>>3691911(cont'd)
>A vulture waits for a starving child to die>A full moon rises over a desert graveyard>an entire apartment complex is captured in a single photo, each apartment a tile in a mosaic >a surrealist painter is suspended midair along with his flying cats >a naked musician snuggles up to his wife>a waiter cradles a politican who was just assassinated>a girl places daisies into the muzzles of soldier's riflesSo on, and so forth. Apply this test to your own work. How would you describe your photos? "A girl is on a balcony." "this is an old shed in the south." "this is a tree." "this is a door." Some of you might have more interesting things to say. I've seen some portraiture that is supremely interesting on this board lately and obviously has a more conceptual touch. There's also been some really great reportage, as well as some neat feats of architectural derring-do. But go through the RPT and describe some of the photos without any floral language regarding the aesthetics or visual content and see how you fare.
Now, the metric for success in this is whether it's a post hoc description, relevant for reportage and journalism, meaning that you captured a meaningful event that you didn't know was going to happen. The flipside of this is a concept that you developed before you even touched the camera. This is more relevant for fine art and portaiture. You set out to create the photo that you already had in your mind. It wasn't just "uh, show up to this public place and we'll see what happens." Even street photographers have some idea of what they're looking for when they set out. The evil twin of this is the post hoc justification of your creative work, where you sit on a pile of photographs and try to come up with a nonsensical explanation for their existence afterwards. There's a lot of postgrad work that exists out there with exactly this problem, where you bury your work in academic jargon in an attempt to hide an obvious lack of inspiration.
