Photography Has No Hips: Fiction and Fake

A bio of sorts -

I packed the trophies gently (not) into a dumpster and retired at fifty in order to spend a year in the wilderness - a year of solitude. It was a goal I set for myself when I was sixteen. I figured that age would nicely separate the first half of my existence from the second. An intermission of sorts.

Life is as diverse as I ever imagined. Am more interested in the connections between things than the things themselves, although some things are pretty nice in their own right. Becoming a child again is trickier than I thought. Living in the country - flyover country, happily, among singing birds and happy crickets with Lovely Rita, two dogs, and a wraparound porch. Quadraphonic peace.

For music, I like the sounds of a puppy's tail wagging, wind through the trees, and a beautiful woman's sigh.

Here's a random question: What the heck was all that back there?

DISCLAIMERS

(Eleven so far, and we're still just now backing out of the driveway. Had seven before I even got the garage door open.)

I have been lovingly advised by helpful friends, wishing only the best for me, I'm sure, that when lecturing around the country, perhaps I should preface my remarks with a few disclaimers, "you know, so as not to step on any toes."
It started simply enough with an offer to buy me a drink, a gentle hand on my shoulder, and "just a couple of tiny little suggestions, mind you."
As time went on, the suggestion list grew. Finally, I had to skip the lecture altogether just to leave time for questions and answers.
Fortunately, blogs have no concept of time, and I can stick these new disclaimers off to the side. I'll probably add more as situations and your helpful and loving suggestions warrant.

1. There are many reasons for snapping pix, or taking pictures, or making photographs, or creating images, or however you wish to phrase it. My goal here is not to denigrate any of those fine functions, or all the others, but rather to guide those who have finally come to The Brick Wall, and help them through it. (Those aren't bricks, by the way.)

2. I will not condemn the amateur. In this blog I will use the word "amateur" (from the French, to love) to refer to those who are photographers for the love of it instead of coming at it with other motivations such as commercial interests. To refer to those lacking skill as amateurs would put us all in that category.

3. My opinions are not necessarily those of any organizations or sponsors I've been associated with in the past or present.

4. My mother did not teach me any of this stuff.

5. This blog should never be thought of as a substitute for the instruction manual for a piece of equipment.

6. This is not a primer for beginning photographers. I have no intention whatsoever of ever discussing equipment except in an incidental way.

7. People who have failed to read their manuals should not be referred to as amateurs. They shall be called ignorant. Ignorance can be remedied. Stupid can't.

8. Ignorance is not an insult. It is merely a description of a temporary, and relative condition, the duration of which being determined by the energy and ambition of those afflicted. And we all are.

9. This blog will not allow name-calling or hurled insults. That's not why I will never call anyone stupid, though. I avoid it for the same reason I don't try to teach pigs to sing or a slab of granite to do the backstroke.

10. Picture vs. photograph vs. image vs. pic.
Call them whatever you like. When I use the term picture, "some circles" think it's demeaning. I think "some circles" are too full of self-importance and become self-aggrandizing. I know of photographers and painters alike who referred to their works, whether photographs or paintings, as "pictures." Some of these pictures are now worth millions.

11. This will not be the place to help people love photography. That should be a given. For me, that will be my point of departure. On the contrary, I intend to take you to the point that I took it to - a frightening place, a level conducive to primal shudders and wide-eyed fear, a level so deep that you will never be able to come back out the same way you went in, a new world, a new reality, a world where you will be scared as hell.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Fiction and Fake

Fiction is not fake. Many people, and some groups, fail to understand the difference.
Fiction is a wonderful thing. Fake is bad, cruel, mean, seditious, harmful, and often illegal.
Great truths can be explained, believe it or not, better by fiction than by nonfiction. That's why fables are there for children, why the greatest novels become the greatest, why myth is so strong, why the Bible has parable, why allegory exists.
How do I define the difference? While neither are "real," fake is the only one to carry with it the intent to deceive. The very purpose of fake is to deceive.
Mark Twain wrote fiction.
That email you got from Africa telling you about how "you're going to get three million dollars just as soon as..." is fake.
Helping a senior girl to become herself in front of a stranger and a camera will take you to the Truth.
Forcing a senior girl's arm into an unnatural position in order to conform to some formula sold to you by some convention speaker who claims that it follows some art dictate, will get you fake.
Truth is beauty.

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Fred Hinegardner

A bio of sorts -

DISCLAIMERS

CAUTIONS, PRECAUTIONS, & WARNINGS

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Fiction and Fake

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