Monday, May 07, 2012

Photographic credibility

click photo to enlarge
If I worried about my credibility as a photographer I'd definitely post fewer photographs. Only my crème de la crème would be on display. Or, I'd select for posting only those that impressed the other photographers and critics who I felt I should be impressing. Those photographs would not necessarily be the same as the ones that I thought my best. I'd also be much more selective of the subjects that I photographed. Flowers and plants would be banished. So too would churches and much historic architecture. Macro shots would disappear along with any subject that didn't have "serious" overtones. The titles of my shots would be enigmatic rather than prosaic, and I'd shoot more black and white and more people. I certainly wouldn't publish "reflections" alongside my images or talk about how I created them. Instead I'd periodically throw out a line or two in impenetrable "artspeak", full of the sort of cryptic jargon in which I'd frame the "artist's statement" that I'd display prominently with my work.

And the last, the very last, thing that I'd do is post a photograph of fluffy ducklings and follow it up with a shot of cute calves penned up in the corner of a Lincolnshire pasture. That would be suicide for my credibility. The only thing I could possibly do worse than that faux pas would be to make the following photograph a shot of baby rabbits eating dandelion flowers. Watch this space.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 32mm
F No: f11
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation:  -0.67 EV
Image Stabilisation: On