Postcard from Upstate

About success and how much of it will get you a meal at Macdonald's. When I started putting photos up for critique in 1998 I expected a particular problem and wasn't disappointed. Since I'm not world famous, photos that look a bit unusual are dismissed as failed attempts to make a usual photo. For example, the one I just posted as "Postcard from Upstate" got low ratings and a comment suitable for beginners about "too much noise reduction." The idea that it's a self-mocking yet pleasantly abstracted landscape doesn't seem to recommend itself to my audience. Then again, why should it? Most photos that look like that really are mistakes – maybe happy mistakes, but not studied and careful work. If such a photo appeared over a famous name folks would look harder and try to see deeper, and most would probably get the picture, so to speak, if the photo really was any good.

I'm not complaining, just describing the problem.

To complicate things, it's easy for a photographer (or any brand of artist) to use this excuse for poor work – "It's supposed to look that way." We've all heard that song and seen that dance throughout the last century or so – "They made fun of Picasso too." And in fact some of the big names produced things that are as banal as they look; most of Cartier-Bresson's lesser known photos deserve to be lesser known. But his best is unbeatable.