Dereliction

[RSL]

Stamper, I really like your first crop, but I also like the full view. The color in the upper right tends to balance the color in the lower left. It's a call shot and you're the caller.

[Dave Millier]

Rob

"It is just that I feel exactly like that with more or less every shot I take that doesn't include a girl. It is something that I think has killed my ability to do landscape in the accepted way - the documentaion of something unusual and beautiful in its own right!"

I find this quote of yours interesting, mainly because prior to attending to this thread I had worked my way all through your "motivation" thread.

What I find interesting is that I have almost the exact opposite response. Whilst I am able to appreciate a well turned ankle as any one else, I find that I absolutely detest all "girl" photography. Whether it's fashion, glamour or the front cover of T3 magazine, I can no longer bear the existence of the totally overwhelming volume of girl photography. 99% of all professional photography must now consist of some pretty girl, plastered in make up, with barely any clothes on, air-brushed to death. It's so utterly boring because of its omnipresence.

Surely it's possible to sell a laptop or a set of spoons or a can of beans without having to present the product in the grasp of a preening teenage model with sparkling lip gloss. Not to mention what it must be like for real women to see the endless walls of beautful people, everywhere.  I went into WH Smiths in Victoria Station near my office and just took a look at the mags. It's not just the fashion and beauty mags and the porn shelf any more. It's everywhere: lads magazines whose existence hinges on screaming headlines "Photoshoot:  Caroline from XYZ TV soap NUDE"; the fashion and beauty mags of course; any kind of product marketing mag like computer mags, gadget mags, photo mags; and amazingly even things like trainspotter mags have glamour women on the cover. It's marketing of the most cynical but, crucially, dull kind.

I suspect that I would feel similarly about any genre of photography if I were presented with an endless diet of almost identical photos every direction you look in. The girl genre just got done to death first because it's the easiest and cheapest and most automatic way to market something it would appear. And the fact the presence of the attractive female is usually unconnected with the product in any way whatsoever, certainly tells you everything you need to know.

[Rob C]

Dave

There is no argument: you are absolutely right. And perversely, that ubiquity of semi-porn is what led to the political correctness syndrome that killed my version of girl photography. It isn't new; it was all around us in the mid-eighties too and when the ugly sisters began to export the pc doctrine out of the campus in Wherever, USA, clients began to fear their secretaries who, for the ones I met, seemed as interested in what I was doing for the companies as were the men commissioning me to do it! Those men should have spent time chatting with their secretaries.

It's crazy thinking, out there. There is more blatant sex in any top fashion magazine today, aimed directly and exclusively at women buyers, that I ever thought of putting into a calendar; it just didn't seem to be what I wanted to do; I was interested in beauty and fashion and trying as best I could to meld the two. I have never shot a pornographic image in my life and have no wish to start any time soon! It just ain't my thang.

Rob C