I've a terrible secret, train wreck posts on photographer forums inspire this blog. An image was uploaded, two girls looking awkward in sporting costumes, shot with a studio backdrop. The photographer submitted it to a club competition, but it was marked down for having poor eye contact, He wants our opinions.
For whatever reason I’m strangely intrigued by the image, who are they? Are they friends? Have they just completed some sporting event? Why are they in a photography studio? I picture some awkward encounter as they face the photographer. I’m comparing the awkwardness between them. On a website with some quite powerful imagery, I’m wondering why I’ve become more interested in a possibly less remarkable one.
“Yes, something iffy with the eye contact, judges be judging, it’s a job they got to do, I’d mark it down also. Nothing more to see here, all move along please” obviously was the unanimous response. I can’t help but think, are they all simpletons? Im now contemplating their bloody right, the image could be “better” if they where a bit smiley or confident.
At my university, a sub-subject nobody wanted to study but was forced by the government’s decision to make design polytechnics universities, was the marketing module. Our lecturer outlined how to achieve a top mark for our 7-week coursework project. “And after that I’ll take all your shit home and spend 5 mins flipping through it and give it a grade” I strangely admired that man.
Which leads me onto the camera club judge. With some anticipation of what he is about to pick out of the pile next, he stumbles upon the image of two awkward girls in sporting costumes. He could go down some intellectual route of capturing adolescent awkwardness and ponder “what really is a portrait and why do we feel there’s conventions to them.” He could talk to the photographer about maybe visiting other cultures and comparing how they face the camera, invest in a 10x8 to solidify the encounter. The art council of England could be interested in this.
None of this is realistic. He’s just some bloke knowing there is no hope of a Moma exhibition coming from said image. Trying to suggest something to make the image a little better to the average viewer, and all viewers given the fact the image, whilst curious is not contemporary art or had any pretentious of being such.
Maybe pragmatism kills art, but pragmatism makes better images. I hope this post is useful as so far I’m getting no clarity from it!
With the upcoming culture wars, if any of my thoughts resonate, you're now a part of a Hate group. Welcome to a Hate group. Anybody with opinions on photography, especially on what could make a great peice of artwork or what might not, needs to be fucking SHUT DOWN! This attidude seems to be mutual from both the Artists and the Pragmatists of the modern online era. My whole blog is probably pure consentrated evil.
The red pill and blue pill are metaphorical terms representing a choice between learning an unsettling or life-changing truth by taking the "red pill" or remaining in the contented experience of ordinary reality with the "blue pill". In Freudian psychology, the corresponding principles are the reality principle and the pleasure principle.[1] The pills were used as props in the 1999 film The Matrix.
Red pill regained notoriety from various pro-masculine groups who hypothesised that monogamous relationships where actually a religious construct, now failing, and you do not want to know the rest about primal female mate bonding. Then morphing into male supremacy and conspiracy groups, being controlled by the government. Red pill is an interesting one.
New age camera nerds now need to cash in on their own pill. T Max pill? Velvia pill? Kodak Gold Pill? All terrible suggestions and sound like Viagra. I want to be a part of the world’s most ridiculously geeky, innocent hate group. We need to make more people refuse the Blue pill. They can carry on with their lives capturing what’s expected, beautiful women in hats, strong eye contact, mild orgasm expressions. Or they can go Red Pill, “hang on a minute, where all taking the same bloody images here? why am I even taking a picture of a girl unrealistically lounging about on a riverside park bench, after-dinner dress, looking longingly at a Duck?
Photography has become so mindlessly obsessed with its technicalities and impact that nobody even thinks of what they’re capturing and why. Being a red pill in photography could be when you reach a mental state where the veneer of social conditioning towards our understanding of viewing photographs collapses in your mind and you start to wonder why anybody took the image in the first place. It could mean thinking about why I’m taking the f’in image, for what end? Thinking about the meaning of the subject. The answer to those thoughts is the thing that will make the next image worthwhile. It's when you realise there are no rules to break, no conventions to follow.
Such Red pill thinking does come with issues. It could be a Red pill suppository that leads me to think my illusional photographic thinking is so superior it’s now gone up its own arse. It’s been a bit of a mixed deposit. I’ve started getting to grips with what makes a typical photoshoot aesthetic, fighting against it made some nice honest portraits. Irritatingly if I was a pragmatic camera club judge, I’d maybe even suggest to myself “you know if she had a slightly sexy expression, this would be cooler".
Red pill photographer thinking could be a trap that becomes a circular intellectual argument about “what is a good photograph” showed by Taylor Wessing portrait clones or just out of focus portraits questioning the importance of focus.
Perhaps my Red pill awakening is akin to a failed military Psyops experiment, aka The Men Who Stare at Goats movie. A super thought power that is completely useless. Believing in it getting you killed in the ruthless battlefields of the photography club competitions. Finishing this diary entry a little early, concerned it’s a load of tosh, I need to think of a better pill name and write the manifesto. I’ve a shoot planned next month; I’m panicking, I feel like my Camera Club judge alter ego needs to help me out with some wisdom.
Focus is important
Exposure is important
Composition is important
Lighting is important
Female beauty is important to me at the mo, make her gorgeous.
Have a fucking concept
Quit overthinking
Enjoy the shoot you twat.
In a nutshell, after the disastrous mind dump, overthinking is bad. Make beautiful images.
