Way off the reservation

Preface: I’m not entirely sure what prompted me to write this diatribe at this particular time. It is just one aspect of a growing dissatisfaction which I have with all this photography culture stuff. And irritation with pretty much everything that crosses my lawn.

A while ago, quite a while in fact, I made a conscious decision to choose photography as a hobby. Apart from the photography in itself, it seemed like a good excuse to get out of the house, and a way to meet interesting people and make new friends. And as the internet exploded it seemed to promise even more. All those websites, fora, photo sharing - a cornucopia of engagement with like-minded people.

Maybe it’s all my own fault, but it didn’t really work out that way. Over time I discovered that the photographic community, by and large, has the highest aggregation of snake oil sales(wo)men, frauds and egomaniacs in the known universe. In fact I’ve realised that I found very few like-minded people, and hardly community at all. Instead it was just a frantic souk milling with people shouting LOOK AT ME! ME! MEEEE!

Pretty much photographic blogging boils down to self-marketing and selling.  Most photography tweeters are plugging their own or their sponsors’ products. The number of people publishing quality material just for the love of it, be it photography itself or writing about photography is near zero. And as far as I can tell, in the increasingly vomit-inducing world of “landscape photography”, if you remove Guy Tal, it is exactly zero. And to be honest, you can probably have too much Guy Tal.

In less constrained themes there are a few beacons of hope. Andrew Molitor’s writings are largely way over my IQ threshold (no, not that IQ, the other one), but he writes very engagingly, and even when I haven’t got the faintest notion what he’s going on about, I enjoy reading him. The chap behind the Leicaphilia site is good too, and I enjoy reading his stuff even if I have very little interest in Leicas as such. And that’s about it - the other engaging writers gave up about 10 years ago. All the other sites in my bookmarks are full of regurgitated nonsense promising to make me such a better photographer if only I’d buy their workshop / course / ebook / presets, or buy that shiny new camera from the company that’s bankrolling their trip to Outer Wazookstan.

Sadly it’s pretty much the same thing at a personal level. I’m running the risk of upsetting a few people here, but frankly I don’t give a damn. Look at yourselves, people. Especially those of you who are my best friends forever when you want something, or when I buy your stuff, and then don’t write or call until that time you’ve got something else to sell. Fine, you’re in business to sell stuff, but just stop with being so fake about it. Only in the Photography World have I encountered this level of mendaciousness, and I’m getting so sick of it that it is getting close to putting me off photography altogether. The only solution I can see is to pull down the shutters and work in complete isolation, which is totally contrary to my initial motivations. I’ve always tended to believe in mutual assistance, but I’ve lost count of the number of photo buddies I’ve promoted, publicised, helped in other ways, only to see them pull the ladder up as soon as I was of no further use in the Quest to be a Master Nature Photographer. Sure, it could just be me - but really, it seems to be only photography as a pursuit that does this to people.

Why does photography drive such behaviour? Why do we accept that anybody with a camera and some ability in self-marketing can call themselves as “educator”? Is just because is it so easy? Does anybody have any theories?

Of course, there are a few exceptions, and I’m going to assume (if you’re reading this) that you know who you are, because if I included you in the above group, I wouldn’t be buying your stuff…

I’ll go and shout at some clouds now.