Finding Your Level - Comments

I have been following the comments on the luminous landscape discussion forum following the publication of my article. Feedback on the forum has been mixed while private emails to me have been almost all fortunately positive (though only time will tell if I have actually been helpful).

I added the following comment of my own to the forum today and for those of you who haven't been following the forum, here's my two bits.

My Comment In Response to Hank writing about a 'Levels' workshop with Sam Abell:

Wow, I don't know which is worse, dealing with the occasional very negative comments about the article, or living up to the expectations of Hank based on his experience with the famous and skilled Sam Abell.

Still, I'm committed and the articles mostly written so I'll stumble on.

Articles on Luminous Landscape can be entertaining they can be informative, or they can be educational.

Informative articles if you already know the information are not likely to generate a whole lot of controversy even if they are a bit boring. Educational articles, on the other hand, quite reasonably risk not only NOT being helpful but criticised by those who feel this isn't the way to teach things, or who feel the person doing the teaching isn't competent to do so. Education involves strategies and quite reasonably we don't all agree on strategies.

What I think we do need to remember is that the skill set that people bring with them to Luminous Landscape varies hugely. There are people like some of those commenting above who bring many years of experience and skill to the website, but I suspect there are a lot more people who don't come with 20 or more years of experience, who have never sold a print or been published and who struggle with issues foreign or dimmly rememberd to the more experienced amongst us.

Fortunately positive feedback has far outweighed negative but lets face it, I presented a controversial idea, that there could be a better way to learn, that there might be a faster way, or heaven forbid a short cut. Time will tell if it really is useful.

The most negative comments have come from people who do fashion or sports and who see my levels as not applying to their kind of photography. As my own interests are not in sports and fashion, I dare say that to some degree they are right. Great sports shots are often not very sharp and yet large prints can be dramatic and powerful. Capturing the peak moment is far more important than perfect focus or tripod steadiness. That said though, the great sports shots are the ones which strongly convey a message, which make you feel the athlete's pain, their glory in victory, and so on. The sports photographers who use motion blurring with great skill are almost certain to have learned to hold a camera steady before they learned to move it with skill. A nude can be erotic or anatomical, so I think the levels I describe for the most part still apply, especially the aesthetic ones.

I remember some years ago attending a lecture on back pain and the ideas presented were absolute rubish and my blood pressure was steadily climbing as the talk proceded. I left cursing under my breath about wasting my time. Six months later though Things he'd said kept coming back to me and seemed to apply to situations my patients found them selves in. That information has been amongst the most useful continuing medical education I have ever experienced. A similar experience occured when I took a photograph appreciation course and found it boring and a waste of time. I have never looked at a photograph the same way since.

Whether my little contribution will be of that class is doubtful, but I can hope. Perhaps even my doubters will down the road find something that applies or is useful.