After plowing through several days of verbosity, pomposity, bleating, and chest- beating about the undefinable thing we're calling photographic Art, I'm struck b y the fact that this may be more ritualistic hunting dance than enlightenment. I have no idea what the membership of this list is, but a question I have been as king all my life is -"where are the girls?" If you're out there, stand up and be counted! Come join the fray!
I am one "photographerette" (?) who is alive and well. I actively shoot small, medium, and large format both commercially and for personal enjoyment. I am currently a student photography major in a top program nationwide. Over half of the students in the program are female, and are very competitive in every field of commercial photography. We're out here, and standing proud!
A goodly number of the "girls" are in my photography class, waiting to kick our male butts in the near future. I have mostly young women in my photography classes who are very interested in both the scientific and the art part of photography and who are doing great work as students. Sure blew all my preconceived notions. I had always thought of photographers trekking through the hills or through the mud with a load of cameras as being a male thing until I started teaching. For example, last November I took a group over to a creek in Georgia where there are a series of small waterfalls that photograph well. It was a volunteer trip, and one male student went along with several of the young women photographers. Guess who ended up wading in a very cold creek in order to get the shots they wanted? The women did. They also got the best shots. I have been most pleased at the way they have jumped into any assignment I have given them and in most instances gone past what I asked them to do. So, where are the "photographerettes" and "girls"? They are out there and doing just fine.
Another one here. I shoot 35mm, 4x5, and have an 8x10 on the way from Dan Smith (heaven help me). I've been shooting 4x5 for a year and am on the board daily trying to learn as much as I can. I look forward to the day when I finally feel like I have enough of a clue to start contributing.
I've also made my New Year's Resolution to spend less time reading and more time doing -- I think I'm finally past the "really stupid mistake" point and on to where just working on composition and exposing film is going to help the most.
Greetings Jennifer and Welcome to you too! If you're beyond the "really stupid mistakes" stage you're way, way ahead of me. After ruining film for a little over 4 decades, I unflinchingly continue to prove that sometimes, I'm still dumb as a post. (Like a whole bunch of shots last summer, after hiking back beyond, uphill, in 95deg wx, taken after changing backs on my Bronny, never looking at the ISO. Heck, I don't have to do that on any of my current 35s! I was dehydrated and delirious, yeah, that's it.)
Hey Paul, that is not a big mistake let me tell you about mine. I went to take some photos with a friend, and we both had our LF cameras, in one shot I was unable to get an image on the ground glass, no matter how I fiddled with the lens, or the focus I still could not get an image.....after about 5 minutes of this I went to y friend and said.."Paul, what the heck I cannot get an image on the ground glass?" he comes over, looks at the camera and said:" If you remove the film holder from the back is a lot easier to see!!"...lol..
So Jennifer, you are way ahead of a lot of us.........:-))
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