Horn tooting, in awe and wonder

[pecunium]

I take pictures. I happen to think some of them are pretty good. But thinking one's own work is decent isn't hard to do. Harder is to figure out what other people will like.

I think this



is a pretty good picture. Based on other people's reactions, I'm wrong; it's a damned good picture.

On the other hand, some of the things I think are outstanding, e.g.



don't seem to resonate with people.

So, yesterday I got a comment on this picture, telling me the detail was really good.



I got it from, of all places, the National Museum of Wales

It took a little time for me to realise this was the actual flickr account for the Museum of Wales (why shouldn't they have one, the US Library of Congress has one). I don't know who manages the account. I don't know what criteria that person (or people) use to decide what to look at, much less what to praise.

I do know the various photos they have (at the museum's flickr account, and at the actual museum pages) include some nice macro, to include some wing scale details.

So I'm feeling tolerably pleased with myself.

Comments

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

Not that I'm an expert, though I've shot video and have been complimented on my framing, but I think the first photo might click with people because it seems to fit the 'rule of thirds'. There's also a lushness to it--with the gradations to "purpleness". I can almost taste and feel them in my mouth--makes me think of the poem, "This Is Just To Say".*

There's a nice dynamic in the second photo, with the pelican and lizard in diagonal opposites, while the last photo doesn't really do much for me other than cause me to say, "Look, nature's pixilated."
_____
*They did a nice rip on "TIJTY" on This American Life, which was one of my favourite poems when I was growing up because it made me think of the plums my mother would can.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Macro (esp. that sort of macro, where the details are raised to levels of abstraction) are very idiosyncratic photos.

To go all meta here:

In some ways they rise to the level of esoteric jazz (what one friend of mine calls, "music for musicians") because they are one of those things one either gets, or not; and there is no shame, harm, or failure, in not getting it.


There isn't really any of that with any other photo; so long as one doesn't take the personal reaction, ad convert it to a statement on the merits.

To digress, in one of the Flickr groups I inhabit; where the rules are to do a very short critique as why one thinks a photo is good, poor, or so-so, someone; so it seems to me, took offense that a photographer, whose style he didn't care for, and attacked him as a talentless hack. He demanded to know where someone who couldn't take a photo that wasn't junk (though he used jargon in the attack, to make it seem it was a valid criticism) got off commenting on anyone else's work at all.

That's bullshit. There are a lot of pictures I don't care for, which are realy good; as photos (Mapplethorpe, for example, did a lot of art I don't like, but the photos qua photos, are great).

As an aside, I think that's one of the most flattering things anyone has said about one of my pictures (wrt to WCW). Thank you.