Goodbye - winding things up

[sadanand]

<p>JDM,<br>

Although I have not been contributing to the CMC forum for a while, I still follow it very much. You will be missed for sure.<br>

Good luck to you ! </p>

[Mike Gammill]

<p>I have thoroughly enjoyed your posts and photos. I will miss your contributions. </p>

[donald_miller5]

JDM

WI just read what I think is the exchange that I think Robin was referring to. It is not a matter of thinking it was uncalled

for,it was uncalled for period. you should be proud of the fact that you took the time to respond at all. If he was so smart

and found your answer condescending then he should have been able to figure it out himself. I am sure you do not have

time to waste on being petty as he described. I hope this was not the straw that broke the Carmel's back. It looked to me

like someone was posting under the Influence and just about everyone on this site saw it for what it was while this guy

dug his own grave. Your patience and help for those who ask questions that require patience are well documented on all

the threads on this site. I would hate to see everyone here loose your input and collegiality because of a few who for

some reason feel a need to target you and be rewarded for it. You just have to look at where this comes from and realize

it is of no consequence.. Bottom line, if they do not like your advice just ignore it. Don't go away mad, just go away. If it is a choice between you being angry and insulted or them it is better for them to be insulted and angry.

[JDMvW]

<p>Thanks Donald. I appreciate the thought, but that thread was not the 'straw' but the trivial 'proximate cause' I mention above.<br>

I had come close to 'quitting' a year ago, so this was not a sudden decision. Several discussions relating to the forbidden topic of moderation, so-called, were also involved, but mostly I kept on because I was having fun. After another year of the same old problems, I am not having much fun so decided to call an end to it. </p>

[donald_miller5]

Thank you for reigniting my interest and eventually I will leArn to get my facts straight as I reacquaint myself. Been an

honor over the short time I have been here and good luck.

[bruce_jones5]

<p>You are a brilliant and much-valued contributor. Best of everything. This forum is one of the jewels of the Internet.</p>

[andylynn]

<p>I feel like there should be cake. Can we get a cake in here?</p>

[John Seaman]

<p>I've got this vision of JDM and Gene M holed up in a cabin in the backwoods somewhere, soaking up Jack Daniels and bemoaning the state of the world amid occasional forays to photograph barns and water towers with Praktica's and box cameras, and foraging for chemicals to develop found films. Sorry.</p>

[Brad_]

>>> After another year of the same old problems, I am not having much fun so decided to call an end to it.

 

Why the veiled innuendo? If you have an issue, why not stand up and speak directly?

[JDMvW]

<p>It was not my intention, nor is it now, to nail up 99 theses. I'm leaving, that should be enough for you. I was only saying not to blame or praise one thread for my leaving.</p>

<p>John Seaman has it, except that I prefer single malts, although I've never refused any "good liquor 'til it carry me down".</p>

<p> </p>

[peter_simpson1]

Going to miss your contributions, JDM, which were always interesting, different, witty, or some combination thereof.

 

Be well.

[machts gut]

<p>Vielen Dank für deine vielen humorvollen und informativen Beiträge. Alles Gute für die Zukunft und immer eine handbreit Wasser unter dem Kiel.<br>

<br />Grüße aus Nordeutschland, Stefan</p>

<p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWQbuJ24Wzg</p>

[randy_cooprider1]

<p>JDM I will miss you.</p><p>Randyc</p>

[chuck_foreman1]

<p>Geez JDM.. This is a sorry state to stumble upon.. Please Don't Never say never!! I want you to still be the keel of this forum. We all take sabbaticals and your wry sense of humor and even handedness is for me legend. I don'T want this to be goodbye, but out of gentlemanly respect, I will bid adieu.. I may yet write you on similar DDR topics and know that we all need to reassess our priorities. Been at such junctions and .. never say never!! </p>

[stephen_jahrling]

<p>Take care, JDM. I've always enjoyed your posts, even the snarky ones. You've created some absolutely gorgeous images using moderately priced (dare I say cheap?) gear, which proves yet again that it is one's eye, not the equipment. You're an inspiration to me! There are, unfortunately, jackanapes everywhere, and enduring them is an unpleasant aspect of our modern age. But there are far more good people than bad. Hang in there - you can always come back after a spell!</p>

[ashleypomeroy]

My word. What a coincidence. On the day I decide to look at film scanners -> google -> photo.net thread about film scanners -> the same names -> this thread.<br>

<br>

I've dipped in and out of Photo.net over the years. There's a core of useful posts. Genuinely good technical information. But on the whole I find the site melancholic; it was founded in the early days of the consumer internet with very high hopes, but over time the eyes of the world have drifted elsewhere. It didn't keep up with dedicated product review websites, the technical nitty-gritty about late-90s film cameras isn't going to have a long tail, and even the underlying forum software feels anachronistic. The people are predominantly of a certain age range. And time is forever moving on, moving us all towards our date with the inevitable.<br>

<br>

A few names keep popping up in the forums. The same half a dozen people posting hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of messages over a period of a decade or more. Every forum on the internet has people like this; I was one of them a long time ago. I had a sudden horrible realisation that I was not as funny or perceptive as I thought I was. You either recognise your limitations and give up, or you work to improve them, or you never recognise your limitations and the world moves on without you.<br>

<br>

This thread's OP stood out. Because the name starts with JDM and it has a little "10" next to it and some rolls of film. One of the elite, the hardcore elite. I remember clicking on the OP's profile a few times, and it depressed me. It was the profile of a man who held himself in very high regard. Which would have been fine if there was substance behind it. But the photographic portfolio - presumably built up over decades, the cream of his crop - didn't stand out in any way. It had a negative effect; it made me want to disregard whatever the OP said, because on a fundamental level he was not operating in the same field. "Photography is a visual art form that magnetically attracts people who do not have a visual sense and are uninterested in art."<br>

<br>

Snapshots of tourist landmarks taken in full sun; the photographer had walked up to the subject, put it in the middle of the frame, pressed the button, job done! Next. And everything looked purple, the colours were strange in a way that didn't suggest it was a deliberate creative choice. There was no attempt at composition, no visual style. The photographs were uninteresting treatments of dull subjects. They lit no spark inside my brain, and I had no desire to look at them twice. I can barely remember any of them. You have to think about the longer term. What are you going to leave behind? On Photo.net and all the other forums - Manual Focus Lenses, Rangefinders.net - the legacy is page after page of "lens tests" and resolution charts but nothing of any lasting value. They don't work as lens tests because they're too informal and they don't work otherwise. They kept you amused; you could have built something of lasting worth.<br>

<br>

I'm younger than the typical long-term Photo.net user. I was aware, back then, that time is forever moving on, moving us all towards etc. Pushing us towards the edge of the cliff, with your generation going over the edge first, my generation following. In practice you will just fade away, stop posting, go and slowly vanish. The internet is a transient thing that has a churn, leaves no legacy. Do you ever think about Galen Rowell, with his technically brilliant but dull landscapes that wowed people in the 1990s? He's not going to last. People will not think about him in the 2030s. He was a technical photographer, and technology moves on. The next generation will see it happen to my generation, and so on forever. It happens in all fields to everybody, novelists and filmmakers and pub bores and nowadays forum posters.<br>

<br>

I'm going to quote at length from myself, which is bad form, but I'm a terrific writer and there's no point writing the same thing twice. Look at these snappy short paragraphs with aggressive clipped sentences and not the slightest hint of sentimentality, just cold hard truth.<br>

<br>

"Some photographers have a knack for producing arresting images with black and white film. Most don't, but why do they persist? The world of awful internet photography is full of people who shoot with black and white film because Henri Cartier-Bresson shot black and white, and they want to be like him, so they copy his gear.<br>

<br>

But Henri Cartier-Bresson shot black and white for solid practical reasons. Film was, for him, the paper on which his art was drawn. If you want to become Cartier-Bresson you have to copy the things that inspired him, otherwise you're only imitating a surface. You are Gary Numan to Cartier-Bresson's David Bowie. And you have to accept that the things he was inspired by might not be relevant any more. Cartier-Bresson is as much Paris and the lives and times he passed amongst as he is black and white film, and Paris isn't coming back.<br>

<br>

Much as I am suspicious of the Lomo people, there is something to be said for photography as an extension of a life lived. Put the best camera in the hands of a boring person and you get nothing; give a thinker or feeler or life-liver a cheap point-and-shoot and he or she will bring back something, from a world of dreams and life.<br>

<br>

For Cartier-Bresson photography was not the process of photographing things with black and white film, it was the act of capturing the emotional truth of a scene, or the act of generating a new sensation with an image, or perhaps he was simply paying the rent with some grab-shots of cute Parisians. Arty girly touchy-feely stuff, practical business stuff. Internet photographers never talk about that. They're not photographers at all, they're gear enthusiasts. They aren't fighters in the arena. Their faces are untouched by dust and sweat and blood.<br>

<br>

Neither is mine. There's a point when every DJ realises he is just a DJ, and that no matter who hard he can rock a party he's still playing records made by other people. Photographers are DJs whose records are the stuff of human life. Eddie Adams watched as another man's brains were blown out, he did not pull the trigger. He watched as real life happened in front of him."<br>

<br>

And inevitably this will appear with wonky formatting because Photo.net doesn't have a proper WYSIWYG editor. Let it be said that JDM von Weinberg and his mates inspired me, but not in a way he expected.

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I am so sorry to hear this. I myself have pulled back emotionally from the site. No more risking myself for some arcane point of. . . something or other.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[dave_s]

<p><a href="http://cf.chucklesnetwork.com/items/8/1/8/1/3/original/last-one-to-leave-the-room-turns-lights-off.jpg">***click***</a></p>

[JDMvW]

<p>LOL -</p>

<blockquote>

<p>It was the profile of a man who held himself in very high regard. Which would have been fine if there was substance behind it.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Thanks Pomeroy, I needed that -- I was actually starting to miss the site. ;)</p>

 

[tony_lockerbie]

<p>Funny, but I thought it was just a lighthearted site where people posted some images and the odd question....like idle chatter around the campfire.<br>

I like this forum because it is not too serious....lights out :)</p>

[b_w10]

<p>JDM von Weinberg,<br>

<br />Sorry to see you go. Will miss your posts ...</p>

[donald_miller5]

<p>I need to take lessons from William Buckley so I can think I am a great writer and think I am impressing people with my sharp tongue.</p>

[Landrum Kelly]

<p>I saw Buckley interview Arthur Schlesinger as a guest on his show once. He treated Schlesinger with the utmost respect, even though they were poles apart ideologically. It was a rare thing to see Buckley offer anything like respect to his guests.</p>

<p>Oh, we are talking about PN.</p>

<p>Same point, though. Deliberate disrespect was Buckley's stock in trade. It gave him some fervent followers--and repelled everyone else. Deliberate disrespect on the web is sort of like that, I think, and after awhile it wears very, very thin.</p>

<p>Is it my imagination, or was PN once a place where respect was the norm?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

[donald_miller5]

<p>I just joined PN because it is a place where respect is the norm. I probably should not have lowered my self to that level, It just evokes visceral responses to see someone like JDM leave while trolls have their fun. I just think the wrong people left.</p>

[ernest-b]

<p>"To have control over others is the ultimate expression of a man's being; it is the lust that drives us all. First for the visceral thrill of destroying something powerful, and secondly for the gratification of being feared and respected." -- Ashley Pomeroy, http://women-and-dreams.blogspot.com/</p>

<p>Just a bit of context for Mr. Pomeroy's post, above.</p>

<p>JDM, like almost everyone else, I've always admired and appreciated your contributions to this site. Thank you.</p>

<p> </p>