on May 10th, 2007Artistic Community
No man is an island and from my experience this includes artist. The social internet trend has created new ways for photographers and art fans to come together and share their work and their ideas. I think this is a wonderful thing. The social web has recreated the internet for me with weblogs and social art sights such as flickr. However, at the end of the day I think it is very important to actually go out and talk to people, in the real world. I am no expert, but I don’t imagine AA would work as well over the internet and I think photographers and other artists should go out and meet their peers.
Tonight is the monthly meet up of a Chattanooga photography group that I have been going to since January. I have meet a handful of great photographers and some future great photographers. I didn’t think last year that I had much to learn about photography, but I have this year and I learned it by watching and listing to other artists. Digital photography is a new art form in the bigger picture and even though so very much of digital photography overlaps with traditional film photography, there are differences. I have found that the early masters of this new medium need not be the most experienced photographers. I started on film, but I have become 100 times the photographer that I was after switching to digital. I have found that digital photographers of all ages can be the teachers and digital photographers of all ages can be the students.
This reversal of roles leads to something else interesting. People who have not been the teacher before are now put into that position and people who used to be the teachers are now the students. For this new dynamic to work, I have had to learn to learn from other photographers in a new way. Watching how they work and looking at their creations. One tool that is very useful, I have found is EXIF information. Digital SLRs record ISO speeds, shutter speeds, aperture and focal length. This is a very valuable tool when learning what you like and dislike in photography and how others get the results that I wish I was getting. My point of course is that when we adopt new technologies we have new things to learn and having an artistic community is a great way to share and learn. I suggest that if you have not already done so, try and find a group of artists in your community that you can share with, and if such a group doesn’t exist consider starting one.
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I agree with you about the internet, also I REALLY agree with you about meeting other bloggers.
I like that the internets has given new ways for people with common interests to meetup. I love my knitting meetup. It definitely inspires my creativity!
And I’ve had pretty good luck with meeting other bloggers too.