capable of enjoying work that has nothing to do with the way they earn their keep; in fact, it can be the very difference that is the attraction.
I’m sorry to refer again to my own experiences, but then they are the only ones I’m really willing to rely upon, so bear with me here, please.
Before I became a fashion and then calendar girl photographer I was totally besotted with the world of photojournalists and their doings. I was never concerned with ‘art’ photographers because in my youth, no such animal had yet been invented and people who went around photographing peppers and other vegetables were regarded with a slightly raised eyebrow. Landscape wasn’t anything that anyone held in high esteem: it was regarded as little more than being there at the right time, the reserve of those with no better outlets available to them – maybe something that still haunts me today. That was certainly the experience in the UK; from the little financial success that even the Americans achieved in their day, I guess their payoff was the bohemian lifestyle and the oodles of supposedly free love in the south-western states of the US of A or even, amen, Mexico.
My suspicion is, basically, that the latter part of the last century saw the commercialization of amateur photography to a level where it began to be accepted as an art form in itself, something fairly new if dedicated galleries were anything to go by. Even now, I’d guess that within the European world, France is a leader in the acceptance of photography as a fine art. I believe that it was the appearance of modern office spaces along with the newly discovered/invented glamour of city lofts that lent itself to photography as an acceptable form of decoration. If not decoration, then art photography has no future beyond a sterile form of investment. That this would content many shooters isn’t in dispute; that it has anything to do with their self-fulfilment as artists is doubtful.
Further, I think that the buying of photographs for domestic decoration is probably a youthful interest; many of my age wouldn’t seriously consider anything other than a really good painting or two as worthy of display; in my own case, I only hang photographs because they are my own and they mean something beyond the image: they bring back happy professional moments that stretch far beyond the merits of the images alone. But hanging other people’s photographs, other than in the office, isn’t on. However, other people’s photographs, as in books, have always fascinated me, and it was lack of funds in the golden days of such publications that kept me pestering the local librarian but not the bookshops. I really envy people like Russ with his vast collection; it would be a wonderful way of passing the long, boring, otherwise tv-bound winter nights. But there you go – I didn’t buy at the right time, and now that I can I can’t.
So no, I wouldn’t agree that being a professional photographer of women hinders or impedes one’s ability to enjoy W. Eugene Smith. But it takes a W.E.Smith to turn on the juices, and there are very few such men around these days.
Rob C
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Thank you for the thoughtful reply, Rob!
I have no issue with you drawing on your own experiences, after all, it's all anyone has to draw upon, ultimately.
My apologies for suggesting that commercial guys were "locked in" which was a terrible word choice. What I really meant to say was something, I think, milder than what I did say. There is, I believe, a tendency for commercial people and in general any photographer who has a clear vision of their own work, to judge other work from that point of view.
Some people, obviously, can step outside their own work with little effort. Others have a harder time of it. What I have observed is that commercial photographers seem to me to have a slightly higher tendency to be dismissive of photography done in non-commercial styles. I am not working from any actual statistical study here, this is pretty much just an anecdotal observation.
Anyways, I think we probably come close to agreement here and if we seem still to differ widely, you should assume that I am continuing to communicate poorly.
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Rob,
That's an excellent summation of the way things are. I can't argue the fact that a photographer, for that matter, any artist, can do both commercial and fine art. Elliott Erwitt is the classic example. He made his living in photography, but it wasn't fine art photography. He'd go somewhere -- often overseas -- with a truckload of equipment for his commercial work, but when the commercial day was done he'd get out his M3 (which you can see here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/aperture64/2739236380/) and do what really moved him. Nobody remembers much of his commercial work, but everybody remembers the stuff he did with that battered M3.
Yes, I raised an eyebrow at Pepper No. 30 too, but avidly read the stories of Weston's series of mistresses, and loved his nude shots of Tina. . . not because they were fine art, which they weren't. As you know, I agree with you about landscape, though I read Ansel's books and gave rocks and stones and trees the old college try before I decided my real interests lay elsewhere. When it comes to landscape I've never seen a landscape photograph that can stun me the way, say, one of Bierstadt's Rocky Mountain ranges (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/66/Albert_Bierstadt_001.jpg) with linear perspective wildly distorted to give you not "the thing itself," but the kick in the gut the thing gives you the first time you see it. Problem is that a real Bierstadt is hideously expensive or in a museum.
I'd also agree not only that France is a leader in the acceptance of photography as fine art, but add that it's always been, starting with Atget and continuing with Kertesz, Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau, Brassaï, and Ronis among others. Stieglitz tried very hard to make the U.S. the world center in photography as fine art, but his main influence lies in the sterile investment world you mentioned.
But when we get into a discussion about hanging photographs as decoration I think we begin to part ways. If it's strictly a youthful interest, then, at 83 I'd have to consider myself pretty youthful. I think you're right that the idea of "lofts" has brought about a lot of decorative photo hanging, but I don't hang photos because they're decorative. My wife hangs paintings and Japanese prints because they're decorative, but I hang photographs because they give me a jolt when I glance at them as I walk by. She gets the upstairs, which in our mountainside home is the main living area, and I get the downstairs, which has a number of hallways just made for hanging pictures. A lot of the pictures on my downstairs walls are my own, but not all of them. I also know other people who hang street photographs, and they hang them for the same reason I hang them.
Yes, I got lucky with my photo library. Frankly I didn't know what I was doing when I did it. Back in the sixties I'd have a couple spare bucks, drift into my favorite used book store while I was walking the streets looking for pictures, and see a book I just had to have. The library grew on its own, not because I was setting out deliberately to create it.
And, finally, yes, anybody with eyes to see has to enjoy Gene Smith.
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Apropos of not much, and rather far off-topic, I have always loved Pepper #30. It's the only abstract I can think of that I like, and I probably only like it because it's borderline smutty.
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Rob, You might like to read the article on Magnum that was in this morning's Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443884104577645882307821656.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs_comments%3D%26articleTabs%3Darticle. It fits right in with the discussion we've been having.
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Rob, You might like to read the article on Magnum that was in this morning's Wall Street Journal: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443884104577645882307821656.html?mod=googlenews_wsj#articleTabs_comments%3D%26articleTabs%3Darticle. It fits right in with the discussion we've been having.
Thank you, Russ; as often happens, the best was kept to last, and I quote:
"That's not the fault of Magnum. What does photojournalism mean now when everybody with a cellphone can upload pictures for the world to see, or when surveillance cameras provide the most reliable way to document a crime?
More troubling is the fact that with the decline of the press and its demand for relevance, and the rise of the gallery where everything can sell, we have lost the tension between good and good-enough-to-show-the-world. When there were fewer photographers, Magnum admitted only the best to its club, and we trusted it to be our gatekeeper. Now we live in a world without Life magazine, but with too many pictures. What form of photojournalist will emerge from these conditions? Who can make images for the digital world that will show us something we can't see without them?
Ms. Panzer is a photography writer in New York."
So what happens next, indeed? I think, probably, not a lot.
With the end of the PJ magazines, with the only thing selling being paparazzo junk of nobody stars or unfortunate royals spied upon in their gilded cage, the future appears to have atrophied to the point of no return.
Television plays its own dominant rôle in the news game - I mean game - and unless one visits stations such as Aljazeera and has a longish look at news in depth, however biased or not it may actually be (who can tell, without being on the ground?) from an alternative perspective, truth, whatever that might really be, is lost to the vested interests of politics and markets and spinners of all colours.
Magnum itself did a lot of pioneering work, as stated in the article, and I think it would be a mistake to discount its work with Hollywood. There, it also competed with Globe, who sported a very good line-up of specialists in the presentation of starlets and established actresses to the media. The thing is, those guys worked with the co-operation of the subject, with a fairly free hand it seems, and relationships were built that assured frequent collaborations, making and finding the best of what each could offer the other. Peters Basch and Gowland come to mind, as do Don Ornitz, Russ Meyer and many more whose names have now fled my fading grey matter, if their pictures have not.
When you think about those sorts of relationships, you find Marilyn coming to mind, working with André de Dienes, Eve Arnold, Avedon, Milton Greene, Bert Stern and various other NY shooters too, and those pictures have become iconic in their own right. They were shot in the tight relationships of one-to-one and with not a friggin’ ‘my people, your people’ interloper in sight. Which picture sets of the last few years have become memorable? Which little lady has become a legend due to the efforts of a dedicated snapper? It’s more likely to happen in the fashion world than the movies, Why? Because it’s all become orchestrated and controlled by PR companies and their pet photographers, the right-to-vet conditions and all the other rules that drive creativity and courage out of the equation. Safe, anodyne corporate imagery is all you ever get the chance to see. Go to the websites of some of the photographers of the moment, and their ‘celebrity’ galleries are all stereotypical, the one no more remarkable than the next. And I mean not just the photographs but the subjects as well as the shooters and, I’d guess stylists. What happened to the days when the girl would bring her own clothes and do her own face? You can’t get originality from a committee shoot! And if you can’t get originality, neither can you get immortality. How ironic, then, that personality pictures lack the one thing they should have in abundance: personality.
But this raises my pressure; I’d better say adios for the moment!
;-)
Rob C
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"10% of all photos ever taken were shot in 2011."
—Fortune magazine, September 24, 2012, page 166
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Slobodan,
I wonder how many Lu-La readers actually read TOP for themselves as well.
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Thanks for the link Russ,
Most formidable breakfast reading here.
W
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You're welcome, Walter. The Journal is great, if sometimes disheartening, breakfast reading.
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That the cell phone has overwhelmed us with "too many pictures" is a standard complaint from a lot of professional photographers, including some of my good friends here in the Pikes Peak Region, but it's an economic complaint, not an artistic complaint. There always have been too many pictures, probably going all the way back to cave drawings, and certainly going back to "you push the button, we do the rest," just as there always have been too many poems, too many songs, too many objects in any artistic genre that tends to dissolve toward and overlap pop culture.
Getting away from the economic part of the problem, when we look back we always look back at the good old days: the days when paintings were good, photographs were good, poems were good, and musical compositions were good. But the reason all that stuff was good in the good old days is that the crap from those days, as it always does, has faded away. Everybody loves the Impressionists, but hardly anybody knows about the flood of stuff the French art establishment was pushing while they looked down their noses at Renoir and Monet.
Nothing's going to bring back Magnum's heydays and nothing's going to bring back Mike Disfarmer's photo studio, but as far as the crap being pumped out on today's cell phones is concerned, this too shall pass away. Good photography, good painting, good poetry, and good music survives the ages. My advice to everybody worried about too many photographs is to go out and get busy shooting the stuff that'll survive. Life is short. Art is long.
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Slobodan,
I wonder how many Lu-La readers actually read TOP for themselves as well.
Apparently, one too many... but I posted for the benefit of those who do not.
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"10% of all photos ever taken were shot in 2011."
—Fortune magazine, September 24, 2012, page 166
Wow! That survey must have been difficult. I wonder what the margin of error is. I have a bunch of my granddad's photographs and I don't remember Fortune coming around to count them. I don't even remember them asking me how many pics I have in my Lightroom catalog. Maybe it's just my memory.
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Yes, and without counting digital files, I have over half a million transparencies stored (and awaiting a judicious culling) and the buggers never consulted me either.
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There were 5 billion photographs on flickr. 2 years ago. Facebook, by all accounts, has far more photographs now than flickr. If Fortune's number isn't right, it's as likely to be low as it is high, and it's definitely in the general vicinity of right.
Photojournalism in the Magnum style was definitely a thing destined to live for a brief window in technological development, when photographs could be made quickly and easily, but the process was not yet fully democratized. It is remarkably similar to the arc of the idea of copyright, which only started to make sense when copies were moderately easy to make, but not yet absurdly easy. How the idea of copyright plays out remains to be seen, but change seems to be in the offing.
My sense is that the next major shift in photography will be to move from shooting photographs to curating them. Making sense of the stream of a couple billion images a year, almost all of them available from any point on the earth's surface, is a potentially fruitful field of endeavor. In some ways it resembles the act of photography itself. Rather than sifting the infinite possibilities of the world for good rectangular frames, you sift the nearly infinite stream of pre-cut/pre-filled rectangular frames.
It's not something *I* want to do, and certainly photography as the people here practice it isn't going anywhere. People still ride horses, even though commerce no longer relies on them.
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Speaking of Friedlander...
(http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8037/8028476726_2dc0087cce_o.jpg)
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Now, THAT I like very much Chris.