Re: Somewhere out there, a monkey just chewed up someone's drivers licence and flung more feces ...


"Get Real" <gr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:fnk9r454g4rrv25gk0nifpm20nt7ns5a8r@xxxxxxxxxx
On Sun, 08 Mar 2009 02:29:59 GMT, "Dudley Hanks"
<photos.digital@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

After reading the Real Deal's tyrade, yesterday, I started to think that,
"Hey, maybe my pics were just accidents." So, I took Mich for a bus ride
and took another picture of him.

You be the judge:

MichOnBus-:


http://www.photography.dudley-hanks.com/Images/MichOnBus.jpg (full size)

http://www.photography.dudley-hanks.com/Images/MichOnBus-small.jpg (quick
loading)

http://www.photography.dudley-hanks.com/Images/MichOnBus.cr2 (original
RAW)

Sorry, though, I have to copyright this one...

The above links address pictures which are Copyrighted by Dudley Hanks,
2009, all rights reserved.

You are granted permission to download and view these images for personal
use and critical review. However, permission must be granted by myself
for
any commercial use, display in a web site / gallery, or for any method of
publication.

Take Care,
Dudley


Commercial use? You're losing your mind along with your sight.

This is better, how? Another ordinary snapshot like any school-kid would
take with their cell-phone camera when on a field-trip bus outing. To top
it off your P&S camera focused on the dog's ear and leash around its neck,
putting the main features of the dog's face out of focus, including the
eyes. If you were going to do it right you would have focused somewhere on
the dog's snout just in front of the eye, so the nose to ear were all in
focus. Unless you are trying to portray a vehicle out of control then you
should have at least held the camera more level, or straightened and
cropped in editing. The exposure is wrong, you lost valuable detail in all
the shadows and didn't properly expose for the highlights. That's what
people get for wishfully depending on a "fancy" camera do all the work for
them.

The woman with chin in hand in the background of the image is just as
amused as everyone else being subjected to your carnival sideshow act.
Watching a blind guy trying to pretend he can do photography. "Awwww....
isn't that cute, look at what the monkey is trying to do ..." To bad that
she didn't get to see the results too--more flung feces.

Consumer camera technology is not going to replace your eyes. Grow-up and
face reality. If I lost my eyesight I would face it like an adult and
switch gears; probably devote more to my music interests; taking another
stab at honing my skills on shakuhachi or maybe some other instrument I
haven't tried yet. Maybe go back to sculpting or some other artistic
interest that's not wholly vision dependent. There are thousands of things
that one can pursue without eyesight. It wouldn't bother me in the least
if
I lost my eyesight. Just as a personal test I lived that way once for two
weeks, alone, to see what it would be like and if it would bother me. I
found hundreds of things to do while living without eyesight. But at least
I wouldn't make a public fool of myself trying to pretend to do what I
would now be incapable of doing. Or in your case, could never do to begin
with, your skills so far have proved that you never were talented with a
camera.

Want some constructive criticism? In case you refuse to grow up and face
realty. Quit trying to use shallow DOF in your photography. You can't see
well enough to make proper use of it. Any time that you try you only
destroy the photo that you were hoping to capture. Auto-focus is not
intelligent enough to do it for you, in any camera. Set your camera to
manual focus and leave it set on a hyperfocal setting, turn it into even
more of an Instamatic snapshot camera so all your faults and limitations
aren't so blatantly obvious to those with functional eyes. Make
composition
your goal, not the individual subjects. I'm not sure what you'll do about
your dependency on auto-exposure too, other than to learn the faults of
your camera and count how many EV button presses it should take to
override
the camera designer's stupidity. Learn to hide your limitations with your
camera. Then it won't look like you're an insecure idiot trying to be what
you can never be. Instead you'll only be one of the many millions of
mundane snapshot photographers with a grade-school level of field-trip
cell-phone-camera talent. You're only amplifying your faults and
limitations and then broadcasting them to the world with what you are
doing
now. You're looking like a delusional dwarf running around on the
basketball court who is hoping to be drafted by a pro team. Embarrassingly
entertaining.

Find something else you might be good at one day because it's never going
to be photography. I'm doing you a huge favor in being the only one here
who is completely honest with you. The rest are only amusing you out of
their own personal fears, insecurities, and the worst self-serving motive
of all--pity. Grow up and deal with it.

Get Real.



Ah, you did say a couple of semi-intelligent things in this post. Nice
change. But, obviously, we still have a ways to go.

Too bad you shot yourself in the foot when you said that my
"point-and-shoot" camera focused on the dogs ears and collar, followed by,
you should quit using shallow DOF. Taken together, these two statements
show how little you really know about photography. First of all, P&S
cameras can't achieve that shallow of DOF, see:

http://www.photography.dudley-hanks.com/Images/Bustrip.jpg (full size)

http://www.photographic.dudley-hanks.com/Images/BusTrip-small.jpg

This pic, although shot on a P&S at a wider aperture than the one with
shallow DOF, definitely has more DOF. Most knowledgeable shooters know that
you can't do shallow DOF with a P&S, but I'm flattered you think I have the
skills to get that shallow DOF from a P&S cam.

Still, if you are going to offer vitriolic critiques, at least, get your
facts right... Perhaps you'll garner a wee bit of credibility that way.

Second, you seem to think it is an acceptable goal for a sighted shooter to
tilt a camera in order to portray a bus out of control. So, why can't I use
that technique, or lost detail in shadows for that matter, to depict an
event experienced by a blind individual, after all, I lose way more shadow
detail than that when I look at a scene. You operate on the wrong premise
that the picture you would have tried to capture in my situation is the same
image I want to capture. You're wrong. The image I WANT is drastically
different than any image you would shoot. I'd go so far as to say that YOU
CANNOT EVEN IMAGINE AN IMAGE I WOULD WANT TO CAPTURE, which will always
result in my shooting pics you can't understand. But, hey, you might at
least TRY to exercise your imagination in order to tentatively ponder
alternative interpretations of my work? Or, is your mind so narrow you are
incapable of that. I guess that's why you are critiquing pics here in
Usenet, as opposed to getting paid for your opinions by a media outlet /
trades newsletter.

Regarding the shallow DOF, many of my current pics use it because it yields
a result I am after: rendering visible a world that isn't perfectly
focused. After all, I DO NOT LIVE IN A WORLD WHERE EVERYTHING IS PERFECTLY
FOCUSED.

And, no, I won't put down my camera just because you get embarrassed by my
pics.

By your logic, Beethoven should have stopped his hammerings long before
composing his 5th symphony; Hellen Keller should have given up and
committed suicide; and Governor Patterson should be working for a charity.
Fortunately, some of us can see past our limitations.

It was once pointed out that "it takes a village" to raise a child. Well,
in my case, it takes a team to make a photograph, which isn't all that much
different than for sighted shooters, most just don't realize it.

When learning their trade, photographers learn from others what works, what
doesn't and how to interpret scenes they are confronted by. They then apply
that knowledge to future pics. And, especially in the early days, they
learn a great deal from feedback they receive from friends, family members
and clients after each pic is reviewed (either formally, or informally).

Why should I be denied the benefit of feedback simply because I have a
vision limitation? According to your logic, people shouldn't be given
wheelchairs when they lose their legs, because their pathetic attempts to
get around their community is an embarrassment to the able-bodied people
they meet strolling down the sidewalk?

The biggest hurdle I have to overcome when displaying my work is to educate
my viewers that I am NOT trying to photograph images in a traditional
fashion. Instead, I am trying to use traditional techniques to photograph
scenes which REPRESENT small slices of my world.

You seem to think that your twisted logic is superior to others. But, what
you fail to realize is that your comments simply highlight your lack of
empathetic development. According to Stephen Covey (in Seven Habits of
Highly Effective People), achieving symbiotic relationships with others is
preferable to self-sufficiency because it allows each individual to not only
benefit from their own skills and talents, but to achieve an even higher
standard of living because each member of the relationship gains from
others' abilities.

But, so much for my rant. Now, back to the picture.

I actually appreciate your feedback. Indeed, you do tell me things others
won't, and that helps a great deal (whether you want it to or not, I can't
say).

I was aware of some of what you wrote, in particular that the camera wasn't
level, and that the face isn't entirely in focus. But, if you could just
hold your attitude in check for a moment, you might understand, as I've
explained, that my pics SHOULD NOT look like pics of sighted shooters. I
have always shot with the premise that my pics should contain a bit of me in
each, because it is that personal touch which makes pics unique /
indellible.

Hence, if I want to shoot pics about a blind person's world, why would I
want to remove all indications that the shooter is blind? That would defeat
my purpose and would truly reduce my work to run-of-the-mill snapshots.
Right? But, when you can look at my shots and see my stamp and think, "Hey,
his world is kind of neat, even though it is a bit unstable." Then, I have
conveyed a bit of what it's like to live in a blind person's world. I can't
say it enough: If a sighted shooter shot pics like these and said, "Hey,
I'm trying to portray a bit of what it's like to live in a blind person's
world," he'd probably get tons of critical acclaim and awards would roll in.
Right? I'd bet on it. Why can't I use the technique when I'm an actual
blind person trying to shoot pics that portray that same reality?

Regarding the woman looking at us, how do you know that she is looking at us
because I'm trying to take a picture. Believe me, when I step onto a bus
(where dogs are not allowed) with my rather large shepherd, all eyes are on
us. And, they continue to watch us simply because we are a distraction from
the daily humdrum of their lives.

I had one bus driver say to me once, when I boarded his bus with a previous
shepherd guide, "I love it when you get on the bus."

At first, I thought he was glad because he got to experience my wonderful
wit and fluent small talk, but he set me straight when he added, "...
because when you are sitting there with that big shepherd, everyone is so
well behaved."

So, once again, your interpretation of my work is based on your projecting
your dissatisfaction with your own existance onto my reality. If I can make
people smile, whether it be because of bringing a dog into a place where it
isn't normally found, or whether it is because they find my antics amusing,
pathetic, or whatever, great! I've made the world a more beautiful place,
even if it is just for a moment, or for a few minutes.

You said you tried living as a blind person for a short time, by
blindfolding yourself. But, that doesn't give you the whole picture. You
KNEW you weren't actually blind, so it is easy for you to think, hey, I can
do this. The fact that you can take the blinders off should you truly face
a life and death situation is always in the back of your mind, whether you
admit that to yourself or not. Things look WAY different when that safety
net is removed, and you TRULY have to face reality. Ask any blind person
who has had to confront a sightless future.

Sadly, though, by blindfolding yourself, you missed the good side of the
situation, too. You didn't see the reactions of the people you were
interacting with.

When it comes to photography, I get to experience a bit of that interaction.
In many of my pics, there are people watching me, or my dog, or both of us
together. To experience a bi-species team at work, communicating with each
other and solving a problem is something I hope you get to experience in
your life time. For me, I have been fortunate enough not only to watch such
a team, but to actually be an integral part of three teams.

For me, having my dog help me find my way to the mall is no different than
asking people for information about a scene I want to shoot, or for feedback
about shots I've already taken. It is all part of the process, and, while
it becomes an integral component in my work, it does not void my work. Just
like any other photographer's talent is not negated by his mentors /
instructors / clients' feedback, even though the photog makes adjustments
based on their comments and ideas.

As I've told other detractors in the past, please, keep the feedback coming.
I may use it; I may not. But, whatever you say, it gives me something to
think about, and it gives me very valuable details about my images, details
I couldn't use (even if I wanted to) if I didn't get it.

Take Care,
Dudley




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