An Opinion, In My Opinion!

Hi everyone! I hope that the PPTs are helping you with your composing of your photos. We've only scratched the surface and there is so much more to cover. For some you might be saying that you didn't know there was so much effecting the composition of the photograph. If you did the mirror and flashlight experiment you may have been shocked just how big a difference the positioning of the light makes. Up till now you may have thought that if the picture was in focus and the exposure your pretty good then you picture was perfect. My hope is that you will discover with this series of PPTs that there is just a bit more to a great photo that focus and exposure. Whether that hope is realized or not is out of my control. What is in my control is whether I choose to try to make a difference or not. It's easy to choose to do nothing and not risk failure. There are times when going to war having little chance of winning the day has its' merits do to the principles involved. But there is something to be said about choosing your battles and it's here where I choose to focus this blog posting.

Like most of you it seems that I need to almost constantly need to be reminded of the things I've learned over the years. Recently I have had to be reminded that opinions are like a certain part of the human anatomy, everybody has one. It seems that nobody views things in the same way. When I was a cop we learned that if you had two people involved in a situation you could always count on have three sides to the story, person number 1s' side, person number 2s' side, and what really happened. I actually watched a demonstration once where a group of people were watching a couple of people talking when unexpectedly a person came out of nowhere, grabbed a purse belonging to one of the folks involved in the conversation and ran off stage with it. Those viewing this event were reassured that the theft was staged but were then asked a series of questions referencing the description of the "thief". No one got the description correct. In fact they were split on what gender they were. Some stated they had glasses when they didn't while others failed to notice they had a coat on but not hat. It was kind of like watching the game were you secretly tell one person a story and tell them to pass it on secretly to the next person and repeat that until everyone has had the story told to them and then see how close the story the last person told heard it compared to what was told to the first person. Most of the time you can hardly tell any similarities at all.

I was also recently remind of the movie "War Games" (at least in my opinion that was the name of it) were a boy hacked into a NORAD computer thinking he had found a site for new computer games and decided to play Thermo Nuclear War. The computer was built to automatically control the US Nuclear response to any threats and it could also calculate all the different options on how to win a Nuclear war. The computer naturally gets out of control and no one realizes it thinking that the things they're seeing the Russians doing were real. And of course the computer is playing as though it's real so now the whole world is headed for nuclear annihilation and no one can stop it. Finally, the star of the show (the kid that started the whole thing) gets the computer to play itself in a game of tic tac toe which it begins to divert all of it attention to trying to find a way to win the game even though by playing itself it is impossible to win which in turn causes it to do the same with the Thermo Nuclear War game driving the computer nuts and disaster is avoided. So after the computer tries every possible combinations in which to find a way to win at Thermo Nuclear War the computer says to guy who created it, "That's a strange game. The only way to win is not to play." It's a great anti nuclear war movie if your in to that kind of thing.

So how are these two things related and what's my point to all of this? I don't know. Only kidding. When you start listening to peoples opinions and react to them, I have found that you've probably just started playing a very dangerous game. Why? Because like most things in life, opinions have mutated over the years. For the most part, opinions are not longer based on truths or facts. They are tainted by how it effects those who are giving the opinion or what they want or is some cases what they don't want. Ego and arrogance as well as fear of being shown up or out done also plays a role. Rarely do they have your sole interest in mind. But that's not all of the problem. Sometimes the issue of getting someones opinion is complicated by the fact that we really don't want their opinion as much as we want them to agree with what we think or what we want to do. That way if it all goes wrong we can blame someone else thereby avoiding any semblance of responsibility for the choice we made.

So now you're asking, "So what?" Well has any ones opinion had an effect on your life. Can you say government? How about relationships or employment status? The movie "It's a wonderful life" comes to mind. Our lives are so entangled with so many others that many times our lives seem so far out of our control. That's not a fun place to be.

Opinions are getting unreliable at best and destructive at worse, in my opinion. The Good Book says we should seek out wise counsel but that's not very easy nowadays. Because the world so entwines our lives, it hard to find someone who doesn't have a dog in the hunt and even then there may be a dog in the hunt that you just don't know about that is effecting the opinioner which in turn effects the opinionee. Being victimized by a tainted opinion is bad, but it's even worse when you are both the opinioner and opinionee.

My reason for this post is because a lot of things in our society seems to be getting diluted or lax in their meanings and purpose. It's easy to slip into that arena. It's dangerous and very crippling and therefor a place that should be actively avoided as much as possible. It's a major problem within the photography community, in my opinion, and left unchecked could ultimately alter the industry permanently. Everything is constantly in a state of change but whether that change is for the better or not is up to us. For that to happen maybe we should revisit what is driving us and rediscover truth and reality. Only then can opinions regain their value and importance in our world and stop confusing and destroying it. It all starts with each of us individually. It won't be easy but nothing worth while is, in my opinion. I pledge to do my best and while I'm sure I will not always succeed, I will still continue to do my part. Will you?

Have a great day everybody!

Richard