{"id":310,"date":"2006-08-18T22:18:08","date_gmt":"2006-08-19T03:18:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/?p=310"},"modified":"2007-01-23T19:06:51","modified_gmt":"2007-01-24T00:06:51","slug":"most-art-sucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/2006\/08\/18\/most-art-sucks\/","title":{"rendered":"Most of my art sucks. Yours, too."},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>Thought for the weekend:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nTo be honest, most of my pictures suck. The saving grace of that admission is that most of <i>your<\/i> pictures suck, too. How could I possibly know such a thing? Because most of everybody&#8217;s pictures suck, that&#8217;s how. I&#8217;ve seen Cartier-Bresson&#8217;s contact sheets, and most of his pictures sucked. One of my teachers said that it was an epiphany for him when he took a class from Garry Winogrand and learned that most of Winogrand&#8217;s exposures sucked. It&#8217;s the way it is.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&mdash; Mike Johnston, of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.37thframe.com\/\">37th Frame<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/theonlinephotographer.blogspot.com\/\">The Online Photographer<\/a>, etc. fame, in his essay,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.luminous-landscape.com\/columns\/sm-sept4-05.shtml\">The Magic Bullet<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So how do you deal with most of your art sucking? The insanely excellent book, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0961454733\/photondetecto-20\">Art &amp; Fear: Observations on the Peril (and Rewards) of Artmaking<\/a>, by David Bayles and <a href=\"http:\/\/tedorland.com\/\">Ted Orland<\/a>, has some outstanding thoughts on the subject. If you like that one, chase it with Orland&#8217;s follow-up, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/096145475X\/photondetecto-20\">The View From The Studio Door: How Artists Find Their Way In An Uncertain World<\/a>. I keep meaning to write reviews of both of them but never seem to find the time to do it properly. For now I&#8217;ll just say that they&#8217;re the best investments in artmaking I&#8217;ve ever made.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thought for the weekend: To be honest, most of my pictures suck. The saving grace of that admission is that most of your pictures suck, too. How could I possibly know such a thing? Because most of everybody&#8217;s pictures suck, that&#8217;s how. I&#8217;ve seen Cartier-Bresson&#8217;s contact sheets, and most of his pictures sucked. One of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,12],"tags":[139,225,430,1152,1708],"class_list":["post-310","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-artmaking","category-books-publications","tag-art","tag-books","tag-david-bayles","tag-mike-johnston","tag-ted-orland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=310"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/photondetector.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<!-- WP Super Cache is installed but broken. The constant WPCACHEHOME must be set in the file wp-config.php and point at the WP Super Cache plugin directory. -->