character inflation

people associate themselves with something they think will impress you ; they think is valuable . they do this as they reach for examples.. this, is like that.. frequently, amongst amateur photographers, it seems to be food.. fast food versus slow food. prepared by others– prepared by you.. with you being gourmet ,custom ,elite.. tellingly , most amateur photographers that don’t hold up to the best of that word amateur have diminished vision of cooking as well. Their examples include such things as retrieving fine steaks from their freezer.. however, Kobe beef is never frozen, is never ground. you lose the flavor of the Kobe cooking.. sushi grade fish is not frozen.. never.

rubbing elbows, walking by a bank ,does not make you richer. living near a university does not make you more educated .. building a better play at liars dice doesn’t make you more honest.. it will fool the news hungry ,the novice , naïve, budding Ansel acolyte..–

The amateur exaggerates more than the professional .. The amateur is always in awe of task or performer. Since frequently they overestimate the task, the difficulty of the task , they overestimate the person who has achieved a task.. they think more equipment is needed than ever was.. thinking dye transfer — my sink is bigger than your sink type of process. But not to dye printers. To amateur non-printers it was a task too far. So far, they spent years buying instead of trying. And then it was gone.

… AND, professionals that appear on amateur, aka, enthusiast forums are usually selling; either workshops, learning materials, something … it seems they give away, and some things they do ,but they never give away what they intend to sell…

I’ve often been wary of the professionals asking advice of the amateur forums..why ask someone who buys film by the box about a capital expense?  why ask a group stalled at agitation and storage practces about complexity of re-exposure reactions? why stunt your personal imaging with the ‘refusal’ glasses — don’t look at Man Ray.. do you think you will arrive at some other place .. whoops, you didn’t.. your enforced astigamism blinded you to more than three alternate routes you could have considered in your slow-mo decade on the hobby spots.