The reason I hate myself this week is that I can't really think of another art form outside of photography where the quality of your art is so heavily dependent on the tools you use to make it.
I have spent a lot of money on my camera and lenses now (made possible by a job I have come to hate but gives me ample disposable income), and I feel like this gives me an unfair advantage over people with lesser cameras. So, when people say my photos are so great, I feel like the credit is undeserved because a lot of the quality of the photo came from having a good camera and not my own skill.
Someone said they wanted to make an oil painting of a photo I took. Yay.
There are a couple of ways to think about that.
1) Be grateful that you have the humility to understand that point and continue on your current path.
2) Test yourself by getting/using lesser equipment. DigitalRev has done multiple videos where they give a cheap/old/terrible camera to a professional photographer, who then goes out and takes (mostly) excellent photos with them. Just like giving a fast driver a slow car, they will learn to focus on the finer details of composition and lighting, and not just bathe in the power of their equipment.
Get that weak shit off my track
I don't know why I decided to come in here again. Its just pissing me off.
Jason, you seem to be taking this extremely personally, it's not meant to be, and I'm struggling how you extrapolated all of that from my last post. In fact what you're saying is essentially the complete opposite of what I said in the last post.
I'm saying that I don't feel like compliments I receive on photos are as deserved when taken with a very good camera/lens. Carrying that logic out to the logical conclusion, it would follow that I feel that compliments received on photos taken with a crappy camera/lens would be very much deserved. And indeed, I do think that.
But it seems like you've completely inverted what I've said. How did you get to the conclusion that I would think you were worthless for using cheap equipment?
Anyway, I guess the thing is, I'm a perfectionist about things like this. So for my own fulfillment and satisfaction, I want to capture the best image possible, so I want the best equipment. But then when other people really like the photos, it makes me wonder if they would really think as highly of it if it wasn't taken with the same good equipment. I guess I feel like in an age where almost every photo was taken with a phone, people will admire any photos taken with a decent camera just because of their comparable quality.
I've seen the DigitalRev videos. Yes, the composition of the photos is good, but of course the photo quality is crap. If I'm capturing a situation, I want to do it as much justice as I can. And most of the photos I take are in awful lighting conditions, so just getting any kind of usable photo that isn't pitch black requires good equipment, or a flash, which I refuse to use.
Again, what it really comes down to is that I am an emotionally conflicted individual, and my feelings and opinions should be viewed and dismissed in the same way that random background noise is.
I'm taking it personally because you keep shitting all over photography while acting like you're some sort of godsend.
I think I'll follow your advice and ignore your 'background noise'.
Ok. So is there anything I could say to make you not hate me, or are you pretty much set at this point?