Plagiarism - Simply Pretty

[Ted Byrne]

Now back to basics (or classics)...




The thing about flowers is that… Well you know what a “gimmee” is in golf? They are given free to us as artists. They are so beautiful… almost achingly so, that it is as if we are cheating by making images of them. They are both simple and pretty… “Simply Pretty”.

And they are so difficult at the same time. I have a similar problem with gorgeous people. Their very perfection leaves me so little artistic room to maneuver. How do I add anything to the stunning presence of those flowers up above? What is left for my artistic muse? I become a reproducer… a copier…. a…a… a… plagiarist.

If I took something like that in my day job… and reproduced it in an article… I’d get sued for appropriating the idea/work of someone else. And yet… yet…

Haven’t you noticed that there are things which are like magnets to our lenses? Trains pull at our cameras along with sun sets/rises, children… and… and.. FLOWERS!

So of course I can’t help myself. But when they are done… and the image sits there smiling back… So simple… so pretty… So Simply Pretty… I want to share it, but not take credit for it. Because what I see there is something for which I have very little credit. What I see there is awesome, moving, and some higher source’s gimmee.

BTW, there are artists who can express their personal wonder through their floral still lifes. I think of April's stunning studio studies. Hers are NOT merely slavish reproductions. Not boooooring. See, it's not so much flowers that I find booooring. Or images of them... It is the fact that I lack the imagination to do more than reproduce nature's gimmee.

Sigh…

[aprilS]

This is so well said, Ted.

Now I better understand why eob gags at yet another sunset shot.  It's pretty, but...

And the feeling of dissatisfaction in much of my own work. Technically ok, but where's the experience?

But regarding your image, it's bold and pulls no punches; very much "in your face" as these orchids are -- which makes me smile.

And that is an experience.

[eob]

Ted, as always, you said it much better than I could ever explain my antipathy for this sort of themes in photography.

If the thing we photograph is beautiful, that does not necessarily mean that our image of that thing automatically comes out beautiful. Usually, the image comes out as just a graphic documentation of a beautiful subject - if not made with some imagination, emotion and abstraction. That's why most sunsets are just replications of the same kitsch and why a lot of nudes are just a pornography. I find those subjects to be the most difficult to interpret artistically.