jeff, after following the display of some of your work on this forum, it is clear to me that you are a serious photographer with much talent. it is equally clear to me that you have forced me to struggle with many of the fundamental concepts upon which my appreciation of photography as art are based. for that i am grateful. however, the conclusions i have reached are certainly not in accord with what i perceive to be those which are exhibited by your images and your commentary. that is neither good nor bad, of course; it is merely a fact, and hopefully a basis for both you and i to learn more about ourselves in relation to our own art and to art in a broader, more generic sense. to be more specific, i find that you represent what i shall arbitrarily call the "creation school" of photography. that is, i think that you view the photographic process as something to be utilized as a tool with which you can create an image as a thing which represents a symbol of a larger subject: e.g., the picture above is for you representative of "the mysteries and ambiguity of being a child". for me, it is simply a vague, meaningless display of a blurred human figure surrounded by a flat, uninteresting background. again, i hasten to admit that such a statement is subjective, and judgmental. but it is not contemptuous. i am well aware that many other members of this forum (and indeed the entire number of serious photographers) may consider this piece to be insightful or stimulating. still, it is not art, nor is it an exceptional photograph in any fashion. as you observed in an earlier post, you must have thousands of "street shots"; your last offering was entitled "just another street shot". in my view, that is an absolutely accurate assessment of this sort of image. the only thing that makes the picture different from any other image taken in the same area is the fact that the horizon is tilted. one could take thousands of shots of thousands of different individuals walking in front of the same storefront; with one very important exception, they would all be the same, for me: very bland images of people walking in front of a cluttered background. i noted that, for me, there would be an exception. that is, if in 1962 you had captured a picture of marilyn monroe on her way to the corner grocery, or stopped julia roberts in mid stride, glaring (or glancing, surprised) into your lens...then you would have an image of some importance. for that matter, even if the individual pictured were unknown, or unattractive, or not unusual; still, if only they were *doing* something, or appeared unusual in some fashion that speaks to us *intrinsically*, without the need to tilt the camera: then you would have an image that deserves or even commands our attention. i suppose the key word for me is this: capture; for me, a photographer recognizes beauty, or fear, or love...any number of the limitless possibilities in human appearance, and *at the perfect time*, captures that image. he does not create the image, he captures the image. i fear that i shall be taken too literally, but that is the risk when one is in a phase of struggling with a new thought process. i know, for instance, that many of the photographs that i have seen on this forum are in some way, more or less, manipulated. tom meyer's wonderful post coital shot comes (poor word choice?) immediately to mind. but the camera wasn't jiggled, or the image intentionally made obviously blurry simply for "effect", or to make a statement about something else. the image spoke for itself, and its relative clarity reinforced what was communicated. it was a powerful moment. tom surely doesn't have "thousands" of similar photographs. oh, well, it's late, and i have had my say, or at least the beginnings thereof. time for a response, if you care to embark upon a brief trip that may make both of us think about where we are going with our cameras.(posted 8645 days ago)respectfully wayne harrison as you