On Tue, Mar 13, 2012, at 10:10 AM, Ken Norton wrote:
> > St. Ansel would have had every item in focus and burned the
> > background in to concentrate attention on the subject lily. I think I
> > might have preferred that approach, but it wouldn't be a Dawid photo in
> > that case. :)
>
> Thank you, Joel, for saying that. The problem we often have with some
> of these pictures is that we envision what _____________ would have
> done with it. Sorry, but this is wrong-headed.
>
> This would be like saying "nice painting, but I would have preferred
> the way da Vinci would have painted it."
>
> Or saying "nice song, but I would have preferred the way Tony Bennett
> would have sung it." Oh, wait. Tony Bennett has done it with every
> song, I think.
>
> Anyway, you get the point. Dawid has his own style. Dawid's work
> stands on its own merits. Just as you might not prefer the way the
> bokeh is rendered in the one shot does not diminish the value of the
> shot. What if one of the acknowledged masters had done that shot? We'd
> be singing the praises of it, not nitpicking it. Dawid has a good
> vision. Sometimes I don't always like his shots for various reasons,
> but in reality I dislike most of my own shots too.
I often do "bokeh brackets" and find that I actually prefer a bit more
detail when there is a busy background in some cases. That's just my
vision, though.
Harold Bloom wrote a book called "The Anxiety of Influence" that was hot
when I was finishing up graduate school. The title is sufficient to get
the point: Pope was riddled with anxiety because of Milton, as Milton
was because of Shakespeare and Spenser, Brahms because of Beethoven,
etc. I think the thesis is interesting but not really relevant to many,
many people. Schubert described his own workflow (in my paraphrase):
"I compose one piece, and when it is finished, I start composing
another."
The anxiety of influence only kicks in when you stop to try to take the
measure of your own work and perhaps your desire for glory, success,
fame, rewards, and so forth. I prefer Schubert's approach. I was in a
quandary in graduate school when a professor urged me to try to get a
paper I had written for him published. I didn't feel it was quite there
yet. Another professor, who was more of a mentor, heard about this and
also urged me to publish it. I confessed my misgivings to him, and he
said, "It is never up to you to judge your own work, so it's better just
to get it out there." He was I'm sure thinking of my career. For
various reasons, I didn't take his advice at that time, though I have
come to live by it since.
The one thing worse than too much self-criticism is perhaps too little.
But maybe not.
Joel W.
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