Bless your heart Jo and your daddy's heart too. I have heard that before but said differently by my mom and dad. They raised three boys to treat women as ladies no matter who or what the lady was. I suspect my brothers and I know I have followed that thinking ever since we were little tykes. I have arrested numerous women for all sorts of crimes and a couple over the years have thanked me for treating them like ladies. It has paid off for me in numerous ways including some really tough female convicts telling me, Thank you, when I retired, for treating them respectfully as if they were ladies. Some of them I and other staff had to literally take to the ground and not in a nice way to maintain control. Even those ladies realized it could have been much worse but we were not trying to punish them but simply control them so we did not get assaulted. They do know the difference.

Dennis

As Photographers, we can have Artistic Intent,
We can produce work that is meaningful to us and practice a high level of craft.
But it is never for us to say ‘this is Art’ (capital A) . The same is true of painters, sculptors, cabinet makers, musicians or any other expressive craft. We don’t get to decide, all we can do is produce work that moves us.
If it moves others, that’s a bonus.
It is just not something we need to worry about, we need to find joy in Doing the Work.
We release our work into the world……
Then we let the chips fall where they may.
We let it go, and get on with the doing….

Quite the contrary. It can be quite an interesting discussion if approached with an open mind. If, on the other hand, your mind is already made up, then probably not so much.

For instance, right now, I'm looking at my panorama of the full arch of the Milky Way made about 6 years ago. It's about 15x36 inches and gets "oohs" and "aahs" all the time. I really like to look at it. It was a fairly involved effort to make it, and I'm quite proud of it. It's actually pretty well done. Some folks who look at it have never seen the actual sight. As my vision declines because of glaucoma, it's harder and harder for me to see the real thing.

But is it art? I'm inclined to think probably not, at least not in any traditional sense. Does that mean it needs to come off the wall and go into the trash? Absolutely not. Even if it's just a fancy photograph, I don't care. It stays up.

On the other hand, I'm coming to believe that the offhand snapshot that I shared in another recent discussion probably does qualify as art. Even though it was soundly denigrated for having an unforgivable amount of digital noise. It also has had a significant impact on a fairly large number of viewers.

The main difference is that my Milky Way panorama is pretty much the same as any number of other Milky Way panoramas. But my eclipse "snapshot" is intentionally and significantly different from almost all of the 17,000,000 others, most of which are just sterile technical displays. They are, of course, worth having to their photographers, but they are not art.

For art to be art, and for art to have value as art, it has to have heart. Something more than what is visible.

So I think...no, not sterile.