From Diane Setterfield's The Thirteenth Tale

People disappear when they die. Their voices, their laughter, the warmth of their breath. Their flesh. Eventually their bones. All living mempry of them ceases. This is both dreadful and natural. Yet for some there is an exception to this annihilation. For in the books they write they continut to exist. We can rediscover them. Their humour, their tone of voice, their moods. Through the written word they can anger you or make you happy. They can comfort you. They can perplex you. They can alter you. All this, even though they are dead. Like flies in amber, like corpses frozen in ice, that which according to the laws of nature should pass away is, by the miracle of ink on paper, preserved. It is a kind of magic.

--Diane Setterfield



Sunday, April 26, 2009

What "great" is.

Hi Peach,

The Secret to doing anything great is to first determine what "Great" is. Then you determine how the doing will get you there. Are there things you loved about other's photos that you thought where "great"? For me it's a feeling captured, and sometimes the artsiness or creativity in the angle which forces a viewer to think from a different perspective. So only photos which do that for ME are great to me. Art is tough like that. What is great to you? Do you like the brighter colors or the sharper contrast? then you can become a great photo editor. maybe not witty or intelligent, maybe a bit ethereal, but hopefully enough commonsensical that it helps.

-James P. Pirate

What is great... I've been thinking about that a lot lately. I can tell you WHO is great, but I'm not sure I know WHY. Pardon the rambling as I try to figure it out.
Let's see I like when photos are not blurry... no when the subject of the photo is not blurry. When there are several layers to the picture. When it tells a story. sometimes.
I like unique lighting and seeing sunbeams. I like bold colors. I like sets of pictures when you can't tell what the subject is in the first picture but it comes into focus or into perspective by the end of the set.
Great photographers can choose what comes out blurry and what is in focus. They can umm... I'll have to think about it more.

They KNOW what they are doing when they take a picture, how to get the desired result without closing their eyes and hoping for a good picture to turn out.
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