Glad you liked the comment.

I’m loving Burn. Being able to comment means having to pull together my thoughts into coherent form. Thankyou for the opportunity.
I’d love to attend a workshop with you at some point.

Cheers
Gordon L

i missed this the first time around…greqt comment amigo!!!

cheers, david

Gordon

-!!!- ?

–!!!–

A note to Jim, Cartier Bresson and others who do not “get” this photo or others of its ilk.

Jim, being from your generation, (Im over 60) I can appreciate where you are coming from. I’m a small town portrait photographer. Most of my customers, and most of my colleagues would not get this photo either. I certainly could not sell it in my community, nor I suspect could Max to Dmytris’ mom.

Much of my own personal work consists of portraits of this “ilk” inlcuding favourite portraits of my children. My wife hated them I love them. They tell me much more about who they are than photos with a big smile. (moms won’t buy a portrait unless the kid has a big smile).

I don’t like everything I’ve seen here on Burn. I am trying to set aside my pre-conceptions and biases about what a photograph should look like. I’ve learned a lot here, and find the discussion sometimes educational, inspiring, and sometimes with a fresh look, I can see value where I saw none before.

Outside of what I’ve seen on Burn, there are some photographers who’s work though accepted by some, I just do not get. Some stuff from the “fine art” community especially I simply feel is pretentious, self absorbed, bullshit. Maybe it’s my own limitation.

This photo, along with the work of many of the celebrated photographers of past and present would be thrown out of next weeks print salon at our annual Professional photographers of BC convention. What is “good” photography is very narrowly defined and governed by a narrow set of rules. The panel of judges are “master” photographers who become masters by being able to fit into these rules and hang enough prints over the years to be awarded the designation.

More than 20 years ago, I joined this association and went to my first convention because I learned that Arnold Newman would be speaking. Arnold showed us a slide show with his famous images and told stories about them, and his experiences. Fascinating stuff.
Finally he shocked everyone by waving his hand toward the back of the room where the prints from the print salon were displayed and said:

“all those pictures back there are plastic sausages. You people are just producing plastic sausages. I’ve seen those images in salons all over the world for the past 30 years”

People were taken aback. Who the hell does he think he is? I thought right on.

I’m a musician. I love music. I love to play music. I love a lot of different kinds of music. But I don’t get jazz. Hate it, makes me crazy. Don’t understand it. However I know two people who are famous jazz musicians. They are highly trained gifted passionate people with a huge following and they play gigs all over the world. Millions of people enjoy jazz. Does jazz suck? More likely I’m either not capable or musically evolved enough to appreciate it.

So rather than assume that those of us who love this ABSOLUTELY SPECTACULAR image are pretending to do so just to appear hip, I invite you all to try and set your photo-egos and pre-conceptions aside, and have a fresh look at this photo with new eyes. You may even discover something wonderful.

Regards

Gordon Lafleur

“So let’s leave it alone, ’cause we can’t see eye to eye.
There ain’t no good guys, there ain’t no bad guys.
There’s only you and me and we just disagree.”

Patricia

Well, Patricia, perhaps it would be helpful if you supplied a list of topics that “deserve” your attention. It would save a lot of time.

a ¨bit of a stretch¨..haha, good one!

Patricia:

I try, but i will try harder..thanks for the slap upside the head..

“A woman is only a woman, but a good cigar is a smoke”

I read a great response to that line. “a good woman can make you smoke – before and after sex. A cigar can’t do that.”