The reality of the shot

Subjectivity. She is a cold hearted bitch that parades amongst the community of “art” often only talking when she has a crass negative answer to an unimplied question. Living in a world delusion that good will show itself brighter than critical is a nonserving viewpoint if you are a photographer, but I remain that the heart of man leans to the kind. Perhaps I am an unabashed optimist, but I will always conduct life this way even when proven wrong. Never more apparent than when public scrutiny is present, I have seen much these last few weeks, and you my readers, and my critics deserve a response.

I am a photographer. Someone that lives his life in a grateful way, constantly reassuring himself that the good fortune that has come his way has never been deserved. For it is on the shoulders of fate and God’s good graces that my success stands. I find the fact that people take interest in my work humbling and I genuinely try and reciprocate the appreciation, because myself, and every other photographer out there, are nothing without a viewer. Likewise our existence it moot without a counter-opinion, as even the brightest of lights would not be measurable without the shadows. The place of the critic spans the area of you character that you let it occupy, and the critic himself often determines his own quality.

As this weeks launch of the of the Lamborghini video has shown, dissenting opinions are easier to show with the courage that the internet’s anonymity provides. I have read and respect all of them, and quite frankly agree with many, so allow me to address the big one…

“The Lambroghini is over retouched”  –   Hell yes it is!  I haven’t even run the image that the video contains because I feel the same way, but therein lies an aspect of irony. The video that the fstoppers made (and made well in my opinion) is a lesson in where things go in commercial photography, and where they can go. It would be worthless to make a video of instruction and have the photographer end it with, “I get every shot out of camera” because no one does. The best photographer can shoot beautiful images that convey light and emotion effectively, but they will never run unretouched for an ad. What Scott and I set out to do was make a video to teach people how photography on a commercial level works. From the prep, to the retouch, we wanted to show aspects of the process that a lot of photographers prefer not teach due to some unfounded sense of insecurity that showing to much will hurt their bottom line. We knew from the beginning that I would show lighting, both easy and for retouch, and he would show how much retouching could do, why waste the time doing work and interviews to show how little we can do? The result is a shot of over perfection that separates from reality and walks right in the door of surreal.  The entire time irony sunbaths in the concept that many of those we set out to teach got angered by what we taught.

Reality back to center stage and the assumption that the perfect image exists from the camera gets lost in the year that printing began. Many an armchair photographer will argue that Bresson’s leap was blurred, but the the critique itself debases the critic. As a professional photographer I am as unique as the 4 billion other people that classify themselves as such, and my ability to sway the masses is limited to the same baron unpaved flat that gets angered by deep prose in a blog.

In closing, it’s Friday, and another week is over, so let me offer a toast to my readers, my critics, and to those people that just plain don’t like me… cheers

Shot and over retouched with my iPhone