I have a friend who tells people at a local photography club that "I only shoot film." I knew someone else who would say "I don't believe in post processing." I have a friend, who is a fine photographer, who tells me "Really, I only shoot 4x5 but I want to move to 8x10". Another tells me that you'll never equal a silver gelatin print, which is a hugely sweeping commentary. Someone else on the forum asked disparagingly of another, "what are you trying to be, Ansel Adams?"
I am appalled at the lack of manners towards beginners by some on the forum. Geez, why be cruel and petty to someone unknown to you? Does that make one feel big and important or all-knowing?
Wayne

Very well reasoned and written essay, Wayne. I read it through twice. For me, the key is above. I see it all the time on the 'hog, it's happened to me (and I'm not a beginner), and I think it's kind'a the internet disease. I'm not sure why it is. It's similar to the behavior of an awful lot of drivers, protected and anonymous in the steel cocoon. It's behavior many would not exhibit in line at the grocery (or maybe they would). I guess that in the last analysis it's just a part of modern life to be put up with. :hunf: Good essay. Illegitimi non carborundum. :D

In one of Richard Brautigan's novels there is a character who goes to parties, saddles up to people, and pronounces solemnly "I'm reading the RUSSIANS." And that's all he says.

I have a friend who tells people at a local photography club that "I only shoot film." I knew someone else who would say "I don't believe in post processing." I have a friend, who is a fine photographer, who tells me "Really, I only shoot 4x5 but I want to move to 8x10". Another tells me that you'll never equal a silver gelatin print, which is a hugely sweeping commentary. Someone else on the forum asked disparagingly of another, "what are you trying to be, Ansel Adams?"

I've know two people who knew Adams, and they both loved him, not as a photographer, though certainly they liked his work, but they loved him as a PERSON. One of them, a former park superintendent at Yosemite, said he was one of the most intelligent, and most pensive person he'd ever known. He was also a humble man.

So my Nikon D90 that I shot for 5 years seemed to overexpose about 1/3 to 1/2 f-stop. I typically adjusted that in post processing. If you don't believe in post processing, does making that adjustment "in camera" make you a better photographer? Does it make you a better person?

Or if I employ an old film trick of underexposing by 1/2 to 1 full f-stop in increase saturation of a shot I'm making with my digital camera, is this cheating?

Is a pinhole camera the only pure form of photography? Is pureness the goal?

Did Ansel Adams have a monopoly on pre-visualization? That is, when he died, did pre-visualization stop? If I shoot "in camera" in color but I use SilverEfex2 to get to what I wanted the photograph to look like in b&w when I took the shot, am I cheating? Did Ansel cheat when he burned and dodged, or used filters while shooting or did he cheat by printing on anything other than #2 paper? He thought Moonrise over Hernandez was a dud when he first printed it. . . should he have stopped there? Or was his finesse in printing it really the creation of a fake?

And what about accidents. Several years ago I was hiking in Utah. A yellow-orange dragonfly landed on a bush. It was backlit, and the colors were especially beautiful. I shot at 300mm and when I looked at the shot in the camera, it was beautiful. I told my daughter, "THAT was the shot of the trip." When we got it home and put it on the monitor, we were surprised and pleased to see that the dragonfly had its lower jaw piece dropped, and it looks all the world like he's smiling. So that was an accident, I didn't realize it at the time, so should I not take credit for the photograph?

Here's what I think for what it's worth (probably not much). Photography for me is always a lesson in humility. I like about 10% of my photographs, sometimes a little more, sometimes less. Even after taking a couple hundred thousand photographs, I cannot predict how the abstraction will look that occurs when one takes a 3-dimensional scene and reduces it to 2-dimensions with absolute certainty. All photography, like all art, is an abstraction. I continually make mistakes, even though I'm careful. Last week in a remote area I will likely never visit again, I accidentally turned a dial to "auto-ISO" and shot an incredible sunset in the Land of Standing Rocks at ISO 700. I often muff focus. I once absent-mindedly reformatted a memory card before I downloaded the photos. I get a lot of portraits with people's eyes closed. I catch dorky expressions. I get fooled by backlighting STILL. I have shots ruined by camera movement. I don't have a camera with me when a once-in-a-lifetime shot presents itself. After 44 years of pursuing this art form (among others) I am reminded that someone in the right place and the right time with little interest in photography can make with luck a masterpiece photograph that will be more stunning, more profound, and capture more of the beauty of the natural world or the drama of the human condition than any photograph I have, or will ever, make. Vivian Maier's extraordinary work, which will outlast any single individual's arrogance, was produced by an intensely shy and presumably modest, diminutive woman of immense talent. I am appalled at the lack of manners towards beginners by some on the forum. Geez, why be cruel and petty to someone unknown to you? Does that make one feel big and important or all-knowing? It is the nature of the medium to remind us of humbleness, and if it doesn't do that, then it says a lot about one's own pathology and shallowness. The next time we have our nose in the air making some pronouncement that has the implicit message that our approach to photography makes us better than everyone else, or our work is 100% good, and that we have a monopoly on art that the novice would do well to fall on their knees and wail "oh I am not worthy master!", or that we are reading the RUSSIANS, we might consider being careful because life has a way of leveling ego.
Wayne

Very well reasoned and written essay, Wayne. I read it through twice. For me, the key is above. I see it all the time on the 'hog, it's happened to me (and I'm not a beginner), and I think it's kind'a the internet disease. I'm not sure why it is. It's similar to the behavior of an awful lot of drivers, protected and anonymous in the steel cocoon. It's behavior many would not exhibit in line at the grocery (or maybe they would). I guess that in the last analysis it's just a part of modern life to be put up with. :hunf: Good essay. Illegitimi non carborundum. :D

The only Brautigan novel I know of where he mentions "reading the Russians" is "A Confederate General From Big Sur". The two places where this is mentioned are

“He was reading the Russians with that certain heavy tone people put in their voices when they say, “I’m reading the Russians.””

and

“Sure there’s God-damn shelter down here. What do you think I’m living in, a burrow? That business in Oakland was something else. A man needs the proper atmosphere to read the Russians.”

To which of Brautigan's novels are you referring?