Photo Fascism

I’m a pretty free-thinking soul. I want freedom not only for me, but for you, too. It is a birth-right. Last Sunday I hit a brick wall at Flickr, right after I posted a picture of a fascinating grave marker, one that has been in my focus since 2004 when I first found it. You can see it here:

What beautiful art work. And such detailed breasts. As I mentioned in the description, I wonder if the husband had this carved as such so he could sneak in the cemetery at night and sort of feel his way around.

Anyway, as you can see, I didn’t include the entire name. It really wasn’t important to me and had nothing to do with the image I had in mind. But then…a Flickr member posted a comment, something about how the name was almost hard to read. I posted a response that I really didn’t care about the name, that wasn’t at all what my image was about. He then told me I MUST include this in my photo. I was stunned as I haven’t dealt directly with a photo fascist in quite a while. Wait, maybe never. I’ve had people inflict their personal opinions on me about how they would have taken my photo (which, I suspect, means it wouldn’t be MY photo anymore!) but never a person trying to play a rousing game of ‘you do what I say’ authoritarianism. We went back and forth on this another round or two. Then I decided to check him out on Flickr and he indeed had some lovely photos, lots of page views and comments, too. I’d go as far as to say he was fairly popular on the site. Looking through his photos, I noticed one he had taken from his classroom. Classroom? Here in America, you just don’t take pictures of other people’s children! ;-) He wasn’t in America, though. I guess things are different in Italy. I suppose here if one posts such a photo, Big Brother notices and invites said pervert to come in for an interview on Chris Hansen’s “To Catch a Predator,” after sending that person some luring emails from police officers posing as twelve year old girls looking for older men.

Anyway, on this blackboard were mathematical symbols.

So, said photo fascist is a math or science teacher! Ah…it all came into sharp focus then. LEFT BRAIN. Laws. Rules. Theorems. Precision. And teachers don’t take sass. What he says…goes. Well, at least in his classroom. I should have studied his photos more closely and noted if all his photos follow those LAWS of photography, like using the grid of thirds, processing any ‘art’ photos in B&W, sharp focus always, etc. Oh, and include a person in every shot (which is kind of hard with macro shots! But clever uses of things like reflections of people in drops of water on flower pedals works.)

I too am a teacher by profession, but instead of math/science…music, a totally right brain endeavor. Sure, there are ‘rules’ in music that were drilled into my head in college by Mr. Johns at Wayne State…”roots in the bass a fifth apart…keep the common tone and move the other voices stepwise.” But RULES in music are merely suggestions and when one updates the type of music, like rock, blues, popular, many if not most of the rules melt away. How could you play a decent rock song without parallel fifths and octaves? I wonder if hardcore music theoreticians, the ones that teach below the college -level, have sympathetic aneurisms whenever they hear loud, rowdy rock blaring?

My ‘zen’ approach to photography wouldn’t work well with Mr. Science’s view of how the world MUST be. Was it a case of a confrontation between right and left brain? That’s what I figure.

Hell, I bet my photo fascist friend worships Ansel Adams. I find Adams’ photos boring as hell. Beautiful, but boring.

Photo Fascist drifted away eventually and removed his comments from my page. Now all evidence of our skirmish have vanished.

Life goes on. I hope he doesn’t feel inspired to dictate other requirements when I’m out taking shots.

A Lethal Mixture

High gas prices and increased violence in Detroit are curbed my enthusiasm to go out shooting. Well, in Detroit, at least. There are shootings every day in Detroit, plenty of violence to go around. That doesn’t faze me so much as one incident I heard about on the far east side, in a residential area (where I tend to roam.) Two fifteen year old boys were hijacking cars and robbing the people inside. How? With an AK-47 they were shooting into the car. That’s getting a little personal.

So perhaps I’ll take a little break now from the trolling through bad neighborhoods I visit to get my photos. I can always focus on flowers. Oh, and how about some photos of my shoes? And pics down the neck of a guitar are always nice, since I don’t have a keyboard.