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Thread: Why Are We Here ?

  1. #31
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    Re: Why Are We Here ?

    With a little more perspective, I'd like to go back to the original post (especially given my prior involvement which was consumed by addressing what is no longer a problem):

    People who are undertaking a new pursuit are full of enthusiasm for learning the mechanics, technique, tools, and (hopefully) history of that pursuit. There is no zealot like the newly converted. This is what sells magazines like Pop Photo.

    But once a person climbs the steep part of the learning curve, their interest in technique becomes more subtle, and their application of technique to expression more interesting. At that point, they become bored with the stuff that kept them up at night just a year earlier, and are much more interested in stuff they couldn't have understood a year earlier.

    So, how does any information medium serve beginners and non-beginners? Pop Photo addresses this by ignoring non-beginners. After all, there seems a never-ending supply of unthusiastic beginners to whom they will be able to sell magazines. But to stay popular (and it is called Popular Photography), they have to focus on the tools and techniques that are all the rage at the time.

    Large-format photography is not the fad of the moment, despite that some younger folks who are new to film are attracted by it. Most of the people who do and know large-format photography learned it when it was standard professional and artistic practice. For this forum to be useful to them, there has to be opportunities for two things to occur: They need a way to express their experience, which means explaining things. That is part of how they validate their involvement in the forum. The problem is that not all those with experience really know what they think they know, so their attempts at teaching get challenged by others, who also may or may not know what they think they know. Quickly, an attempt to express something to a beginner, as a need to be expressive, becomes an argument among old hands that will not be useful to the beginner. These arguments may seem petty, but they are actually the manner in which facts get separated from opinions, and consensus forms on what is dependable information. On a forum, we don't get to "approach the bench" to engage in a legal argument relevant to the case at hand but not to the jury's understanding of it. It's all right out there. So, beginners have to give the crusty old farts some room to have their arguments, hoping that in the end someone will summarize it for them. They need to understand that sooner than they think, they will be the crusty old farts.

    When I search in other forums looking for information as a beginner, I get frustrated by all the back-and-forth that is not answering my question! But that is really rather selfish of me--the forum does not exist to answer my question. It exists for sharing, and part of what I have to be willing to share is my patience for conversations about topics unrelated to my immediate problem. If I persist in that pursuit, there will come a time when I'll read those exchanges with great interest. If I let that sort of thing scare me off, then maybe my commitment to the pursuit was rather weak. I find that when I get most frustrated is when I'm talking to regular practitioners about somethinig I only want to do once. If I'm trying to troubleshoot the control circuitry for my clothes dryer, and a couple of appliance repair guys start chit-chatting about the quality of the Chinese components on that board, I get annoyed. But for them, that's their community and they do not exist to make me happy. I'm compelled to remember that, since I know I'm just there to answer a specific few questions (for free) and then I'll leave them in the hopes my dryer never again needs repair. Should they tailor their forum for people like me? If they did, there would be no experts left in that forum to answer those questions, and I'd be getting bad answers from other people only a little further along than I am. That has happened a lot in online communities.

    The answer is to allow people to just express themselves, as long as they remain civil, and let the chips fall where they may. I don't think we need to worry about the beginners, really. If the medium grabs them, the crustiness of our old farts is not going to scare them off. If the medium doesn't grab them, I'm not sure us optimizing what we say for their benefit will cause them to be grabbed.

    I play in a community band. That band does not have auditions, and allows anyone who walks in with an instrument to play, even beginners. Nobody is excluded. But--and here's the point--we do not program music for beginners. We only program music at the advanced amateur/college and professional level. That music is too demanding for beginners much of the time. One of two things happens as a result: 1.) the beginner feels sorry for himself or herself, wraps themselves up in self-righteous self-pity, and leaves. Or, 2.) the beginner persists, plays what they can, commits to doing no harm, practices diligently, and by next year is no longer a beginner. Musical technique is a lot harder than photographic technique, at least to get beyond the beginner level.

    As far as statements that we'd be better off if we were empathetic, etc., to new people, then, well sure. That could be applied to the whole of human endeavor. But we are not going to be super-human here. The best way to undermine the tendency of a few to be mean to beginners is to be kind to beginners. Civility is a requirement of this forum, to the extent that it can be codified and enforced (which is a pretty small extent), and it is also a requirement of being human.

    And the best way for non-beginners to keep it interesting for themselves is to help explain things to beginners. But we should explain only what we personally know, not just what we heard from others (unless we are summarizing it as such).

    This forum will always have discussions about the finer points of technique and photographic technology. That's what feeds a significant component of the community, and it's what keeps us from being a Pop Photo that is optimized for beginners and doesn't really care about non-beginners.

    Rick "at the risk of reviving this thread" Denney

  2. #32

    Join Date
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    Re: Why Are We Here ?

    Quote Originally Posted by Sal Santamaura View Post
    I am, therefore I think.
    I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.
    One man's Mede is another man's Persian.

  3. #33

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    Re: Why Are We Here ?

    Once or twice I didn't think to close the shutter after focusing. Does that mean I wasn't?
    "I would feel more optimistic about a bright future for man if he spent less time proving that he can outwit Nature and more time tasting her sweetness and respecting her seniority"---EB White

  4. #34

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    Re: Why Are We Here ?

    We don't know. Some freak universe event I suppose.
    "...with the grandeur of true simplicity", Patrick White, "The Tree of Man".

  5. #35
    Preston Birdwell
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    Re: Why Are We Here ?

    Dark Matter?

    After all, we do talk a lot about Darkrooms, Darkslides, and Darkcloths around here.

    --P
    Preston-Columbia CA

    "If you want nice fresh oats, you have to pay a fair price. If you can be satisfied with oats that have already been through the horse; that comes a little cheaper."

  6. #36
    Land-Scapegrace Heroique's Avatar
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    Re: Why Are We Here ?

    It’s raining.

  7. #37
    ROL's Avatar
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    Re: Why Are We Here ?

    Quote Originally Posted by romavia View Post
    I am here because i guess joining this community is a great entertainment with a lot of learning as we can see there are many fellows who always try to help us with their practical experiments. I have seen few senior members of this forum who suggest in a good manner also try to help everyone in every matter.
    Well, taking what I may be incorrectly assuming (my specialty ) to be your slightly broken English sentiments literally, that pretty much sizes it up for me.

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