New Year greetings

Welcome to the list Dan, and happy New Year to everyone on the list!

John.

www.johnbrewerphotography.com

----- Original Message -----
From: "Judy Seigel" <jseigel@panix.com>
To: <alt-photo-process-l@sask.usask.ca>
Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 9:52 PM
Subject: Re: O.T. RE: Sharp plane of focus

>
>
> On Sat, 31 Dec 2005, dan@haygoods.org wrote:
>
>
>> JC> There is not a woman alive that wants her
>> JC> portrait taken with a normal lens!
>>
>> JS> ...when a person is seriously gorgeous...there's no point in..."soft
>> focus."
>>
>> But the comment was not about what the photographer should do when
>> photographing
>> a portrait; it was what the sitter would want. While the phrase "not a
>> woman
>> alive" is a bit hyperbolic, most people like to look their best in a
>> portrait,
>> even if the photographer would prefer to dwell on pores, blackheads,
>> facial
>> hair, and acne scars.
>
> I see no profit to Dan or the list, & least of all to myself & 2006, in an
> attempt to correct the misassumptions, spin, distortions, false
> syllogisms, and ruffled feathers of Dan's "reply,"... but being especially
> interested in the photo representation of women, especially the
> subdivision as seen by men, and now subdivision of the subdivision as
> *theorized* by men, I do a service to humankind, art & photography, in
> observing that any person (no matter who JC is -- what comes to mind for
> those initials, especially in this season, is Jesus Christ) is that any
> man, mortal or immortal, who knows what ANY woman wouldn't want, is wasted
> on mere photo philosophy. He could be much more usefully employed as, say,
> director of marketing for the Gap, having its troubles of late.
>
> But aside from hyperbole, the question that comes to mind is -- do women
> have more blackheads & acne scars, etc., than, say, men? If not, do MEN,
> dead or alive, want them shown in *their* portraits? Ie, are they less
> vain than women? But the whole business is based on a false premise
> anyway -- that it requires a special soft focus lens to avoid these. IME,
> an ordinary 85 mm lens is fine, as for that matter is my dopey little
> Canon 5 megapixel.
>
> There's also the fact that I don't offhand think of any of the women I
> know whose faces show the above mentioned blemishes, at least when seen in
> the flesh at normal distance -- and they haven't shown in the many
> photographs I've made of women (tho when I was a student and made a shot
> of a colleague that I found particularly flattering, I was surprised that
> she saw TWO layers of rings under her eyes. Would "soft focus" have cut
> them out???) My most recent foray onto this apparently treacherous
> territory was a series of head shots last month for a stage actress aged
> 40+ to send to producers... she said they wanted to see exactly what she
> looked like. Meanwhile, AFAIK, all these women are "alive" -- at least
> when last I saw them.
>
> In any event, most folks at any time like to be flattered in a portrait,
> but said blanket rule for women wouldn't work even if it weren't so
> patronizing.
>
> Judy
>
>
> --
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Received on Mon Jan 2 18:23:54 2006