Well, that told me, didn't it?
To conclude this interesting discussion so far, we could say that 'landscape' as a concept in relation to photography simply isn't worth discussing.
I wonder if that also means it isn't worth doing. I would imagine that a lot of people who read this forum produce landscape photography. In what ways do you think landscape photography is worth doing, or even important as a form of photography?
The problem with it is that it is often a subject of last resort. Folks might have the camera whilst lacking an idea of what to do with it. So, the most obvious answer to the moral dilemma is to point it and click at whatever's there. It's still a picture and can be perfectly executed too. Which doesn't make it worth doing for anyone other than the photographer. Which is valid enough: his baby. Amd just as people ooo and coo at other peoples' offspring they render similar homage to photography.
Again, it boils down to validity. And again back to Donovan and his claim that the most difficult thing facing the amateur is a reason why to make a photograph. I don't at all think he was being flip; in retirement I face the same struggle every time I take the damned thing out of its box. Come to think of it, the days of the Kodachrome thrill provided many a solution at minimal cost to personal time and expended energy in pusuit of what?
Were more valid alternatives available...
Sex and the Camera.
You take it in your hands, you feel its shape and your imagination starts to probe the question of what the hell you are going to do.
It’s close to your face, snuggled against your cheekbone and your breath becomes that tiny bit faster, less controlled; concentration marks the lines on your forehead and a suspicion of sweat breaks out. Your lips are just a little parted and then, as the shapes begin to happen before you, you become half-aware of the tension in your mouth as you speak things that have no logic but are so very relevant to where you are going. Your head and your hands feel independent of the rest of you which belongs to the music on the system and the electricity of creation.
Her eyes are looking right back into yours through the machine; the smile that you are seeing is for you but not really for you because you are just the mirror, and you don’t care at all because what you’re doing is the passport you both share, the ticket to the never-never, the place where imagination is all that exists, where paths can cross and unspoken wishes shared or not and neither knows where the other one really is. What the sparks within the two minds? Does she care? Would there, could there be a brief future together? Has she ever thought about it – is she thinking that now? How often have you been right here before? Is it love, is it desire or even fear that it all will end as quietly as it began? Is this thing ever about love?
You sign one paper and she another. And then it’s done.
It’s colder now and the music seems irrelevant in your ears. You switch it off with a flick of anger that you really can’t explain; you become impatient and don’t want to spend any more time on where you’ve just been, but you have to, just so you can do it all over again another time to another tune.
The silence and loneliness are killing you. You wish you still smoked.
So you put the music back on but don’t even remember having switched it off.
Love your studio.
Rob C
