Pucker Up and Gimme Some Love!

So no one thinks that I think this thing we do, i.e., this photography thing, is all about technical skills, I don't.

I don't.

I don't.

I don't.

What I think it's about is a whole lot of things.

While I don't feel qualified to speak about too many genres of photography, I do feel I can speak for glam and tease and erotic shooting with some small degree of experience and with a qualification or two. With that in mind, here's what I think this stuff is all about: It's about passion, it's about what you know and what you have yet to learn, it's about art and aesthetics, it's about gaining rapport, it's about communications, and yeah, it's about technical skills. And not necessarily in that order! (Although that order will do just fine. In fact, any order works because all of these things, and many more that aren't occurring to me right now, are equally important.)

If you subscribe to that left brain vs. right brain stuff, photography is an art (or a craft... whatever) that calls on your whole brain to accomplish excellent results. It's an art form that calls on science as much as it calls on creativity. One side of the brain working overtime while the other side hibernates does not, IMHO, produce outstanding photographic results. At least, for the most part it doesn't.

When I see work that seems mostly right-brain conceived and executed, with little or no regard for the technical stuff, I find that work somewhat deficient, leastwise in terms of it being a great photographic image. It might be a notable image, but not a notable PHOTOGRAPHIC image.

Personally, I've been shrink'd (shrunk?) more than a few times in my life. Each time, I've been told that I'm very right-brained, almost to the exclusion of the left side of my melon. That doesn't make me Mister Creative. It means I'm a big picture kind of guy. Details elude me. It also means I have to really focus and concentrate to achieve results that require left-brain thinking. You know, where much of that processing occurs that works well with the technical stuff. Example: Algebra? Fuhgedaboudit. Might as well be an extra-terrestrial language. Geometry? Maybe. It kind'a makes sense. That's probably why a technically near-perfect photograph really impresses me... at first, that is. But then, the right-side of my melon resumes its authority and decides the image, which at first impressed me with its technical prowess, sucks... or isn't all that. You know what I'm saying, right? Anyway, I guess I'm this way (that way?) because I'm quite impressed with people who can figure out how to do things that elude me until I take a closer look at the results, the BIG PICTURE results, and then I sometimes end up much less impressed than when I first considered whatever it was that impressed me to begin with. (I hope that made sense.)

People that excel at mechanical stuff, like fixing a car or building a nuclear reactor, usually impress the heck out of me... until I get to know them.

So, in a nutshell, here's where I'm coming from: For someone's work to really impress me, they need to show me that they've mastered most all the stuff that comes from each side of their brains in order to produce truly great results.

The pretty girl puckering up is Jamie. I shot her a month or so ago and, while doing so, I asked her to give me some love. And she did... well, maybe she wasn't really giving it to me, personally to me, but to the camera. But I can delude myself pretty well. (An often-seen trait of right-brain thinkers.) And if I want to believe that kiss was for me, it was for me. So there.