![\"IMG_0082-Edit\"](\"http:\/\/www.artistrichardcuster.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/IMG_0082-Edit.jpg\")
<\/a>Williams Tower – Houston, TX (2007)<\/p><\/div>\n
I recall my own innocence (for lack of a better term) in taking this photo.\u00a0 I was still learning everything I could about photography, but it was very slow going at the time. \u00a0 Magazines such as\u00a0Popular Photography<\/em> seem to assume one has a baseline of knowledge.\u00a0 I didn’t even have that baseline when I took this picture.\u00a0 It wasn’t until a little over 2 months later that things would finally start to gel for me.<\/p>\n Beneath The Massacre at Summer Slaughter 2007 in Houston, TX<\/p><\/div>\n An early concert photo taken in 2007 (before the image of Williams Tower).\u00a0 This was among the first taken with my DSLR.<\/p>\n Cy-Fair College – Houston, TX (2007)<\/p><\/div>\n That was my first film image taken after I enrolled in a photography course at Cy-Fair College.\u00a0 I was amazed at how one class worth of lecture crystallized everything for me in terms of the camera settings.\u00a0 I had achieved a baseline of knowledge (and quickly learned how very little use a certain magazine had for me in terms of teaching).\u00a0 I knew I could only get better from there.\u00a0 I had to, since this negative was pretty messed up by my repeated attempts to load it on the film roll for processing. It also awakened the artist that was always inside me and had been suppressed since graduating from high school.<\/p>\n I’d like to say that I did get better.\u00a0 In these early days I still had my innocence (again, for lack of a better term) about photography.\u00a0 I learned technical aspects (such as metering for extreme lighting conditions), effective composition, and color balancing.\u00a0 I would go on to learn about conceptual things such as the language of photography (which eludes me a little, but with each day it gets a little slower in avoiding my grasp), the essence of photography as an index and how it relates to art, and the limits and possibilities of the medium.\u00a0 The conceptual stuff destroyed my innocence, but gave me new focus (pun not intended) in terms of how I was going to proceed.<\/p>\n This is an interesting time for photography.\u00a0 Like the proliferation of hand held cameras in the 1960’s and 70’s, cell phone cameras have brought an old challenge back to photography, albeit in a way that is much more intense.\u00a0 A couple of years ago an artist was inspired by an exhibition at the Museum Of Fine Arts Houston that explored photomanipulation prior to the advent of Photoshop.\u00a0 He created a little project of abstract photos taken with his iPhone.\u00a0 He said that he was “faking it” by attempting to create art with a cell phone camera.\u00a0 Not much was discussed about that project (he was submitting 2 for critique), but it does illustrate the challenge posed and the resistance to it.\u00a0 The explosion of social media has also brought new importance of the snapshot just by virtue of the proliferation of snapshots in the wild.<\/p>\n The 2 issues above pique my interest each in their own way.\u00a0 The proliferation of cell phone cameras (along with their growing capabilities) has led some agencies to actually eliminate photo staff and rely on the field reporter to get images for a print or web story.\u00a0 Can an untrained (relatively speaking) photographer capture an image that will have the same effectiveness as one captured by an experienced professional?\u00a0 That is the biggest question.\u00a0 The growth of social media, fueled by the growth of cell phones, challenges our personal relationship to photography.\u00a0 The snapshot is generally a personal image made to document our relationship to the world.\u00a0 When those images are out in the wild, is it still “just” a snapshot?\u00a0 How has our relationship to the world changed when a personal photo is published for all to see?\u00a0 How is medium challenged in general?\u00a0 Is “art” photography elevated or cheapened?\u00a0 These are just a few of the questions we find ourselves asking.<\/p>\n Thus ends my contribution to World Photo Day.\u00a0 I will leave you now with a recent image I created, just to show my own progress in photography.\u00a0 I will also leave a snapshot I created at the same event.\u00a0 Maybe it will help my faithful and not-so-faithful readers to ponder their own questions regarding the medium within the context of my discussion.\u00a0 If not, well, that’s perfectly fine with me.\u00a0 Not everyone thinks about it the way I do, but I do hope you at least enjoy the images.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/a>