It's just a black and white hose. I can go out in my back yard and see a hose, what's so special about a picture of it?
Okay starfish, you want me to defend every single loving one of my pictures? Because I'll do it. I'll loving do it. Since you talked stuff about that one photo though, I'll talk about that one.
Every single loving thing in that picture was done for a reason. I took the picture in the first place because I thought the way that the hose was coiled had interesting symmetry and the shadow it cast on the wall was cool. I liked the framing inside the three prongs of the hose holder. That is what attracted me to take that picture. The framing was done with the two horizontal posts roughly on the upper third and the middle post more or less on the middle line. It wasn't exactly on the middle line because it was on the corner of a building and I didn't want any background to clutter up the image. I'm not fond of that shadow on the left but I couldn't cut that out without cutting out part of the left support. If there was something else on the right, it would've rooted your eye in the photo better, as it stands I'm having a tendency to wander out of the right side of the frame, because that's the way the shadow is cast and there's nothing to root you in the picture. Finally, I made it black and white because color added nothing to the photo. I got everything I wanted out of it with shape and texture, there were no interesting colors, and I wanted to accentuate those two aforesaid qualities so I made it black and white. I did NOT make it black and white because I thought "hurr durr this will make it artsy."
So to say it's "just a picture of a hose" is loving insulting to me, and it shows a genuine disregard for the intentionality I put into that picture.
In fact, do you want to see "just a picture of a hose"? I don't care what you want. The least you could do to not be an ignorant, stuff spewing swine is to learn from your mistakes so you don't go talking stuff about things you don't understand.
This is "just a picture of a hose".
iPhone camera. I walked outside, as soon as I saw the hose in my backyard I stopped and took a picture of it where I stood. It's boring. It shows no thought. It is, as you said, "just a picture of a hose".
Now, this is a goddamn intentional picture of a hose.
I'm not saying it's a good photo, of course, it's a photo I took at 10:30 at night with an iPhone. But it shows the intentionality that the first one lacks. I found what I liked about it (it was covered in leaves and tangled) and tried to make that apparent, meanwhile making an attractive composition. The end of the hose leads you into the photo, but the board at the top of the photo keeps you rooted in the frame so your eye doesn't wander off. I could've done it better, but I took about 30 seconds to do that and that's what I came up with. It's a loving skill you acquire when you KNOW WHAT MAKES A GOOD PHOTO. You will notice that it's still a picture of a hose but it's not just a picture
of a hose. If you really want a grammatical distinction, it has gone from being a "picture of a hose" to a "photograph featuring a hose." If that sounds lame to you, I'm sorry, but I'm really loving trying to hit you over your thick head with the difference.
I don't care if you don't like my photos. I personally like my photos, and I love taking them, but I've spent far too much time learning about photography and honing my skills as a photographer to get berated by people like you who think that they somehow have the right to criticize something that they know nothing about. It takes immense amount of skill to be a good painter, and even if a composition is boring, people will marvel at a painting if the technical detail displayed is exquisite. However, just because a photographer can create, in essence, a perfect "painting" every time they open their shutter, doesn't mean that it's easy, or that taking pictures of mundane objects isn't photography, or that anyone can do it. Furthermore, it doesn't give people like you the right talk stuff about me when you don't understand what goes into making a photograph good.
So if you're going to criticize my photography, do it because you know why you don't like it, because "it's just a black and white hose" is not a valid criticism. If you don't understand why, read this post again.
