the summer of discontent

well a little rant from me today!

Rules, what are the purpose of rules in photography? there there to help us maintain a quality, a standard as such. There there to help us keep interest and to direct the viewer around the photo. There there to keep things safe? some would say there there to help us be better photographers and that you must understand rules fully before you can break them.. Really? do we need to understand rules before we break them?

Lets understand the child the free minded exploritive liberal mind of a child! they do little for rules, they don't care much for time and place and whens and wheres they care little for what a monster really looks like or in fact asks if monsters really exist, but they draw them, with skies in the air and suns in the corner! We educate the child to accept rules, for who's benefit the child or societies and ours? OK big question I know, but look as photographers or artists we need to challenge rules we need to say 'I like that' 'I want this to happen' and the results are no worse or no better, but yet the rules dictate so to us. We are fooled to belong to a set of tried and tested rules, rules which keep us safe and keep others safe from missing something with in! I'm not sure I like these rules, I'm not sure I want to look at a picture as an artist and say thats not acceptable because the tops cropped of or the colour isn't accurate, (did Monet fail because he saw a wider spectrum of colour than we do) I'm not sure that I want the image to be focused on every shot or the rule of thirds to apply. I want to capture things with Lenses that restrict me and I want to use angles and turn the world on its head. WHY!!!! Why do I want to do this, because a picture that I can experience is a place I could have gone to a memory I could have had. Don't get me wrong I love to see others memorys or interpretations of a place, capture the game on the weekend or the view from the castle they visited, I love all of that. I am after all the worlds biggest sunset whore, I could take there picture every night. BUT... I also want to see your daydreams the places we want to go or don't perhaps your nightmares, I want to see and share my fears and my hopes my colours and shapes that excite me I want to say look at the beauty in that light bulb the amazing mechanics or the fantastic colours in the defocused blur! Why because thats what I have to offer that unique, its what makes me me! Is that wrong, is the chid wrong to dream of monsters and crazy factories full of helper robots! to imagine cars that fly or butterflies in peoples hair! Isn't that beauty and isn't that what we here to do, make day dreams real?

Happy making things real, making butterflies out of paper and a wood flooring on our beaches, happy to challenge the Status Quo, and happy to say the rules are great, I know some of them, and use some of them, but I won't live by them, that would be dull.

Steve

whats your thoughts?