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Thursday, 08 May 2014

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Why visit them? Why not have them come to you? If you use RSS and a good RSS Reader (I use Feedly) then, as and when a site updates the changed/added/new information comes to you.

Try Feedly.com. It's a pretty good news reader. After a little setup, you can efficiently peruse as many sites as you'd like. It's still a deluge, but a more controlled deluge.

I'll be interested to see what you come up with. In addition to TOP (you do sometimes visit that one, don't you?) there's Kirk Tuck's blog, also the Rangefinder Forum, The Online Darkroom, Dave Beckerman, Ken Rockwell, Luminous Landscape, Photography on the Net, mu-43.com (micro 4/3s), and ex-DWF, the Facebook group for former members of the Digital Wedding Forum. I have a long list of others I check occasionally.

You're one up on the rest of us, because you don't have to count TOP in your eight or ten ;)

I read Blake's post and inmediately remembered your old post about what HCB and other classics would receive as feedback in online forums. Its the same principle, how ridicule clichés and fixed ideas are, specially when you see masters work.

"I didn't write the rules; why should I follow them?"
W. Eugene Smith

What a great list! I now have a Street Project:
A. Make my own example of violating each rule*.
B. Make examples of violating as many rules as possible in a single photograph.

* including, by default, the anti-Winnogard rule.

bd

PS Blake made his list in response to difficulties defining Street Photography. That's easy: def Street photography is NOT any of the following; Landscape, Family, Sports, Studio, Wedding, Event, Architecture, Abstract Photography. Nor is it Photo Journalism which is street photography for pay.

I read it. It was loads of fun. Unfortunately, judging by some comments on that post, there are lots of people who won't recognize a satire even if it bites them on the leg.
You know the old saying: "Oh well..."

And don't forget to read the comments too ... they're the best bit.

And the follow up post:

http://blakeandrews.blogspot.com/2014/05/into-pool.html

There are a lot of things in life which I consider "painting a bridge" type tasks. As soon as the task is completed it's time to start over. Finding the best fish taco on the west coast for instance is a painting the bridge task, one I would rather enjoy. Finding the 10 best photo sites...not so much.

A short list is good. After that, don't try to winnow the rest down. Bookmark them all. Just work down the list; five each day. In one year you'll hit 1825 sites. It's not so tiring that way.

I saw this recently and was amused by the comments of those irritated by it. Yes, there are many rules while are "enforced" on the Internet as to what constitutes one type of photography or another, the type of camera one must use etc. Part of the fun of breaking rules (for a reason) is to see/read the reactions of those irritated----infuriated---at the breakage.

Blake might want to take a leaf out of your book and use the SA* system. It's surprising how some people's interpretation of a blog post differs from my own and, I suspect, the writer's.

I have about 15 blogs on my short list. Active ,interesting blogs levitate toward top. Some bloggers post monthly and my rule is "If you don't have time-I don't have time". Strobist comes to mind,just went from third to number 14. When my morning coffee is done my blogging is done. TOP is doing rather well, by the way.

8. Street photographs must depict people. But not street performers, buskers, homeless, or other common sidewalk denizens. Fish in a barrel. Prohibited.

Personally I do indeed have a problem with people taking photos of homeless. They are on the bottom of the social ladder, used to get (mis)used. I don't see any reasons, for bored middle class people with aspiration to be edgy, to use them more. To those middle class bored, I would instead suggest that they should take photos of the police or gangs instead. These groups have often very clear ideas, of how they want to, or not, be used.

But if you are a photographer as for example Jacob A. Riis who wants something more than a good motive, then by all means go a head and shoot.

Please post your list!

Not nearly as sharp of humor as your classic 2006 Great Photographers on the Internet piece.

Does this mean that photographing peoples' backs is getting it ass backwards?

Benjamin Marks wrote: "And sometimes a 'rule' is really just a practice that all of us sheeplike nudniks fall into because it is the received wisdom."

Actually, in the arts world, that is PRECISELY where the supposed rules come from. They never were conceived as rules. They were simply things that worked, among many other things that worked, and which eventually became recognized because they come up so often. They aren't so much rules as they are "tendencies," or "observations about things," or "options you can try."

"There is only photographic rule that should never be broken: respect your subjects"

-- Cheryl Jacobs

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