On Year Boards & Priorities

So yes, after nearly half a decade of lobbying and pestering and being an irritating old man; I have given up.

Yes, you did not hear me wrong, I have given up. I have given up and decided to take matters into my own hands. Sometimes, some things, some people just don't get it and you just gotta do it yourself. You might be forgiven for wondering why I sound kinda irritated. Well, that's because I am. And somewhat disappointed too.  If you ask me; if one cannot complete a 1-hr job in a span of 1 year, then it says plenty about one's priorities.

Yes, one might argue about priorities and etcetera, but I believe I have explained the rational and significance so much so I am sick of hearing myself repeat it. And its not like no one agrees with me. Everyone agrees; yet no action is taken. So who's priorities are we kidding? Mine? Your's? Or the club's?

And yes, since we are on the point of priorities, allow me to add. No, I am not questioning your rights to determine the priorities for the club, more like I'm wondering if you are indeed basing your priorities based on club's interests or your own or your exco's. During the early days of the club, there was literally no difference between the club's or exco's interests. Because the club had nothing, anything and everything beneficial was an interest of the club. But as time passes, more and more legacy is acquired, but newer and newer excos choose to continue on their path of maximizing their interests over the club's and that is where the line starts to diverge. I am not denying that even though the paths diverge, it is not for the benefit of the club. It is; but is it the most effective and efficient way?

Yes, obviously the most efficient way from point A to B is a straight line; and if you are the first to carve out that path, you get to put your name on it. Great! So what happens if you are second? Or third? Or fourth? Do you create alternative paths to B to call your own? Well, clearly it depends on your priorities. Given a fixed amount of effort, one will probably get more mileage out of building on top of an existing infrastructure than building something from scratch. So am I denying the rights to new ideas? No! But have existing ideas been maximized? No! So you might be mistaken that I am trying to put the blame of this phenomenon on someone; but that is not the intention. I don't blame anyone. It is only natural for this to happen because it is inherent in the way we work. When we work, we want to maximize our benefit by maximizing the benefit of the organization we are working for; but when push come to shove, our benefit will always comes first. However, no one realizes that by putting the benefit of the organization first, we will automatically maximize our own benefit.

Yes! The whole point of this complex mental and literary exercise is to make us wonder, are we doing something because it is in the club's best interests? Or are we just selfish pricks trying to make ourselves look good? Don't be the selfish prick, ya?

Finally! Now all we need are some spotlights... *cough cough*

I am magnanimous. If you choose not to do your year boards, I will kindly do them for you.

Hopefully, this will provide some additional motivation...

On: Competitions

The blog seems to be very very quiet these days and I reckoned as much; but if you are here now, then I reckon again as much that you need a break too. :)

For those of you who don't frequent Clubsnap, you prolly would not have noticed this:

http://www.thempa.com/masterphotographyawards09_finalists/

It's essentially the Master Photography Awards 09 Finalist album. It's an outstanding selection of 70 odd photos and even though it's a British competition, you can see some local pictures in there. Some local professional photographers managed to enter the finals; hence they plastered this on the Clubsnap front page.

But that's not the point, the point is that: It's a good album and you all should take at least a quick glance to get a sense of what makes a good photo.

The other point is that while I was looking through the photos, if anything, a number of the photos were heavily edited (burning, dodging and even framing), some even composite and it really got me to start thinking, if overseas professional competitions allows for such freedom in photographic expression in competitions, then why are local amateur competitions so uptight about post processing? Some don't allow you to edit and some allow, some don't allow you to crop and some restrict you to certain specific sizes, some allow for some form of contrast enhancement but the large grey area leaves much to be desired.

Over the years, I have joined or witnessed quite a number of photographic competitions and I've noticed that a lot of our local judges tend to favour under edited photos; some WB correction or very minor contrast enhancements at most. For some reason they seems to like the raw and unadulterated flavour in photos, opposed to those heavily edited ones, seen in the album I mentioned about. Like some people prefer their vegetables blanched in water rather than stir fried in chilli. Of course to one his own taste, but the problem - from what I gather is that they tend to think that heavily edited photos are fake, over processed and unnecessary. It's almost like saying its a sin to fry kang kong with blachan because it kills the delicate flavour of the kang kong even though it might taste delicious. It may be extremely delicious but it's pointless hence it's a failure because it relies on heavy seasoning. Clearly to just brush it off as bad, is just wrong.

Is it fair to say girls who put on heavy makeup have poor fashion sense or out of their mind? If she's pretty, she's pretty, if she's ugly, she's ugly. What does having heavy, light or no makeup got to do with it?

Then again, those of you who have seen my photos would know that I like to process my photos heavily so you may think I might be biased, but I'll let you decide on what you think is best.

But personally at the end of the day, your preference in post processing really boils down to how you view photography, whether you think it's a journalistic extension of writing or a more technical form of art, hence the way you preserve the "truth" would be very different. The important thing is that you do it your way, not what others think is the right way. To me, photography is an art form and as an artist; my expression is absolute. Everyone else comes after me.