Seeing as this was the 1st week of my new website and blog launch, I thought I’d gauge some opinions in a forum I frequent. BIG mistake.

Well.. on the whole the feedback was pretty good, and the site was received well, but then the select few started to nit pick beyond all reasonable comment, and were pulling me up on things that even Ansel Adams would not have noticed, or for that matter cared about.

The actual comments were irrelevant, but what struck me was the anger and possible jealousy that some folk had towards what they perceived as a newcomer to the club.. I thought I’d just go and ask some advice.. but left feeling angry and deflated.

I’m all for hearing and taking on board feedback but I think , especially with photography that there’s an increasing trend to focus (no pun intended) on the micro analysis of every shot.. pour over each pixel and analyse each angle as if a life depended on it.

I dont ever remember people looking at 35mm negatives or slide film the same way. Just because we can doesn’t mean we have to. For me the enjoyment from digital means that I dont have to be stood in the dark and stinking of chemicals and my results are instant. its JUST as rewarding. But i think people, espcially the pros and tend to overlook one important element of the art of photography – how it looks.. on paper, or on the eye.. NOT enlarged 1000% and analyzed.

In my opinion..clients dont care what camera you use, what lens, what make, how fast your memory card is, what kind of ISO you are shooting at. They just want nice photos. True, nice cameras tend to give nice photos, but a good photographer can get good photos from an expensive camera. An excellent photographer can get  good photos from a crap camera. 

I left the forums feeling both fustrated and angry.  Too much analysis, not enough time in my life to care about pixel-peeping. If you look on my website, can you tell which of those have been taken with a 100 quid camera, and which have been taken with a 1000 quid  camera? I bet you can’t. Would you like them less once you knew? I would doubt it.

I’m thinking that forums are not such a great idea.