Thanksgiving Conundrum

A note to my friend Fiertel. Chris and I have a niece and her three-year-old son visiting for Thanksgiving.

Made a couple of snapshots of the sub-nephew. They were much appreciated. Also my photos of folks at the office were received with embarrassing praise. This raises a question that's vexed me for years. It sounds like false modesty or fishing for compliments, but I promise it's not. Why is it that if you or I make a photo of somebody, or of a hunk of scenery, or of an objet d'art like for a catalog, viewers are generally full of approbation – yet all we do, or anyway all I do, is point the camera and snap the shutter, trying of course to choose good lighting and the right aperture. Seems to me anybody could do that, especially now that cameras focus themselves and set their own exposure and such. Yet there must be something else involved, because when most perfectly intelligent, art-sensitive people get hold of a good camera and try to do what we do, they can't. I just don't understand. I mean, I can dig why it is that I write better prose or poetry than most folks – they just don't seem to have the right muscles in their head. But in photography I know I'm not all that shit hot, and yet... What the hell?