"Please stop me before I snap again."

<blockquote>

<p>I still find a discussion about adopting a compulsive bent as a way to randomly react to one's surroundings as an interesting motivation in developing a collection of photos that may or may not have the potential of saying something new and interesting.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Speaking for myself, Tim, I don't know that this was so much a "compulsive bent" that I "adopted" as a compulsive tendency which I allowed to "flow" (so to speak) without any attempt at self-restraint. I admire those who "censor" (or at least discipline) themselves as they shoot. I'm sure they get better photos than I do.</p>

<p>Tim, that is an interesting perspective that you have gotten using LR. Sometimes I just open my entire portfolio here on PN and ask myself (not in so many words), "I wonder what anyone else would think if they just ran their eyes over the entire pattern of forms and colors."</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p><a href="/photo/18272602"><strong>HERE</strong></a> is an interesting one, Tim. Perhaps you can tell us what you were going for on this one.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

I am not. But at most it would count as a personal foible. And who is to judge if not oneself. Not me.

<p>Lannie, the picture you posted at the beginning has bright red and white striped patterns. I think we are all attracted to patterns, diagonal and converging lines, strong graphics of any kind, bright colors, faces, animals, sunsets, ocean waves, the list goes on and on. In some ways we are very primitive in that our visual systems are hard wired to be stimulated by certain things. That's why we snap pictures. Its up to the individual to edit them, however, to try to weed out the really banal, boring, cliched stuff. That is a more subtle task and volumes have been written on what is worth looking at and what is not. We each have to just do what we like and hope maybe other people will resonate with it.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>We each have to just do what we like and hope maybe other people will resonate with it.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>That's the bottom line, isn't it, Steve? Knowing that it is inherently boring, and that no amount of manipulation could have saved it, I probably should have discarded it when I first saw it on the screen.</p>

<p>Why did I shoot it? I think you answered that. Why did I keep it? Well, that's another issue entirely. Winnowing out our weaker shots is surely an essential function that we all have to do lest we waste our own time along with that of others.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

<p><a href="/photo/18272602" rel="nofollow"><strong>HERE</strong></a> is an interesting one, Tim. Perhaps you can tell us what you were going for on this one.<br /> --Lannie</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I was going for an abstract of a balanced composition of random soft shapes and harmonious colors created by the bokeh of a long lens I hoped would convey a dreamlike vision with the shrub branch in sharp focus to add contrast and bring it down to Earth as a real photograph and not a painting. I found the scene sitting in my living room pointing my 300mm lens out my window about 12 ft away.</p>

<p>It is not a compulsive snap. I knew that I would get something that appealed to me. I have a background in design, graphics and illustration and have been an artist since I was six years old that guided my choice on my tripping the shutter and keeping the image. So I have an eye that I developed over years as a professional visual communicator to help me be deliberate in my selections on what's a keeper and what's not.</p>

<p>And I didn't use Lightroom to show that screengrab of random thumbnails created by my responding to No Words topics. I used Mac OS folder view of No Words folder jpegs set to thumbnail view which I just discovered as a handy way of visually creating random image grouping collections.</p>

<p>Since I edit one image at a time of a small collection of shots in one folder of one event during a specific time and place in CS5 Bridge, I don't get to see how they relate to the rest of my other images in different folders taken at different times and places. This way of randomly viewing them together makes them look different. They seem to compliment each other while other groupings don't.</p>

<p>Lannie, just for the heck of it claim that you've shot that with M3 and the price would certainly go to 10K, eh ?</p>

<p>Les</p>

<p>... hmmm ... really old dude with a long photographic obsession/interest in roads of all kinds in all weather (see his portfolio) starts a thread about "stopping," of being stopped; thread is headed with a photo of a blocked, danger/no-entrance icon off a very dark road. What's going to make you stop? What stops all of us?</p>

<p>[it's Sunday, Lannie. Put your head out the door and you'll hear the faint sound of Baptist congregations. They too are afraid. If this sounds preachy, be warned, I have poems just waiting to be quoted from.]</p>

<p>I'm afraid of the Baptists. Married one. Holy crap.</p>

<p>Quote to me, Julie. Quote to me.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>What shall we give Lannie? Nice, serious Wallace Stevens? No, better start with Philip Larkin:</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><strong>The Life with a Hole in it</strong><br>

[first verse of three]</p>

<p>When I throw back my head and howl<br>

People (women mostly) say<br>

<em>But you've always done what you want,</em><br>

<em>You always get your own way</em><br>

— A perfectly vile and foul<br>

Inversion of all that's been.<br>

What the old ratbags mean<br>

Is I've never done what I don't.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Howl for me, Julie. Howl for me.</p>

<p>I'll meet you on the Appalachian Trail at 3 p.m. sharp, near the I-64 cut at the Rockfish Gap Entrance, milepost 105.4. If you don't see me, howl. I'll be in a <a href="/photo/17536478"><em>'95 Stealth Honda. </em> Hell on wheels.</a></p>

<p>I don't understand the poem.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Lannie, just for the heck of it claim that you've shot that with M3 and the price would certainly go to 10K, eh ?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Leszek, the only thing I've got in a Leica is a Telyt 560, but no body. With an adapter, it will fit on my truly beloved old Canon T2i (the only thing left from my Canon EOS collection). Howzat? It surely will have that Leica glow, and so I can back off on Levels in PS.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

<p>So I have an eye that I developed over years as a professional visual communicator to help me be deliberate in my selections on what's a keeper and what's not.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, Tim, it's<a href="/photo/18272602"><strong><em> a keeper</em></strong></a> alright. That's for sure.</p>

<p>Tell me, though. What is "window bokeh" and where can I buy some? Sounds sort of like Glade air freshener.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>This way of randomly viewing them together makes them look different. They seem to compliment each other while other groupings don't.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I see what you're getting at. Looking at my thumbs in my portfolio is not random enough. They've already been grouped in categories.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Lannie, the framing of your OP puzzles me a bit. Not only do you ask whether I have a compulsion to shoot photographs, but you also ask whether it's "... even a sickness." Although I do confess to displaying some odd, perhaps neurotic, behavior from time to time, shooting photographs is not something that is uncontrollable or something that I choose not to do but do it anyway. I do choose it, period. The reasons behind this choice vary, in all likelihood, from one instance to the next.</p>

<p>Nor do I wonder why I shot a particular photograph when, after the fact, I realize that it may be utter crap. I do shoot lots and lots of photographs, some of which I immediately (and wisely) discard after initially uploading them. Many images I've posted on PN have been slammed, and correctly so. But this does not lead to questioning my motives for shooting them. I'm primarily interested in the learning I can derive from the process.</p>

<p>Finally, I also confess to shooting subjects that, I suspect, most photographers would pass by. Please see the following examples.</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/18240211<br>

http://www.photo.net/photo/18195758</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Not only do you ask whether I have a compulsion to shoot photographs, but you also ask whether it's "... even a sickness."</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Well, Michael, that was mostly tongue in cheek, but I have seen persons so compulsive in other ways that, yes, I would have to call them "sick." I don't see any <em>a priori</em> reason why that could not happen with photography as well.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>Lannie, in all honesty, I get your point. I was just trying to show that, at least in my opinion, it didn't really apply to me.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>I was just trying to show that, at least in my opinion, it didn't really apply to me.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I imagine that it would be pretty rare for compulsiveness to become a debilitating condition among photographers, or a condition that interfered with normal functioning. I certainly did not think of anybody's work in particular as exemplifying compulsiveness--not even mine, in fact.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"Do it like you mean it and don't apologize for it."</em></p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>A quote from my German memaw, may she rest in peace.</p>

I don't see anything wrong with your shot. I don't like it much and it's presumably underexposed, but I don't think you need

to torment yourself. The investment in time was slight, I assume. We all waste time most of the time, so it's no worse

waste of time than, say, playing a video game.

<p>Robin, I didn't say that I found lots of deficiencies in these examples. </p>

<p>Lannie - Fair enough . . .</p>

<blockquote>

<p>We all waste time most of the time, so it's no worse waste of time than, say, playing a video game.</p>

 

</blockquote>

<p>Robin, I would say that that locates its place in aesthetic space pretty darned well. There are moments when I think I see something in the photo, but most of the time I just see the garishness--and I hate garishness. Knocking out the color might get rid of the garishness, but then it would really be empty.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>If I like the idea behind a photo but have any kind of feeling that it didn't work then, I usually just delete it. Otherwise one fusses over it and yet it still remains unsatisfactory in the end.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Otherwise one fusses over it and yet it still remains unsatisfactory in the end.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, that is the essence of a failed shot--poorly shot, poorly processed, or else nothing that processing can save. I should know better by now.</p>

<p>This one was cropped from a shot made to document an area that I knew would change as urbanization spreads this way--and that is all that it (or at least the original) will ever be.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

hi Lannie wouldnt it be a shame if the one great shot we took was poo pooed by everyone and it turned out to be a masterpiece? they say we change who we are every 2

yrs so if we look at photos we have taken from 2 yrs gone by or so i guess some of them may have become greater and some of them ... what the hell was i thinking

photos?