sidemirrorshooting

I’m at lost for words whenever people make claims about what photography is for them.

Whilst others are the annoying fanb01s and fangur1s eager to play with their new toys and basically taking the same people-over-mountain/di-op ni yaya scene with different mediums and wondering why their pictures are too dark, too blurry, too burnt out, or just too … (insert other crappy adjective here).

Let’s talk about the revolution of the PP(post-processing) fanb01s and the persuasive purists. While one insists the dire need to crop/resize/redo/dodge/burn/brighten/contrast/hued/dave hill/saturate their photos, others claim that it should be done with the camera’s immediate settings (plus all those polarizer thingies) and post processing should be sought to a bare minimum.

To the people who think point-and-shoots aren’t real cameras. And the people who gave up on their little digital wonders and replace them with high-end bodies because they cannot capture a perfect nightshot with it. (tripod and long exposure is the answer) and they end up using the DSLR like a point and shoot and then… (see 2nd paragraph again).

The whole indian-pana*/pana-indian/indian-indian/pana-pana syndrome? Please give it a rest. The thing with that is both ends matter. The indian wants a pana. Pana will not work without the Indian. If the Indian wants to shoot safari or action, get a better plugins for the pana, if the Indian is happy with his pana, screw what everybody says… if it still works the way it should why get a better medium to prance around with? Just so you aren’t behind the times? geezus, I know someone who shoots with a 4 year old camera, and he has beautiful, beautiful, pictures :)

*pana means arrow in English

And don’t even get me started on the “lomography” business. Some live and die to be lomographers and not photographers. Their accidental-happy shots, the i couldn’t care less about the aperture/iso/shutterspeed/other stuff here. As long as the camera is cute and I get to xpro, everything is fine and dandy as a vivid, saturated blue sky day.

These and probably six thousand four hundred and fifty seven other ideas clashing about this whole hype of using a boxed object with a lens (and sometimes with a built in flash). Everybody is jumping into the bandwagon and buying/trading/ebaying the latest/oldest/greatest piece of gadget/toy to take pretty pictures with.

But in the end, what is the picture for anyway?

Now if anybody can answer the question without a doubt, with sureness in his heart and mind, is enough.

Be it the purists or the post-processors, lomographers, n00bs or experts, boy or girl, man or woman, gay or straight. If they know what they want to pursue in this field and not for the sake of bandwagoning into the next big thing, then that is how I see it as well.

Who cares if you post-process? What if you really like it that way? What if that’s your personal sense of style? Manny Librodo, Mango Red and Dave Hill all post process their photos to the point of being extreme and it’s fucking fantastic. So what also if you don’t like post-processing? If your aim is to capture purely the actual soul and essence of the subject, why bother mediating the reality?

For me, each picture I take should have some sort of meaning or story. I like stories in pictures. A visual should be an aid for something you want to say. Be it a trip or an event a portrait or a stolen moment that just feels right.

And who cares about the medium it could be the crudest of matchbox pin hole camera or a Hasselblad worth millions. If you got what you want then the photo is worth more than anything.

This is why I ramble too much about my photos sometimes (sometimes, really?) because I like stories. I like telling them. I blabber too much for my own good.

This is why I have no real field, I wish I did, maybe soon, but for now Photography for me is a beautiful way to capture even rawer emotions that I cannot truly write or say.

I thank thee *bow

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