I'm shutting down Google+ for the night and quite possibly for the weekend. Why? This stupid #gifwars thing people are so proud of. This Adam Black guy said he doesn't like gifs and now everyone is mass trolling him. Having been mass trolled like this I can relate to him easily enough. Have an opinion and the collective might of Google+'s lower class denizens jump on a bandwagon. I just saw a post where someone wanted to jump on board and had to get clarification she was tagging the proper Adam Black. She wasn't even connected to him ! Nor was she a part of the original discussion. She just wanted to follow the herd. When I called her out of it she claimed, "one gif doesn't make a troll." Perhaps not, but she's contributing to a larger troll effort. One straw doesn't break the camel's back, but thousands will. So, tonight, Google+ disgusts me. It probably will tomorrow as well. And possibly Sunday. I gave up Google+ for two months this spring
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I agree that there's no place for manipulation in photojournalism (even though there are photogs who've doctored their images long before digital computers were around, and that the pictures that legitimate photogs take are just as biased as the stories a journalist writes).
There's still a pretty big movement of toy-camera photographers who make quite stunning pictures. There're no settings to be adjusted on a toy camera, the majority of the work is done in processing in the dark room trying to get a useable image from a crappy pinhole camera. These people aren't any less of an artist than someone who spends several minutes fiddling with a light meter and a multi-thousand dollar rangefinder.
Today's "whisper snappers" are the equivalent of Lab techs who process the film but have no artistic training when it comes to photo composition.
I truly believe that composition is what separates the Pro from the amateur who uses "AutoWhats-its." It takes skill and experience to know how to compose a shot that will draw the viewer in.
If I let a program play chess for me, but I know how to play chess, does that make me a chess player?
As I stated in the blog post, is a paint-by-numbers painter a professional painter?
I firmly believe the means are just as important as the ends in regards to very many aspects of life, art being one of them.