Notes on life, art, photography and technology, by a Danish dropout bohemian.
When you drink the water, remember the river.
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Monday, January 06, 2014
A comment from the side lines
Under the Resolutions post, "Anonymous" commented:
Are you still pretending to be interested in photography? Face it, you're a poseur. You like buying cameras, but you don't care about photography or photographers.
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Bloggers produce the blogs that they want, and then we can decide if we want to read them If Anonymous doesn't like it he can do something else. Maybe write his own, or maybe something involving use of porn. Either way his karma will be better than wandering around the internet criticising the efforts of others.
Don't the "brave" anonymous detractors amuse you? They are just so empty, producing nothing of their own, that they get their only sense of value from attacking those who actually DO something. As long as you are being attacked anonymously you are probably on the right track.
After I am done writing to you, I will have to prove that I am not a robot. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. The NSA already knows all about you. (Blogging is fun. I just did it too).
Bloggers produce the blogs that they want, and then we can decide if we want to read them If Anonymous doesn't like it he can do something else. Maybe write his own, or maybe something involving use of porn. Either way his karma will be better than wandering around the internet criticising the efforts of others.
I'm not sure why you would automatically assume it would be porn-related. That kind of comment seems just as bad as those Anonymous has made. Countering ignorance or stupidity with more ignorance or stupidity is just...stupid. And ignorant.
Don't the "brave" anonymous detractors amuse you? They are just so empty, producing nothing of their own, that they get their only sense of value from attacking those who actually DO something.
I find this kind of comment amusing - just as amusing, to be honest, as any comment of Anonymous. Why? Because it's just a version of "haters gonna hate." It's something I've seen all over the internet - that any negative comment, no matter whether it's real hate or actual constructive criticism (I'm not saying Anonymous was making the latter kind) often is dismissed, that the person is just a "hater," i.e. a troll. Often that's not the case. Also, it's impossible to tell because they're anonymous but you don't know whether they produce anything or not. It would I bet be inaccurate to say the only people who troll on the internet are the type you've described.
As long as you are being attacked anonymously you are probably on the right track.
That isn't a logical assumption.
You have to be interested in photography.Its either that or naked women.
To be fair most of the photos of naked women are the work of other photographers. I don't know that Anonymous' criticism is entirely wrong, he/she has just put it in as deliberately insulting way as possible, obviously hoping for a reaction. However, Eolake has given health problems as the reason he doesn't get out there more often taking pictures.
Jim, the bit about porn was a joke, as Anonymous deserves to be made fun of. Too many serious people in this world, or maybe people who take themselves too seriously.
Wow. I couldn't disagree with this guy's comment more.
I've seen your photography that you've posted outside of Domai, and very little of it is nudes, and you seem to be interested in some of the techniques involved, and have talked a little of the history of photography, and have blogged about other photographers, etc etc. You do seem to be enamored with some of the latest and greatest gadgets, but not just cameras. I recall something about an internet toilet. And you are a guy, so of course you are going to be into naked women and the latest greatest and coolest gadgets. But I've found you photography to be inspirational at times. I recall a study in red that changed a direction I was shooting a year or two ago.
I simply cannot imagine what prompted Anon. to post that unless he/she/it was just trolling from blog to blog trying to flame on each one a little bit just for gags.
The idea that you are bothered by it reminds me of some of my friends that are politicians who are tremendously popular, but will whine to me that they have one or two or three constituents that send them nastygrams in the mail or email or write flaming letters to the editor or blog entries, and they are tremendously upset by them. Don't let this get to you. I am almost as offended by this guy's comment as you might be.
I have a feeling Kelly Trimble is an Eolake Stobblehouse alias. No one would say Eolake's bland, unimaginative photography changed the way they take pictures...unless they sucked even more than he does. It would be like a writer of fantasy fiction saying that Terry Brooks had inspired them. "Unimaginative," and "derivative," are the two words most critics would probably use to describe Eolake's work.
I don't disagree that he's genuinely interested in new technology, but he likes the technology side of it more than photography itself, for which he has no eye. I'd have to see your photos, too, "Kelly," but I bet they're pretty dull, staid, and lifeless too.
Jim, the bit about porn was a joke, as Anonymous deserves to be made fun of. Too many serious people in this world, or maybe people who take themselves too seriously.
If you need to tell people something's a joke, it wasn't a very good joke. As for deserving to be made fun of, well, that says a lot about you. How many people say things like that, being unable to formulate an argument? They will say some people are unworthy of the effort, being to some only trolls. Pretty lame, Ken.
Anonymous, I can't guarantee that anyone will understand anything. Some people are just too stupid. Anyway in amongst the joke was the point that Anonymous should find something that he enjoys, rather than following a blog that he obviously doesn't. Which possibly means he should do something involving porn. Or look at what I assume is his/her selection of self-created high quality photography.
Kelly, You have a good point. I read a long interview with Charles Schulz. He talked about a janitor long ago who had said he didn't get the strip. So there Schulz had one of the most beloved strips in the world, selling in the hundreds of millions, literally, and one janitor who "didn't get it" bothers him? That is a pity. Me, obviously I have a little bit left of it, otherwise I'd not even have posted this. But I'm taking each one as a learning experience, and I've made a lot of progress. Most of the time I think it's funny, these days.
I haven't been in a really really good flame war with anybody on a personal level since Bill got impeached for letting Monica suck his balls (except when I got unfriended a couple of months ago by an old liberal living on government checks while sitting around waiting to die after he begged me to give him my side of the issue in response to his lame tirades about the need for gun control, but that's another story).
I am not an alias, seudonym, doppelganger, or even a cognate for Eolake Stobblehouse (although I think 'Eolake Stobblehouse' is supposed to be an alias of some sort), although I am actually mildly complemented by the accusation.
There are significant differences between myself and Eolake. Eolake spends his days dealing with art, writing about cameras, photography, cutting edge technology, and modern culture and playing with pictures of naked women in London. I spend my days researching and writing about boring real estate that people I don't really care about are having boring problems with in a place that is as far from the cultural centers of Europe as you could hope to imagine. I can only wish I was Eolake Stobblehouse.
But I'm not. I have worn out shutters on Nikon digital cameras taking pictures, but most of what I shoot is real estate, aerial photos, mostly lifeless dull stuff, and so naturally 99 % of my photos would probably be pretty dull and lifeless, but that is what my clients are needing. If I do a really artful job of, say, a toxic waste dump or a meth house that is being foreclosed or a proposed sewer line right of way through somebody's back yard or a tombstone dump at the rock quarry or of a roof leak in an underground warehouse, I can't do anything with them, I can't even post them anywhere. So sure, most of my photos are dull, staid, and lifeless, I would even say sterile unadventurous, often colorless (try color in a rock quarry or underground storage), or even repetitive and pedantic (such as having to take the same fifteen photos of every room in a 200 room motel foreclosure); I'm pretty sure that my photography sucks, but so what! How do we know whether your photography doesn't suck as well. We don't have any actual evidence, or even any admission, that you have even ever taken a photo.
All we know of Mr. Anonymous is that he thinks Eolake's work sucks, that Kelly Trimble's photography sucks, and that by inference he doesn't think too much of Terry Brooks. We have no information regarding the authority from which he projects his criticism of the work or personal behaviour of others.
However, the use of the franconaise word 'poseur' as a pejorative term in place of the more common English descriptor 'poser' suggests a cultural upbringing and social tastes shaped by a mixture or punksterism, teenie bopper goth, skateboarding, surfing, and heavy metal communities and presumably trailer parking living (I'm not kidding-look up poseur on WP). These are all social cohorts of people who are so conscious of their adherence to the conformance norms of acceptance of a social ingroup that they are willing to get piercings and tattoos, dye their hair green, red, or purple, and wear ugly black clothes all day, just like every body else in the cohort, to demonstrate their individuality. Thinking about this deeper may give us some insight as to the psychology driving his need to lash out at other people, claiming they suck, without giving any reasoned critisism.
Part Two of Three (sorry, I know, I'm ranting again):
'Unimaginative'? 'Derivative'? Derivative of what? In his photography, Eolake has imagined a few things I haven't. I was quite sincere about my comments about his study in red. As I described earlier, a lot of what I shoot is actually dull, lifeless, and colorless. Try shooting photos of an underground aggregates quarry converted to warehouses. It's all grey rock, and you have to shoot it in the dark. The study in red photos used a specific color as the primary compositional element. Although I have seen that done before in individual photos, I hadn't really seen it done in a series of photos with that compositional element forming the theme of the series. I found it a little like when people use light and shadow as compositional elements, except using contrasts between a striking color and non-color or all other colors. For a while I was going around picking a color and trying to form interesting compositions of otherwise dull and lifeless scenes. It was a bit of a challenge. (I used yellow instead of red. I am convinced that i see yellow differently than other people, but that is another story.) And I learned a lot-inspired, at least to a degree, from seeing photos of Eolake Stobblehouse. I'm sure that most critics would agree that my stuff was crap, but I will admit that I was stealing ideas from others. Which is what real artists do all the time.
As for his similie about Terry Brooks, well, based on my actual real life experience, I can say definitively that it was the wrong similie for him to choose to try to make his lame ass point. About fifteen years ago or so I knew a writer named Christopher Newman who had moved to my hometown from New York. He was famed for writing crime fiction. He had been commissioned to write a novelization for a film about IRA terrorists or whatever, I think it was called The Devil's Own. He got the advance, spent it on bills, and then got the script, and decided he hated the ending. I had a conversation with him, and I remember the name of Terry Brooks came up because Brooks had written the novelization for some lame assed Disney POS movie a few years earlier, and he hated something in the script, and he wrote the novelization with a different plot line. It 'inspired' Chris to write a different ending. His clients got really pissed, but they ended up re-shooting the end of the movie because of it. I don't recall reading any of Terry Brook's stuff, probably because most of it is really long drawn out fantasy stuff that I literally don't have time to get drawn into again (I learned my lesson on epic fantasy with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings which were fine, but at age fifty looking back I see the experience as a collossal waste of time), but I do recall that George Lucas had him novelize some of the Star Wars movies and I think he has sold a ton of stuff, like maybe one of the top fifty selling authors of the era. The idea that Terry Brook's work is crap because he is so popular is sort of like the opinions held by a lot of snooty people about the work of romance novelist Janet Dailey. Before she died, all of the official people said her work was formulaic. Since she died a few weeks ago, there have been some academics write stuff about how her work, taken as a body of work, shows an evolution of the formula over time which in itself tells an epic story of the growth of the psyche of an artist. (I know this because Janet Dailey lived just up the street from me, and I worked on part of her estate.) It's hard to argue with success. So Anonymous's reference to Terry Brooks in a similie, at least for me, reverses the intended derisive meaning of the similie. Translation: Anonymous isn't grounded enough in the culture of either photography or fantasy fiction to be able to use cultural references of one to communicate an opinion about the other. Ie, he's a lame-o.
But I digress. Anonymous thinks Eolake is a 'poseur' as a photographer. He thinks I suck as a photographer (and he might be right about that, but only by accident). And based on a subsequent comment in response to somebody named 'Ken', it seems he/she/it has no problems making aspersions as to Ken's psychological makeup as a oloquisative defense to a comment made by Ken, he/she/it seems to see no problem in his own unsolicited vituperative remarks about Eolake (and me).
"How many people say things like that, being unable for formulate an argument?" Sort of reminds one of "Are you still pretending to be interested in photography? Face it, you're a poseur. You like buying cameras, but you don't care about photography or photographers." How about formulating an actual evidenced and reasoned argument to support your impuisant pontifical declarations?
The point about photographing real estate is a good one, and one which I would also like to make. Sometimes photography is a means to an end, and to do it competently means doing it methodically. As a subscriber to domai, and occasional subscriber to other nude sites, I will go out on a limb and say that nudes are one such area where the work can be unimaginative, derivative, and GOOD. (What Eolake has written about his "simple nude" philosophy may even back me up on this.) The idea of photographing naked women is certainly not an original one. And I have regularly seen uninteresting results from someone trying to go against the grain, while the photographer who has mastered the technical aspects can crank out 100 photos of the same model in the same setting and have every shot be worth looking at.
So, in this context, it is all the more silly that anon would make this complaint. Then there is this part: "you don't care about [...] photographers." I imagine that domai keeps money flowing to a number of pro photographers. Perhaps anon is a person who sees this and is sour about it, because they have not had an equal level of success.
I am not an alias, seudonym, doppelganger, or even a cognate for Eolake Stobblehouse (although I think 'Eolake Stobblehouse' is supposed to be an alias of some sort), although I am actually mildly complemented by the accusation.
Pseudonym, Kelly. But no one accused you of being a doppelganger - obviously that's impossible. Nor could you be a cognate, if you understand the meaning of the word. As for being an alias, an anonymous person claiming so doesn't equal proof. Obviously every single person on this blog could be anonymous. It's possible every comment here is just a very lonely Eolake talking to himself. I don't know why you'd be even mildly complimented (not complemented, you really need to watch those typos, if they are typos).
There are significant differences between myself and Eolake....and playing with pictures of naked women in London
I'm pretty sure he lives quite a way from London, but of course if you are a different person there would be lots of differences between - you don't have to be so long-winded.
I'm pretty sure that my photography sucks, but so what! How do we know whether your photography doesn't suck as well. We don't have any actual evidence, or even any admission, that you have even ever taken a photo.
We don't know that, but I haven't made any claim to quality. Do you think every critic has to be able to outdo those he critiques? No. What you've said is a variation of the old "Do what I do, then critique me." No. Sorry, doesn't work that way. People who go on American Idol or shows of that ilk deserve to be told the brutal, honest, often cruel truth because they're putting themselves forward as being good enough to go pro. Eolake calls himself a photographer. Just as with other things, like philosophy, where many of the greatest couldn't make a living at it (e.g. John Stuart Mill's day job was with the East India Company) you don't have to actually make a living at it to consider yourself a photographer of professional quality even if you're not actually a professional.
All we know of Mr. Anonymous is that he thinks Eolake's work sucks, that Kelly Trimble's photography sucks, and that by inference he doesn't think too much of Terry Brooks. We have no information regarding the authority from which he projects his criticism of the work or personal behavior of others.
In fact I've gone beyond just saying Eolake's work sucks. I've said why, and I've also said that it's partly because he plays it safe. He could possibly do much better, more interesting work but that requires going out there and taking a lot of pictures. You can't learn to draw without spending many hours practicing, or become a writer without doing a lot of that (no matter how much talent; even Michelangelo had teachers). He claims it's partly ill health. Okay, maybe he gets a pass for that, but has it always been the case? He doesn't live in London, but wherever it is he lives in northern England he could probably find or have found interesting things to photograph - people and objects.
However, the use of the franconaise word 'poseur' as a pejorative term in place of the more common English descriptor 'poser' suggests a cultural upbringing and social tastes shaped by a mixture or punksterism, teenie bopper goth, skateboarding, surfing, and heavy metal communities and presumably trailer parking living (I'm not kidding-look up poseur on WP).
I don't know what WP is - hopefully not Wikipedia. No one does themselves any favor using Wikipedia as a resource. No, I used the word poseur in its original sense which dates to the 19th century. That meaning is the same as poser, true, but I've always understood them to be interchangeable. I have no knowledge of goth, surfing, skateboarding, punk, or heavy metal culture.
Thinking about this deeper may give us some insight as to the psychology driving his need to lash out at other people, claiming they suck, without giving any reasoned critisism.
You can save yourself the trouble of wondering because I have, as I said above, given a reason. Even if you didn't see that post, I've briefly restated it here - again, above.
'Unimaginative'? 'Derivative'? Derivative of what? In his photography, Eolake has imagined a few things I haven't.
I believe I've answered this already. Unimaginative because it's the kind of stuff you'd find amongst any high school student's photographs where they will inevitably have tried too hard to be artistic. Closeups of inanimate objects, usually in black and white (I know Eolake does mostly color). He's posted some of Stephen Gillette's photos recently which are virtually identical to Eolake's own. The very top one is typical of Eolake's own work - something inanimate, mostly monochrome (but not black and white) with one splash of color. He's done this again and again. Derivative because Eolake didn't originate that type of thing. It might be hard not to be derivative of somebody but other photographers often manage to do something new.
As for his similie about Terry Brooks, well, based on my actual real life experience, I can say definitively that it was the wrong similie for him to choose to try to make his lame ass point.
It's funny, you make incorrect statements about how I haven't given reasons for my opinions, but then do the exact same thing yourself. Why is it a "lame ass" point (how lame is it to say "lame ass"?)? It's not. And, I used Terry Brooks because he's an obvious example of a hack without any originality, one of many (but one of the first) to tell essentially the same story only worse. I could have picked another genre. I could have gone with "mainstream" literature. Who I picked doesn't really matter, it's the "lame ass" point I was making that's the point - using Terry Brooks was merely illustrative.
probably because most of it is really long drawn out fantasy stuff that I literally don't have time to get drawn into again
The idea that Terry Brook's work is crap because he is so popular is sort of like the opinions held by a lot of snooty people about the work of romance novelist Janet Dailey.
There's nothing wrong with being a popular writer. Being popular doesn't equal being untalented. That's not the point I was making. It's funny, you complain about that point being "lame ass" but obviously you didn't understand it. I like a lot of very popular writers. Terry Brooks sucks because he has no original take. In the fantasy genre you can't escape Tolkien's shadow. The best writers manage it by not trying to retell the exact same story, reusing the same plots, with thinly veiled versions of the same characters. I could easily have said Robert Jordan instead of Terry Brooks - Jordan has been accused of going one "better" and ripping off Terry Brooks - kind of a plagiarism of a plagiarism. I have no idea who Janet Dailey was. I could Google her but I don't need to know who she was to understand the point you're trying to make.
Translation: Anonymous isn't grounded enough in the culture of either photography or fantasy fiction to be able to use cultural references of one to communicate an opinion about the other. Ie, he's a lame-o.
I'm certainly well versed enough in fantasy fiction to speak about it, which was why I referenced a fantasy writer. I don't claim to have that same knowledge of photography or I'd have used one of many Terry Brooks level photographers who must exist. (If even something without a great knowledge of photography, apart from the ones everybody knows, can tell how stale and derivative Eolake's work is, what about people who do have that knowledge? Lame-o? Oy.
it seems he/she/it has no problems making aspersions as to Ken's psychological makeup as a oloquisative defense to a comment made by Ken
My comment to "Ken" was due to his employing the same tactics he claims to despise, and mock, in me. That does say a lot about him - that, like many people here (including you) he seems to think the rules don't apply equally to everyone.
Then there is this part: "you don't care about [...] photographers." I imagine that domai keeps money flowing to a number of pro photographers. Perhaps anon is a person who sees this and is sour about it, because they have not had an equal level of success.
OK, that's much better. You'll have to admit that your original comment was fairly tert and had the effect of a hit and run. We finally have something to go on other than a simple declaration.
I'm on a project, so I don't have time to do a three parter again, but just a couple of points:
You can parse my words if you want, and some of my word choices were over the top, but the first point I was trying to make was that I am not Eolake in disguise. I think I made that point. I know he lives in England, and somehow I got it into my head that he was in London, but maybe not.
The word poseur hasn't been used much since the 19th century except in the last thirty years by punksters, goths, and the like, though, yes, they are interchangeable, though the use of poseur outside of these communities is a little odd in modern times. Since we had nothing else to go on, all we can do is to try to draw inferences that you were part of one or more of these communities, based on the odd use of a word that hadn't been used much in a hundred years.
If you don't know who Janet Dailey was, you could have looked her up on Wikipedia!
The last quote 'then this part . . . ' wasn't me, it was some other anonymous that obviously was not the original Anonymous.
I'm still pretending to be interested in the beauty of female nudes, while actually 'm just a horny lonely guy who can't get laid. Then again, given the handlebar mustaches women have down here in Lebanon, I wouldn't want to see THEM naked, let alone sleep with them!
Bloggers produce the blogs that they want, and then we can decide if we want to read them If Anonymous doesn't like it he can do something else. Maybe write his own, or maybe something involving use of porn. Either way his karma will be better than wandering around the internet criticising the efforts of others.
ReplyDeleteDon't the "brave" anonymous detractors amuse you? They are just so empty, producing nothing of their own, that they get their only sense of value from attacking those who actually DO something.
ReplyDeleteAs long as you are being attacked anonymously you are probably on the right track.
You have to be interested in photography.Its either that or naked women.
ReplyDeleteAnother very brave and highly intelligent Mr/Mrs Anonymous? I think not!
ReplyDeleteAfter I am done writing to you, I will have to prove that I am not a robot. You don't have to prove anything to anybody. The NSA already knows all about you. (Blogging is fun. I just did it too).
ReplyDeleteI think you did brilliantly, just displaying it without any further comment!
ReplyDeleteHeh, some things just speak eloquently for themselves. :-)
ReplyDeleteBloggers produce the blogs that they want, and then we can decide if we want to read them If Anonymous doesn't like it he can do something else. Maybe write his own, or maybe something involving use of porn. Either way his karma will be better than wandering around the internet criticising the efforts of others.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure why you would automatically assume it would be porn-related. That kind of comment seems just as bad as those Anonymous has made. Countering ignorance or stupidity with more ignorance or stupidity is just...stupid. And ignorant.
Don't the "brave" anonymous detractors amuse you? They are just so empty, producing nothing of their own, that they get their only sense of value from attacking those who actually DO something.
I find this kind of comment amusing - just as amusing, to be honest, as any comment of Anonymous. Why? Because it's just a version of "haters gonna hate." It's something I've seen all over the internet - that any negative comment, no matter whether it's real hate or actual constructive criticism (I'm not saying Anonymous was making the latter kind) often is dismissed, that the person is just a "hater," i.e. a troll. Often that's not the case. Also, it's impossible to tell because they're anonymous but you don't know whether they produce anything or not. It would I bet be inaccurate to say the only people who troll on the internet are the type you've described.
As long as you are being attacked anonymously you are probably on the right track.
That isn't a logical assumption.
You have to be interested in photography.Its either that or naked women.
To be fair most of the photos of naked women are the work of other photographers. I don't know that Anonymous' criticism is entirely wrong, he/she has just put it in as deliberately insulting way as possible, obviously hoping for a reaction. However, Eolake has given health problems as the reason he doesn't get out there more often taking pictures.
Jim, the bit about porn was a joke, as Anonymous deserves to be made fun of. Too many serious people in this world, or maybe people who take themselves too seriously.
ReplyDeleteWow. I couldn't disagree with this guy's comment more.
ReplyDeleteI've seen your photography that you've posted outside of Domai, and very little of it is nudes, and you seem to be interested in some of the techniques involved, and have talked a little of the history of photography, and have blogged about other photographers, etc etc. You do seem to be enamored with some of the latest and greatest gadgets, but not just cameras. I recall something about an internet toilet. And you are a guy, so of course you are going to be into naked women and the latest greatest and coolest gadgets. But I've found you photography to be inspirational at times. I recall a study in red that changed a direction I was shooting a year or two ago.
I simply cannot imagine what prompted Anon. to post that unless he/she/it was just trolling from blog to blog trying to flame on each one a little bit just for gags.
The idea that you are bothered by it reminds me of some of my friends that are politicians who are tremendously popular, but will whine to me that they have one or two or three constituents that send them nastygrams in the mail or email or write flaming letters to the editor or blog entries, and they are tremendously upset by them. Don't let this get to you. I am almost as offended by this guy's comment as you might be.
I have a feeling Kelly Trimble is an Eolake Stobblehouse alias. No one would say Eolake's bland, unimaginative photography changed the way they take pictures...unless they sucked even more than he does. It would be like a writer of fantasy fiction saying that Terry Brooks had inspired them. "Unimaginative," and "derivative," are the two words most critics would probably use to describe Eolake's work.
ReplyDeleteI don't disagree that he's genuinely interested in new technology, but he likes the technology side of it more than photography itself, for which he has no eye. I'd have to see your photos, too, "Kelly," but I bet they're pretty dull, staid, and lifeless too.
Jim, the bit about porn was a joke, as Anonymous deserves to be made fun of. Too many serious people in this world, or maybe people who take themselves too seriously.
ReplyDeleteIf you need to tell people something's a joke, it wasn't a very good joke. As for deserving to be made fun of, well, that says a lot about you. How many people say things like that, being unable to formulate an argument? They will say some people are unworthy of the effort, being to some only trolls. Pretty lame, Ken.
Anonymous, I can't guarantee that anyone will understand anything. Some people are just too stupid. Anyway in amongst the joke was the point that Anonymous should find something that he enjoys, rather than following a blog that he obviously doesn't. Which possibly means he should do something involving porn. Or look at what I assume is his/her selection of self-created high quality photography.
ReplyDeleteKelly,
ReplyDeleteYou have a good point. I read a long interview with Charles Schulz. He talked about a janitor long ago who had said he didn't get the strip.
So there Schulz had one of the most beloved strips in the world, selling in the hundreds of millions, literally, and one janitor who "didn't get it" bothers him? That is a pity.
Me, obviously I have a little bit left of it, otherwise I'd not even have posted this. But I'm taking each one as a learning experience, and I've made a lot of progress. Most of the time I think it's funny, these days.
OK, I can't leave this alone.
ReplyDeletePart One of Two (I'm limited to 4,000 characters)
I haven't been in a really really good flame war with anybody on a personal level since Bill got impeached for letting Monica suck his balls (except when I got unfriended a couple of months ago by an old liberal living on government checks while sitting around waiting to die after he begged me to give him my side of the issue in response to his lame tirades about the need for gun control, but that's another story).
I am not an alias, seudonym, doppelganger, or even a cognate for Eolake Stobblehouse (although I think 'Eolake Stobblehouse' is supposed to be an alias of some sort), although I am actually mildly complemented by the accusation.
There are significant differences between myself and Eolake. Eolake spends his days dealing with art, writing about cameras, photography, cutting edge technology, and modern culture and playing with pictures of naked women in London. I spend my days researching and writing about boring real estate that people I don't really care about are having boring problems with in a place that is as far from the cultural centers of Europe as you could hope to imagine. I can only wish I was Eolake Stobblehouse.
But I'm not. I have worn out shutters on Nikon digital cameras taking pictures, but most of what I shoot is real estate, aerial photos, mostly lifeless dull stuff, and so naturally 99 % of my photos would probably be pretty dull and lifeless, but that is what my clients are needing. If I do a really artful job of, say, a toxic waste dump or a meth house that is being foreclosed or a proposed sewer line right of way through somebody's back yard or a tombstone dump at the rock quarry or of a roof leak in an underground warehouse, I can't do anything with them, I can't even post them anywhere. So sure, most of my photos are dull, staid, and lifeless, I would even say sterile unadventurous, often colorless (try color in a rock quarry or underground storage), or even repetitive and pedantic (such as having to take the same fifteen photos of every room in a 200 room motel foreclosure); I'm pretty sure that my photography sucks, but so what! How do we know whether your photography doesn't suck as well. We don't have any actual evidence, or even any admission, that you have even ever taken a photo.
All we know of Mr. Anonymous is that he thinks Eolake's work sucks, that Kelly Trimble's photography sucks, and that by inference he doesn't think too much of Terry Brooks. We have no information regarding the authority from which he projects his criticism of the work or personal behaviour of others.
However, the use of the franconaise word 'poseur' as a pejorative term in place of the more common English descriptor 'poser' suggests a cultural upbringing and social tastes shaped by a mixture or punksterism, teenie bopper goth, skateboarding, surfing, and heavy metal communities and presumably trailer parking living (I'm not kidding-look up poseur on WP). These are all social cohorts of people who are so conscious of their adherence to the conformance norms of acceptance of a social ingroup that they are willing to get piercings and tattoos, dye their hair green, red, or purple, and wear ugly black clothes all day, just like every body else in the cohort, to demonstrate their individuality. Thinking about this deeper may give us some insight as to the psychology driving his need to lash out at other people, claiming they suck, without giving any reasoned critisism.
more to come . . . .
Part Two of Three (sorry, I know, I'm ranting again):
ReplyDelete'Unimaginative'? 'Derivative'? Derivative of what? In his photography, Eolake has imagined a few things I haven't. I was quite sincere about my comments about his study in red. As I described earlier, a lot of what I shoot is actually dull, lifeless, and colorless. Try shooting photos of an underground aggregates quarry converted to warehouses. It's all grey rock, and you have to shoot it in the dark. The study in red photos used a specific color as the primary compositional element. Although I have seen that done before in individual photos, I hadn't really seen it done in a series of photos with that compositional element forming the theme of the series. I found it a little like when people use light and shadow as compositional elements, except using contrasts between a striking color and non-color or all other colors. For a while I was going around picking a color and trying to form interesting compositions of otherwise dull and lifeless scenes. It was a bit of a challenge. (I used yellow instead of red. I am convinced that i see yellow differently than other people, but that is another story.) And I learned a lot-inspired, at least to a degree, from seeing photos of Eolake Stobblehouse. I'm sure that most critics would agree that my stuff was crap, but I will admit that I was stealing ideas from others. Which is what real artists do all the time.
As for his similie about Terry Brooks, well, based on my actual real life experience, I can say definitively that it was the wrong similie for him to choose to try to make his lame ass point. About fifteen years ago or so I knew a writer named Christopher Newman who had moved to my hometown from New York. He was famed for writing crime fiction. He had been commissioned to write a novelization for a film about IRA terrorists or whatever, I think it was called The Devil's Own. He got the advance, spent it on bills, and then got the script, and decided he hated the ending. I had a conversation with him, and I remember the name of Terry Brooks came up because Brooks had written the novelization for some lame assed Disney POS movie a few years earlier, and he hated something in the script, and he wrote the novelization with a different plot line. It 'inspired' Chris to write a different ending. His clients got really pissed, but they ended up re-shooting the end of the movie because of it. I don't recall reading any of Terry Brook's stuff, probably because most of it is really long drawn out fantasy stuff that I literally don't have time to get drawn into again (I learned my lesson on epic fantasy with the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings which were fine, but at age fifty looking back I see the experience as a collossal waste of time), but I do recall that George Lucas had him novelize some of the Star Wars movies and I think he has sold a ton of stuff, like maybe one of the top fifty selling authors of the era. The idea that Terry Brook's work is crap because he is so popular is sort of like the opinions held by a lot of snooty people about the work of romance novelist Janet Dailey. Before she died, all of the official people said her work was formulaic. Since she died a few weeks ago, there have been some academics write stuff about how her work, taken as a body of work, shows an evolution of the formula over time which in itself tells an epic story of the growth of the psyche of an artist. (I know this because Janet Dailey lived just up the street from me, and I worked on part of her estate.) It's hard to argue with success. So Anonymous's reference to Terry Brooks in a similie, at least for me, reverses the intended derisive meaning of the similie. Translation: Anonymous isn't grounded enough in the culture of either photography or fantasy fiction to be able to use cultural references of one to communicate an opinion about the other. Ie, he's a lame-o.
(more to come . . . .)
Part Three of Three:
ReplyDeleteBut I digress. Anonymous thinks Eolake is a 'poseur' as a photographer. He thinks I suck as a photographer (and he might be right about that, but only by accident). And based on a subsequent comment in response to somebody named 'Ken', it seems he/she/it has no problems making aspersions as to Ken's psychological makeup as a oloquisative defense to a comment made by Ken, he/she/it seems to see no problem in his own unsolicited vituperative remarks about Eolake (and me).
"How many people say things like that, being unable for formulate an argument?" Sort of reminds one of "Are you still pretending to be interested in photography? Face it, you're a poseur. You like buying cameras, but you don't care about photography or photographers." How about formulating an actual evidenced and reasoned argument to support your impuisant pontifical declarations?
(Sorry to rant, but this was way too much fun.)
The point about photographing real estate is a good one, and one which I would also like to make. Sometimes photography is a means to an end, and to do it competently means doing it methodically. As a subscriber to domai, and occasional subscriber to other nude sites, I will go out on a limb and say that nudes are one such area where the work can be unimaginative, derivative, and GOOD. (What Eolake has written about his "simple nude" philosophy may even back me up on this.) The idea of photographing naked women is certainly not an original one. And I have regularly seen uninteresting results from someone trying to go against the grain, while the photographer who has mastered the technical aspects can crank out 100 photos of the same model in the same setting and have every shot be worth looking at.
ReplyDeleteSo, in this context, it is all the more silly that anon would make this complaint. Then there is this part: "you don't care about [...] photographers." I imagine that domai keeps money flowing to a number of pro photographers. Perhaps anon is a person who sees this and is sour about it, because they have not had an equal level of success.
(Sorry to rant, but this was way too much fun.)
ReplyDeleteYou should probably be pretty embarrassed by that actually.
By the way you seem to have trouble organizing your thoughts.
I am not an alias, seudonym, doppelganger, or even a cognate for Eolake Stobblehouse (although I think 'Eolake Stobblehouse' is supposed to be an alias of some sort), although I am actually mildly complemented by the accusation.
ReplyDeletePseudonym, Kelly. But no one accused you of being a doppelganger - obviously that's impossible. Nor could you be a cognate, if you understand the meaning of the word. As for being an alias, an anonymous person claiming so doesn't equal proof. Obviously every single person on this blog could be anonymous. It's possible every comment here is just a very lonely Eolake talking to himself. I don't know why you'd be even mildly complimented (not complemented, you really need to watch those typos, if they are typos).
There are significant differences between myself and Eolake....and playing with pictures of naked women in London
I'm pretty sure he lives quite a way from London, but of course if you are a different person there would be lots of differences between - you don't have to be so long-winded.
I'm pretty sure that my photography sucks, but so what! How do we know whether your photography doesn't suck as well. We don't have any actual evidence, or even any admission, that you have even ever taken a photo.
We don't know that, but I haven't made any claim to quality. Do you think every critic has to be able to outdo those he critiques? No. What you've said is a variation of the old "Do what I do, then critique me." No. Sorry, doesn't work that way. People who go on American Idol or shows of that ilk deserve to be told the brutal, honest, often cruel truth because they're putting themselves forward as being good enough to go pro. Eolake calls himself a photographer. Just as with other things, like philosophy, where many of the greatest couldn't make a living at it (e.g. John Stuart Mill's day job was with the East India Company) you don't have to actually make a living at it to consider yourself a photographer of professional quality even if you're not actually a professional.
All we know of Mr. Anonymous is that he thinks Eolake's work sucks, that Kelly Trimble's photography sucks, and that by inference he doesn't think too much of Terry Brooks. We have no information regarding the authority from which he projects his criticism of the work or personal behavior of others.
In fact I've gone beyond just saying Eolake's work sucks. I've said why, and I've also said that it's partly because he plays it safe. He could possibly do much better, more interesting work but that requires going out there and taking a lot of pictures. You can't learn to draw without spending many hours practicing, or become a writer without doing a lot of that (no matter how much talent; even Michelangelo had teachers). He claims it's partly ill health. Okay, maybe he gets a pass for that, but has it always been the case? He doesn't live in London, but wherever it is he lives in northern England he could probably find or have found interesting things to photograph - people and objects.
However, the use of the franconaise word 'poseur' as a pejorative term in place of the more common English descriptor 'poser' suggests a cultural upbringing and social tastes shaped by a mixture or punksterism, teenie bopper goth, skateboarding, surfing, and heavy metal communities and presumably trailer parking living (I'm not kidding-look up poseur on WP).
ReplyDeleteI don't know what WP is - hopefully not Wikipedia. No one does themselves any favor using Wikipedia as a resource. No, I used the word poseur in its original sense which dates to the 19th century. That meaning is the same as poser, true, but I've always understood them to be interchangeable. I have no knowledge of goth, surfing, skateboarding, punk, or heavy metal culture.
Thinking about this deeper may give us some insight as to the psychology driving his need to lash out at other people, claiming they suck, without giving any reasoned critisism.
You can save yourself the trouble of wondering because I have, as I said above, given a reason. Even if you didn't see that post, I've briefly restated it here - again, above.
'Unimaginative'? 'Derivative'? Derivative of what? In his photography, Eolake has imagined a few things I haven't.
I believe I've answered this already. Unimaginative because it's the kind of stuff you'd find amongst any high school student's photographs where they will inevitably have tried too hard to be artistic. Closeups of inanimate objects, usually in black and white (I know Eolake does mostly color). He's posted some of Stephen Gillette's photos recently which are virtually identical to Eolake's own. The very top one is typical of Eolake's own work - something inanimate, mostly monochrome (but not black and white) with one splash of color. He's done this again and again. Derivative because Eolake didn't originate that type of thing. It might be hard not to be derivative of somebody but other photographers often manage to do something new.
As for his similie about Terry Brooks, well, based on my actual real life experience, I can say definitively that it was the wrong similie for him to choose to try to make his lame ass point.
It's funny, you make incorrect statements about how I haven't given reasons for my opinions, but then do the exact same thing yourself. Why is it a "lame ass" point (how lame is it to say "lame ass"?)? It's not. And, I used Terry Brooks because he's an obvious example of a hack without any originality, one of many (but one of the first) to tell essentially the same story only worse. I could have picked another genre. I could have gone with "mainstream" literature. Who I picked doesn't really matter, it's the "lame ass" point I was making that's the point - using Terry Brooks was merely illustrative.
probably because most of it is really long drawn out fantasy stuff that I literally don't have time to get drawn into again
Your time is obviously at a premium.
The idea that Terry Brook's work is crap because he is so popular is sort of like the opinions held by a lot of snooty people about the work of romance novelist Janet Dailey.
ReplyDeleteThere's nothing wrong with being a popular writer. Being popular doesn't equal being untalented. That's not the point I was making. It's funny, you complain about that point being "lame ass" but obviously you didn't understand it. I like a lot of very popular writers. Terry Brooks sucks because he has no original take. In the fantasy genre you can't escape Tolkien's shadow. The best writers manage it by not trying to retell the exact same story, reusing the same plots, with thinly veiled versions of the same characters. I could easily have said Robert Jordan instead of Terry Brooks - Jordan has been accused of going one "better" and ripping off Terry Brooks - kind of a plagiarism of a plagiarism. I have no idea who Janet Dailey was. I could Google her but I don't need to know who she was to understand the point you're trying to make.
Translation: Anonymous isn't grounded enough in the culture of either photography or fantasy fiction to be able to use cultural references of one to communicate an opinion about the other. Ie, he's a lame-o.
I'm certainly well versed enough in fantasy fiction to speak about it, which was why I referenced a fantasy writer. I don't claim to have that same knowledge of photography or I'd have used one of many Terry Brooks level photographers who must exist. (If even something without a great knowledge of photography, apart from the ones everybody knows, can tell how stale and derivative Eolake's work is, what about people who do have that knowledge? Lame-o? Oy.
it seems he/she/it has no problems making aspersions as to Ken's psychological makeup as a oloquisative defense to a comment made by Ken
My comment to "Ken" was due to his employing the same tactics he claims to despise, and mock, in me. That does say a lot about him - that, like many people here (including you) he seems to think the rules don't apply equally to everyone.
Then there is this part: "you don't care about [...] photographers." I imagine that domai keeps money flowing to a number of pro photographers. Perhaps anon is a person who sees this and is sour about it, because they have not had an equal level of success.
I'm sure Eolake's site does help a lot of photographers, but I should have been more specific. I meant the ones whose work history has deemed worthy of preserving, i.e. not just the truly great but even the more minor talents. Eolake doesn't seem to have much interest in their work, or knowledge of it. That's what I meant by saying he doesn't care about photographers. In any art form you have to know something about those who've come before or you end up covering the same ground, and falling into cliché.
To ANON:
ReplyDeleteOK, that's much better. You'll have to admit that your original comment was fairly tert and had the effect of a hit and run. We finally have something to go on other than a simple declaration.
I'm on a project, so I don't have time to do a three parter again, but just a couple of points:
You can parse my words if you want, and some of my word choices were over the top, but the first point I was trying to make was that I am not Eolake in disguise. I think I made that point. I know he lives in England, and somehow I got it into my head that he was in London, but maybe not.
The word poseur hasn't been used much since the 19th century except in the last thirty years by punksters, goths, and the like, though, yes, they are interchangeable, though the use of poseur outside of these communities is a little odd in modern times. Since we had nothing else to go on, all we can do is to try to draw inferences that you were part of one or more of these communities, based on the odd use of a word that hadn't been used much in a hundred years.
If you don't know who Janet Dailey was, you could have looked her up on Wikipedia!
The last quote 'then this part . . . ' wasn't me, it was some other anonymous that obviously was not the original Anonymous.
I'm still pretending to be interested in the beauty of female nudes, while actually 'm just a horny lonely guy who can't get laid.
ReplyDeleteThen again, given the handlebar mustaches women have down here in Lebanon, I wouldn't want to see THEM naked, let alone sleep with them!