Underwhelmed

It's long been obvious to me that if I posted most of my photos for 'crit' on a photography forum they'd get ripped to shreds. My subjects are often 'boring', and I don't do much post processing so they lack that, apparently. essential 'pop'. At least 'that forum' has now got a personal project section where I feel happier posting stuff for comment because it tends to be mostly about the project and from people who also work on projects - of which there are few.

Another boring photograph

When I delve into the other sections I see lots of photographs that are well executed and show far more technical mastery than I could ever be bothered to develop. Yet there's rarely anything that interests me. I keep looking at the people and portraits section in the hop that I'll get some inspiration to fire me up to get my finger out and do some proper portrait work, but it's all uninteresting. The best photo in there I have seen recently was a picture of the child from someone who had only just taken up photography. It was badly out of focus, but it was the kind of picture you wanted to keep looking at rather than note how well done it was and move on to the next perfectly uninteresting picture. It had captured something beyond what the kid looked like which - no matter how good the lighting, posing and composition - most of the portraits fail to do.

I guess if I am ever to find inspiration for making portraits of my own the only way forward is to get out of my safety zone and make some. The old learning by doing routine.

---