February 26 - Free as a bird

The more I take casual outdoors pictures the clearer I realize that amateur photography is only very little about fancy Jap cameras. It is not even too much about good German optics or high quality BW film or groovy prints on aquarell paper. The whole set of hardware along with its costly (mostly pirated) software is just a heavy weight convention assisting me in locating and framing an accidential picture. Which in fact is a very simple manipulation that may be easily performed by two hairy hands forming a rectangular (two tumbs against the opposite index fingers). With training it can be reduced to a simple momentary glance followed by shutting of your both eyes for a quick development of the obtained image in the dark room of your memory.

I mean that photography in its essence is a basic mental process. It is also older than the whole oil painting tradition or the ancient Greek tragedy. What made photography, as a separate sort of Art, come out from behind of its well documented predecessors in the beginning of the last century was just a pure technical trick, a kind of a curiosa or hocus pocus. However, it allowed the initiated ones to freeze and copy their mental experiences on paper in exchange for a relatively modest fee (at least in the beginning).

All that gradually developed into several different sorts of commercial photography. The whole concept of "Professional photography" is often assotiated with (if not based on) the assumption of serving specific kind of trade (journalism, medicine, wedding, advertisment etc) or otherwise generating hefty incomes (minimum enough for making a living). The resting majority is an ocean of happy amateurs dominated by countless crowds of curious Japanese tourists and enthusiastic middle class fathers tormenting their families with "cheeses" and painful flashes to produce their red-eye vampire horror shots (been there done that).

What is left is a numerous homeless bunch not daring to call themselves "professionals", but kniting their brows if called "amateurs". Of the three groups the latter one seems to be the closest to the existential essnce of photography. Having entered this group I came to realize the pressing need for a proper self-definition that would spare me the urge of becoming another "professional" plus provide a legitimate space for what I do. And I think have found it. It came kind of out of blue, when I was sipping at my tea this morning: a free soul photographer. I tried to put it on. It feels good.