Commentary # 27 ~ January 2009
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Am I Better Than I Was One Year Ago?

January 2009


- by Craig Wassel


Boy, did that go fast. 2008 is behind us, and we are already three weeks into January 2009. Thus begins my third full year of commentary for my little corner of the web and world of photography. I never would have imagined when I wrote my first one back in November 2006 that these commentaries would become monthly, but it's funny how something can take hold of you and grow into something bigger you could never have imagined.

The beginning of a year is traditionally a time of reflection and resolution, so I have been thinking about what I will do in my photography to make 2009 an even better year than 2008. I started off with a simple question:

Am I a better photographer than I was a year ago?

Before I too quickly answered myself, I tried to excercise some introspection, and what I write here is much of what I pondered.

I thought back to the first commentary I wrote, "Photography's Digital Battleground" (link). In it - among other things - I talked about the digital format's stigma and the war of words between film and digital shooters. Although there are still plenty of people railing against digital, it does seem to me that digital has gained a little more acceptance over that past four years. Maybe that comes as the cameras improve, or maybe it is just a natural product of time. I'm not sure.

What has definitely not decreased over the past four years is the number of photography forums and volume of posts found on them. I don't have numbers to back me up, but I'll venture there has been a dramatic increase. It seems every week someone is pointing me to a new one, or I come across a link to one I have never heard of before. They are the perfect venue for photogs to argue back and forth about anything and everything photographic: lenses, bodies, brands, styles, mediums, formats, sensors. Noise.

On one of the forums I read quite a bit of in 2008, I saw one forum member who had more than 6,000 posts in three years. SIX thousand. Holy smokes, that is alot of posts. How does one find time to follow and post that much to a forum and still find time to shoot? To be clear, this is a question and not a full blown critcism. To each his own, and granted everyone has different levels of demand on their time. Personally, I struggle to fit everything in: putting family first, taking care of life's chores and responsibilities, deliver shoots to customers, and still find time for all the other photography and learning I want to do.

It's easy to look down one's nose - or camera lens - at photogs who spend enormous amounts of time posting and postulating and even arguing about absolutely anything and everything on these forums. Then it absolutely hit me like a ton of camera gear.

I am no better.

Am I a better photographer than I was when I started at age 11? Definitely. Am I a better photographer than I was a year ago? Probably. Did I learn everything I wanted to and do everything I wanted to in 2008? Definitely not. So in the balance, why do I say I am "no better"?

Well, here is the thing:

To me, many of these forums filled with photogs posting like mad and debating back and forth are like reality TV. It can definitely make for interesting reading. It is downright hard to resist looking, just like it is the human tendency to slow down to look at an accident on the road. I can (and have) looked with a critical eye at the amount of time others spend posting. The problem is when I assess how much time I spent in 2008 reading much of it, I realized something. That makes me somewhat of a hypocrite, and in THAT way I am no better.

Is reading these forums a waste of time? No, not necessarily. Not every forum or every post is argumentative or combative in nature, and there people who no doubt share knowledge and expertise that is of great value. You just won't come across it though if you get caught up in threads of dueling photogs trying to out-sling eachother. So while they may not be a waste of time, they can be a poor use of our time if we are reading them for the curiosity of seeing which photographers will crash into eachother and argue about who is right and who is wrong.

So there is my photography resolution for 2009 - to prove to myself my morbid curiosity and guilty pleasure of watching others argue on these forums has been satisfied, and put that time toward the learning and photography I did not get to in 2008.

Happy New Year, everyone.


" . . Photography expanded my world. It has always been for me, a medium through which I can share my observations and responses to the world. . . "

~ Peter Turnley ~








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" . . . It's easy to look down one's nose - or camera lens - at photogs who spend enormous amounts of time posting and postulating and even arguing about absolutely anything and everything on these forums. Then it absolutely hit me like a ton of camera gear . . .

. . . I am no better. . . . "




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