Interesting.

I don't enter into club competitions much now, all / most judges seem to look at a photo and only comment on what could be done with it in PS.

I have nothing against PS some of the things created by it are fantastic, but it is far removed from a 'photo'

I have just been looking at some shots a friend took on a point and shoot set to auto.  They were honest shots, horizons not level, note I say level, there is no such thing as a straight horizon as required by judges, blured images, all the faults but there was some good honest stuff as well.

As for mobile phones, there are some fantastic photos taken on mobiles. note I do not have a mobile phone

So where does that leave us.?

Jeff   

Hi Jeff,
I have one and I use it for making records, print occasionally and put on Flickr:-
https://www.flickr.com/photos/terry-m_flickrphotos/albums/72157693286603324

Terry

Interesting comments from Terry and Jeff, and I am in complete agreement with their analysis.

Our local club competitions and the judging process seems to follow the same pattern. Easy to criticize the judging though. In my town we have a million souls in our catchment area and we need 30 judges per year for 10 competitions. The gamut runs from the good, the bad to the plain yuk. Then again the pressures of judging forces them to examine the image, form a definitive judgment, and give a score all within 60-100 seconds. Do it over and over again until they have got through the 100 or so entries. Not an easy task. But they certainly should do better.

I try to evangelize printing at our local club, and for my efforts am considered something of a nut case. I am always amazed when a person with a couple of thousand dollars of gear slung around his neck and an even larger amount in the bag on his back, whilst salivating over the latest ad greatest camera soon to be released tells me, "PRINTING IS TO EXPENSIVE

It gets better when he proudly shows his multi megapixel camera body with umpteen stops of dynamic range. Also explaining he is shooting raw to capture maximum data, AND THEN POST PROCESSES IT DOWN TO 1080 x 870 pixels in 8 bit sRGB to post on his website, or enter the local competition. Effectively discarding some 80% of the data he has paid so dearly to capture.

OK Rant off I had better stop now.

Fred's comment about meeting for coffee with frinds to exchange and view prints sounds interesting. Will try it with a few of my friends and see how it goes.

As for a term for the output of the ubiquitous phone image brigade: wow about "Crapola". Google it. An accepted term for rubbish, at least on this side of the Atlantic.

Have a good day!

Roy S
-Old age and treachery trumps youth and enthusiasm-

Fred and Roy – I loved both of your stories.  I am so glad that I am not a professional photographer in these times.  First of all, I am not good enough to be professional – but that is another story.  What I see now more and more is people treating photographs as a very transient artifact – here today – gone tomorrow.  Even for big events, I don’t see people keeping permanent records (i.e., prints).  They spend a day or two and ooh and aaah, and geek and gawk at phone images, and then move on to the next thing.  To some extent, I have to believe that for professionals, photo quality and artistry is being superseded by speed (that is quick availability) and portability.

I make lots of prints of almost everything, and like Fred, I give them away. I also make up photo booklets – like yearbooks and give to the family.  I have been printing and distributing going back to my darkroom days where sometimes a days work yielded one or two usable prints, (temperature controls were not my strong suit) 

Nothing to me is more satisfying than going into someone’s house and seeing one of my prints framed on the wall or on top of the piano. But increasingly, I am finding, that if I don’t get those prints to people within a few days to a week of when I took them, there is rapidly decreasing interest in them.

Glad to have the opportunity to make this rant.

Mel W.

H all,
I'm pleased to see the BBC video has provoked some discussion, particularly about the joy of making prints.
No-one's said very much on the video said regarding creative photographs, a point that struck a chord with me:
.
Terry

How would you define creative photography??  For example, my grandchildren have these apps on their phones that lets them do a lot of weird things with photos.  So they take a picture of me then turn my face into some kind of bear-like thing (my wife says she can't tell the difference), or they can put stripes on your tongue, polka dots where your eyes should be, etc. etc.  Is that "creative photography?"  I just want to take and print pictures that say something, or show something, or are just pleasing to look at. So Fred posted some of Marilyn's pictures. I have seen some of her work before and that is what I would like to do - consistently.  So far, I have had to settle for occasionally.

So I would seriously like to see some good examples of "creative photography."