Crap, I’m becoming a “Pixel Peeper!!”

Kind of following up on my last post, I’ve realized I may be becoming one of those people that I rant about on a regular basis!

You know the ones I’m talking about… Mr. Dissect-every-little-pixel when discussing an image.  And I know who to blame (and naturally,  it’s not going to be ME!)

A couple of years ago, I started a blog.  I wanted to use it as a tool to improve my writing skills.   It sucked.  Badly.  The only guy that followed it (besides my dad who doesn’t count ’cause he’s seen me with a full diaper and still had to love me) was a pencil-dick colleague of mine who hoped to use anything I wrote against me by reporting to management if I even came close to talking about work.

But really, it sucked because it wasn’t about anything I had passion about.  It was one of the 500 billion “me wandering through life” blogs with no actual purpose.   Then I thought.. what am I passionate about?  Photography. Bam, Al Borrelli Photography the blog was born!

So then I started to think about where to go for inspiration about what to write about.  And I found forums as a great source because thousands of people with thousands of viewpoints were sharing (or imposing heh) their flavor with the masses.

One of the first places I ended up on, sadly, was Fan Art Review (FAR).  If you don’t know of it, don’t worry, you’re not missing much*.  If you’ve been there you’ll know I’m accurate when I say that if you want a “wow, great photo!” pat on the back with little else in terms of constructive input, fine go there.  Otherwise, if you’re serious about photography, stay away and go somewhere else, like my recent stomping grounds, Digital Photography School (DPS).

I got so upset with the empty commentary that people disguised as “critiquing” that I found myself going in the completely opposite direction and highlighting only bad things in the images so that the input the photographer got was more balanced.    I ended up being asked to leave the site by the site creator. (PS Tom, your site sucks and takes advantage of people who have to pay for what they could get through DPS or flickr for free!) And this more-negative-than-not attitude has persisted somewhat up to now.

On DPS, even though the ‘back patting’ isn’t near the level it was on FAR, I find myself becoming like the guy in the cartoon above and it scares me a bit.  Have I lost the ability to simply get lost in the fun of an image even if it’s one of the 10 billion close-ups of someone’s child?  Have I gotten to the point  that I expect everyone to fit in some context I’ve constructed in my own head as to what a “good” photo should be??  Flying Spaghetti Monster, I hope not!

Luckily, I believe I’m still well in the camp of someone giving constructive commentary at all times (ehrm, at most times) … but would I notice when I finally cross over to the Dark Side and become one of these “fix this, fix that, do better before we pros take you seriously” pricks that I’m always complaining about?

I hope not.  And when/if I do, I hope you all call me out on it and tell me “shut up, get off your high horse,  and go take some photos Al!!”  Please.

*When I reference FAR, I mean the photographers there, not the other artists and writers.. just the photogs.  And even then there were, of course, exceptions. But for the most part, the senior (or higher ranking) folk while I was there were wankers.