Saturday 28 February 2009

Q: Are we not men?


Sometimes it is easy to relax into safe mode. Like robots, we follow the path that we have been down a thousand times. I was thinking about this recently and posted a thread on a popular photographers society forum. They didn't seem to get what I was talking about. Which is nothing new! Between the waffling I was trying to say that it would be nice to return to the innocence of when we first took a picture, instead of evaluating every little piece of information before we open the shutter. My first ever picture was taken when I was three years old. I know this because I moved out of that street, the house of my birth, when I was three. The picture was of my mum. I had somehow managed to get my hands on the family Brownie and she was running up the garden path to save it from my grubby paws. At the time she was hanging out washing and had a clothes peg in her mouth as she run. By all accounts it was a fantastic action picture! My mum in her pinafore, curly hair akimbo and a with mouthful of wooden peg. Click ,lovely. Couldn't ever recreate that picture. Didn't know about f-stops, shutter speeds or anything else, but I knew how to mimic what I had seen my dad do which was enough. That picture may be lost now. I hope not, but I don't have it. The point is that it is the content of that picture that counts and it didn't take a pro to get it. To get my fun from photography and not be constantly bound by 'the rules' or by taking 'pictures that sell', I know I am going to go back to a happy snap camera. Loaded with film. Maybe I shall buy another one of these.

5 comments:

  1. No we are Devo! Hello Uncle G. Nice robot.
    -phil

    ReplyDelete
  2. Phil, I didn't think you were old enough for that particular beat combo, are you sure you were in the right race in Belgium?

    ReplyDelete
  3. You can't put age on men wearing boiler suits and flowerpots on their heads. Swimming goggles is a look I may resurrect this summer!

    ReplyDelete
  4. I saw Devo at the Glasgow Apollo, anyone want to make an offer on the Mechanical Man EP?

    Boogi Boy

    ReplyDelete
  5. Still sound good to me. Uncontrollable Urge in the cans before a race sounds like a good idea. And the Whip It video is ace!

    ReplyDelete