The Big, The Small, and the Pretty

Some classes of photographs we see around: Macro shots, photographs of hired models, and (occasionally, and from a particular breed of nerd) astrophotography.

Amateurs seem to be mostly awful at this sort of thing.

There is a class of amateur that works feverishly away taking macro photographs of various things. Bug's noses, the innards of flowers, salt crystals. They acquire gear, they learn technique. If they persevere and have some real taste, they might eventually stop making ugly pictures of quasi-moonscapes, and start producing attractive photographs of things that are very very small.

There is another class of nerd that owns one of more telescopes, and takes photographs through them. Again, they acquire gear and technique and, if they persevere and have some taste, they might eventually stop making ugly pictures of inky blackness with a sort of unpleasant blurry sphere in it, and start making attractive photographs of things that are very very large.

(A subclass are photographs of the moon. The moon is, let's review, tidally locked. Literally the only variation in moon photographs is the phase of the moon. There are, in real terms, about a dozen possible photographs of the moon, and they have all been shot.)

Finally, there is a very very large class of nerd that wants to hang around with pretty girls and take photographs of them. The acquire gear and technique and, if they persevere and have some taste, they might eventually stop taking awkward pictures of badly lit, over-made-up and not actually very attractive girls. and start making attractive photographs of things that are very very pretty.

So what?

Let me begin by stating that this is all basically ok with me. All of these things have their place. Well done, they're rather beautiful to look at. Photographs of models are also used to sell things, I understand. Most photographs of these sorts (as well as lots of others) are what one might term "craft" in the sense that there is a lot of technique and skill involved in doing it well, but rarely does the result communicate much of anything. Often, they're made by someone who saw a similar one and said "I want to do that".

The common thread here is that it's really hard to make anything actually good out of any of this. The macro and astro photographs have very little to say. At best, when they're really well done, they are attractive decor. Perhaps they offer slim commentary on our place in the universe. They're basically abstract art, but abstract art that rarely tries to even communicate in the way that Stieglitz did with his Equivalents, and Pollack did and Christo does with their giant whatever-the-hells. They're hampered in their abstraction by the fact that they are actual photographs of things. Does it even make sense to try to convey "existential terror", "love", or "sorrow" with a macro shot of salt?

Shooting models is potentially more productive, at least there are people involved. One could potentially say something. Most photographs made by amateurs are simply aping fashion imagery, but good work is certainly done with models. At that point it's usually it's no longer about taking pretty pictures of pretty things.

Sadly, most of these people never even get to the attractive stage. It's all chubby models badly posed, blurry pictures of Jupiter, and crummy pictures of pencil erasers. I get that you guys love doing it, it's fun. I just wish you'd keep it at home next to your gigantic train set.