6/18/08

“Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.” Dorothea Lange

My pal Ken Babbit, a great sports action photographer and I were talking about how photography had changed. Market and value have changed dramatically over years. Today, anyone one with a cell phone is a photographer and has little interest in anyone but themselves and their own photos. Most people alive today have little interest in anything but themselves, so this isn't surprising.Craft and precision have gone away. Give someone a mid range digital camera with a small telephoto that has an image stabilizing device and presto change-o! A new action photographer is born. Throw enough s**t at a wall and some of it is bound to stick. I have always concerned myself with portraiture more than action shooting but it is always fun to air out the motor and hunch over to wait for the DP.. Now, the donkey in Shreck with no expertise can compete with the likes of Ken. Does anybody care? Not like they used to. I mentioned to Ken, "I sometimes ask myself why I bother," and he reminded me. "It's for the love of the game.." That sounds like a Kevin Costner movie quote but it really is the truth.

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