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P3D Re: Bruce is Born to Run (on)
- From: Oliver Dean <3d-image@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Subject: P3D Re: Bruce is Born to Run (on)
- Date: Tue, 28 Sep 1999 18:41:07 -0600
Hoo, boy! Eat your heart out, Pandora, Bruce Springsteen just opened a
box whose contents make yours look like happy muppets!
Well, into the fray (somewhat late, I admit):
While I sympathize with Bruce's lament that the world seems full of
mediocrity and technology that alienates rather than empathizes, I
submit that this has always been the case; but in spite of it, the
talented ones still seem to thrive. Look at some of the old advertising
from the 1700's, 1800's, and early 1900's --- it was even more banal and
transparent than today's ads, which, through the technology of
television, are simply more numerous and, occasionally, even creative.
But at the same time Tchiakowsky still wrote exquisite symphonies, Van
Gogh painted with the furious energy of a progressively deranged mind,
and artisans of the White Star Line tried to challenge nature with a
floating palace that dared the fates to sink her.
By way of loss to increased automation, I lament the loss of cameras
with built-in match-needle exposure meters from the current marketplace
-- they gave you the options of slavishly accepting the metered reading,
ignoring the metered reading completely, or using the metered reading as
a piece of information on which to base a creative exposure, and they
did this with a simple display you could see in the viewfinder.
On the other hand, I rejoice that such cameras can be found used, either
by advertising on the internet, or by attending one of the many used
camera shows prospering monthly. I rejoice that today we amateurs can
buy a Digital8 video camera that provides creative tools we didn't even
imagine a decade ago. I rejoice in the availability of 35 mm cameras
with such sophisticated features as a flash synch that, for long
exposures at night resulting in trails for moving objects, optionally
fires the flashgun just before the shutter closes rather than just as
the shutter opens.
And I rejoice that the non artistic amateur has available to him those
despised automated or throw-away cameras so reviled in this thread.
Let's face it, folks, we are in a tiny minority. The average person
wants a hassle free, quick, inexpensive, reliable way of taking
recognizable pictures he can show to a small group of friends or
relatives. Creativity or tack sharp imaging is not important -- he just
wants Aunt Tillie's green dress to look green in the picture and her
face to be recognizable. These are reasonable, unambitious requirements
that these cameras satisfy. And, to be sure, there are numerous cases in
which a person's dormant creativity has been awakened by such cameras,
and the person finds a new part of himself by growing into the other
photographic options available to him.
I'd better split this post here -- more to follow -- including a
sonnet!
Cordially,
Oliver Dean
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