I seem to be managing to write or post something about every second day on this blog. This seems to indicate that I am serious about bringing this blog back, so I think I shall keep it up. If I am going to make it permanent I need either a redesign or I need to thoroughly hack the template. I think the blog looks a bit generic right now.
Moblogging is certainly fun, although it does lead to a lowering in the quality of pictures on the blog a little. It is not the same as taking 100 pictures, looking at them all carefully on a laptop screen, and then posting the best. If you blog from a mobile directly, you pretty much end up posting whatever you were lucky to get.
I think this is an example of a general conflict that occurs when you post photographs. One possibility is to post the best photograps in terms of the quality of the picture itself. The other is to post the most interesting photographs in terms of making some sort of point, or pointing out some irony between foreground and background, or something like that. Although I am a reasonably serious photographer and I care about taking the best possible photographs and succeeding in terms of the first category, the second almost always wins when I decide what to blog. (For instance, I thought that seeing the EU flag flying in the exact spot where once flew the banner of Ferdinand and Isabella was quite delicious, although nobody commented on it). I think this makes the blog slightly less striking on first glance, although hopefully it makes it more interesting if you settle down and read.
6 comments:
Are you going to make it to Sevilla? I've been there twice, and enjoyed it once I got my car parked, but never made it to Granada.a
--Tony
At some point, very likely. Probably not this year though.
Ah yes, the not always understood distinction between "interesting photographs" and "photographs of interesting things". It is of course possible, though not all that common, for the same photograph to be both.
We may also be approaching the distinction between a photographer and a photojournalist here, too.
Except that many photojournalists produce great works of art. Not sure if Henri Cartier-Bressson was a "photojournalist" in the sense of reporting big newsworthy world events, but James Nachtwey -greatest living war photographer, easily - most certainly is. And a marvellous artist too.
Perhaps a really good photojournalist and a really good photographer are the same thing - they just approach it from different places. Just as a really good photograph of interesting things is also an interesting photograph. Or am I pushing it?
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