George Lazarette wrote:
Don,

You are proof that education is something that, to a large extent, starts when you leave school. You are irrepressible, a pillar of the forum, the man who put the genius into ingenious, and an all-too-rare visitor nowadays.

G

johnriley wrote:
Well I've just arrived back to find all this, and as most of you are not aware of what has happened behind the scenes in the past few days with a couple of members, apparently from the same group, I'll just say that some of the comments in this thread are somewhat disingenuous to say the least.

Cloudhunter is obviously way out of line, intentionally so it seems, so unfortunately we will not be seeing him here again.

Some of you will be surprised to learn that you are my "cronies" just as much as I am.

It's a pity that there are still some here who seem to want to cause trouble, they know who they are, and I will now ask them for a final time to stop. Trolling will not be allowed.

benjikan wrote:
I just wish to clarify something here, I love Richard Avedon, Irving Penn, Bert Stern and others work. It isn't so much the tool but how one uses it and as far as I am concerned too many people are reaching for the tools without too much forethought. That is not a critique, but an observation. When I gave a tutorial at the Sorbonne School of Photography a branch in Orleans, France. The first things I asked was, what are your preferred lighting tools and in almost all cases the answer was what you would expect. I was attempting to have them think outside of the box, to break with convention. Once you have the vocabulary and reasoning for why you are doing what you are doing, then perhaps the response might be a single 60" umbrella at 60° right and above the model, because "that is what you Wanted..."

George Lazarette wrote:
Indeed. And fifty years ago the standard of English was immeasurably higher than it is now. (I know - I was there!)

But as others have pointed out, I am not asking for perfection, just a little more care. It's the sloppiness that I object to, and it goes hand in hand with a feeling that it's better that a hundred readers should have to struggle with a post than that the writer should take five seconds to "post-process" the thoughts he want to share.

And welcome back to our resident troll. Sometimes he's a business student, with textbook views on marketing; today he's an anthropologist. One day he might transmogrify into a real person, with views of his own, but don't hold your breath.

G

johnriley wrote:
I use the umbrella, the softbox, the snoot and anything else that takes my fancy at the time, but most of all I prefer the look of natural light.

Unfortunately in some circumstances natural light is not there on tap, so flash with umbrella it might have to be!

Shaky wrote:
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, it seems to me you would need to have a heart of stone to read George's original post without shedding a tear of laughter at the supposed injustices suffered.

But rather than take issue with his hypocrisy or petty prejudices, I would instead like to outline my anthropological theory regarding the underlying forum dynamic at work.

Without having been fully privy to of George's 5,000 odd posts over not much more than 5 years - itself an extremely prolific achievement raising legitimate questions as to quality control - it is clear that he is a forum "oldie" to use Malo's no doubt apt description.

Malo is himself an oldie, and so are most of the others that have weighed into this thread in favour of the original sentiments expressed; just do a members search and you will see these names at the top of the posting leaderboard and the clustering of joined dates around 2006.

However, although these people may be oldies they are not the progenitors of the forum; now try a search of members by joined date and a whole plethora of names crop up that I have never seen or heard from. This is unsurprising as the original members generally speaking were unable to generate much by way of posting, allowing the new oldies a clean canvas on which to make their mark.

In my view this backdrop creates the real possibility that the term oldies may in fact be a subliminal slip of the tongue that actually implies the term elders, specifically tribal elders, because is clear that the dynamic here is very much that of a tribe.

Seen in this way the otherwise meaningless zealotry regarding the use of proscribed language instead assumes highly ritualistic significance transformed as it is into magical incantation warding off the possibility of change in general, which is invariably deemed harmful to tribal society.

Of course going all the way back to Hearclitus man has been fearful of the effects of change on society - tribal or otherwise - and whether a metaphor for this is sought in the supposed decline in standards of language or that of the chief object of veneration Pentax, it impels an urge to arrest and if possible reverse it. A tall order indeed!

I believe the tribal analogy may be extended in many other interesting and often amusing ways but to stay on topic I will mention only one final thing; although George is clever at wrapping this up in a flowery albeit somewhat pompous literary style he has a tendency to be rude and abusive (I had thought he temporarily made an effort to curb this but he appears to be back to his old ways again).

However, it is a tribal taboo to point this out, and if anybody should ever accuse him of such a thing the tribe must immediately close ranks and shout down any offenders. For it is in the nature of the tribe to tolerate any and all behaviour, even severe literary deficiencies, if the transgressor pays due homage and reverence to relevant customs and ritual.

PentaxBabe wrote:

Someone also wanted a comparision between a shot taken with a Canon and a Pentax. Well I can provide you with that as well. Please bear in mind that Peter is a professional and I am not. Peter will also have performed more pp on his image while I have only sharpened and cropped mine. I have blown my images up to A3 in the past. I believe the differences in the images are down to the shill of the photographer either in camera settings or in pp or both. You are welcome to disagree with me

Peter's image
link

My version
link

Just trying to help