Hi Rob, of course I will not take your comments as an attack on this image, or this style of photography, or me personally. I was on holiday in an ancient part of Spain and thought I would shoot what I saw and this is what I saw and yes it is nothing more than a holiday snap, albeit a very enjoyable one to see, compose and process.
I do however disagree with you about your statement that
1. "how you perceive any form of photography where the photographer just happens to be there and contributes nothing but a camera",
because with any form of photography that is not a setup like studio work etc and therefore completely under the photographers control, but with most other forms of photography the biggest skill and what the photographer brings to the table and is unique to them, is the art of seeing.
2. Yet you make it sound as though images like the one above are obvious and easily observed and could therefore be made by anyone, yet I would contest the complete opposite is true, whereby I might have been the first person to see this composition and yet millions of people (lots of them with cameras looking for just such a scene) have been unable to see it before me.
3. You see after once teaching photography for far too many years, I now believe that the art of seeing is a skill that not everyone can acquire, no matter how hard they try to acquire it or want it. This is the same for all forms of photography, be it street, fashion/studio or landscape and many others genres.
4. So I do think you are entirely wrong in your assumption that scenes like the one above are simply akin to walking through an orchard of obvious photographic opportunities and then choosing which of the low hanging fruit you want to pick and that anyone can do it, because it is as easy as shooting fish in a barrel (oops really mixing my metaphors now aren't I).
5. Russ likes his street photography and thinks that it is the only truly creative form of photography and everything else is pretty much a waste of time and effort, you think fashion and portrait work is the best thing ever and that it is the only truly creative form of photography, whereas I think that landscape is the only truly creative form of photography and I don't suppose we will ever agree, nor should we. But hey it is really enjoyable to constantly chew the fat about and argue who is right and who is wrong with both you guys and which obviously is never going to be me that is wrong, as it is only me and my fellow landscapers that are the truly creative types of photographers and who are able to make something out of nothing jst by the art of seeing, whereas street is just wandering about and shooting random scenes and hoping it might work and intruding on peoples privacy and emotions and fashion/portrait etc is just about setting up lights and reflectors and using a ridiculously expensive camera
Over to you Rob...
Dave
(Please excuse the chopping of your post into this numerated form that makes reply easier!)
1. But that's not the entirety of my written line of thought in that post.
To complete that line of thought, mine, it is essential to include the subsequent qualifier that I made:
"Maybe the measure of a good photograph/photographer is this: what added value did the shooter bring to the party?"
2. But they are
exactly as you stated; and the reason they are seldom made is that they say nothing new, if they say anything at all, and one of the best reasons for the use of captions - as I know perfectly well in my own case, is to lend a faux validity.
3. That has been my unpopular mantra since I came to LuLa.
4. Again, it is exactly as you describe but deny: one could do the very same thing in any piazza, place or plaza in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal, and probably anywhere else with palms. Especially in tourist areas, nobody even looks at other people with cameras.
5. Street is hardly the most creative form of photograhy, but good street, along with combat photography, is certainly one where the quickest reflexes are needed, as well as a sense of surrealism and the absurd. Without those factors, steet pictures are pretty meaningless.
Fashion and portraiture are both simple and extremely difficult, for the reasons you explain in (3). Additionally, they require that you can be best friends with people you sometimes don't even know or like the look of, and wish were somebody else. So a form of people-skill is needed on top of everything else. Complex lighting is, in my book (and that of Sante d'Orazio too) always a bad sign.
My first reasonable fashion snaps were with a cheap, second-hand Rollei T and an Exakta Varex lla. Buying into Hasselblad and Nikon didn't make me any the better a snapper, but did make life easier and more reliable, plus lending my operation a gravitas the cheap stuff could not. Gravitas is very important in business.
But yes, debating photography is an endless source of joy, frustration, anger and release! Wouldn't miss it for what's left of the world!
Rob