Originally posted by tuco It reminds me of a basic art design class I had in college. The professor would have us post our work up front for evaluation. Once I got low marks for using "predictable geometric shapes". When I pointed out the advanced art students were doing that and were displayed in an exhibition, her response was, "Well, they know what they are doing". I just rolled my eyes.
My design teacher clearly thought that I was a no-talent from day one. She was obsessed hand drawing and painting everything, was a painter, and I can't draw or paint worth crap, at least not by hand. Give me a graphics tablet and a computer though and I can create some decent stuff. Assignment after assignment she just gave me these pity filled looks, and C's every time to the point where it pissed me off because I knew that if I was just allowed to use a computer and a graphics tablet I could do so much better than most of the people in the class that she thought were better than I am.
Finally towards the end of Design I she lets us touch a computer. First computer assignment, and it's a tough one. She then makes a switch to her usual routine says the whole class will judge and critique and no one will know who did what because each student will enter the classroom in turn and put their stuff up with no one there while the others wait outside. Paper on the door to block any sight of the inside of the room, and she's not in there herself.
Time comes and there all up, and she goes from one to the other judging, critiquing and basically telling the whole class that they really didn't get the assignment quite right. She gets to mine and she just stops, and she smiles, big smile, and she says "This one, it's PERFECT, exactly right, A plus! Now, who did this?" The look on her face when she realized it was me is one the sweetest memories I own. She looked at me, she looked back, and it was just like she could not believe it at all! I was half waiting for her to accuse me of cheating, but a few questions in and she knew I hadn't. I showed her the steps leading to the final version, showed her an alternate one I was still fooling with after class too. In the end she had to give me my due. The funny thing is my other teacher, the one I was in class for Illustration with had told her I could draw, on a computer, but she admitted that she had not believed it, thought the other teacher was being too kind. But in actuality my design skills they were pretty sophisticated. I had been doing that kind of work for a long, long time, on my own. I just could not paint or draw in traditional ways because I had issues with my hands.
I don't much like photography contests and while I am in two clubs here I don't participate in that kind of thing. I don't like to compete with anyone but myself. I tried it here a couple of times but honestly I was uncomfortable with it. I don't even want to judge anyone else's work and I did turn down a request to do that here at one point. I can spot technical imperfections as well as anyone else I suppose but what I like that's very subjective sometimes and what "I" might consider good and what other people consider good are often two different things. An image doesn't actually have to be perfect for me to love it. If it really moves me I can forgive a certain lack of technique sometimes.
I also tend to hate the work of so called genius photographers who take shots of blurred people or simulated dead people and such and who call that their art. I'm the same way with modern art. I like very little of it. Don't show me a fuchsia dot in the middle of a while canvas, with maybe a black lightning bolt to one side and call that genius and expect me to like it. Any 7 year old could do that for cripe's sakes. A lot of the avaunt photographers that the Sunday Art page reviewers so adore praising I think they are totally full of themselves. But I am sure they probably wouldn't consider what I do art either so who cares?
If ever end up on a wall in a gallery so be it, but I'm not courting that. I don't really care what those so called judges of the world might think. I do what I do for two reasons. To make a living and the other stuff because I like doing it. That's it. My photography is how I pay my bills and it's what I do for me. If other people end up liking it, fine, if they want to buy it I'm proud, but I'm not tailoring my personal work for anyone's taste but my own. F- the accolades, excuse my french, but f- them. I won't sell out, make my non-commercial work stuff I can't stand, just to be more popular or famous, I just won't.
I spent over 20 years in retail selling junk things I hated. I often had to mentally prostitute myself just to keep my job, keep those sales coming in. I quit doing that to do this and I am not going backwards, not with the thing I really love doing. There are a lot of people like my design teacher, like those judges out there, ready to declare so authoritatively whether you are talented or a mere pretender but most of them? I wouldn't trust them to pick the pictures and stuff I put on my bathroom walls. :P