Camera Club Competitions

One of the members of the camera club which Alcy belongs posted on the clubs FB site the link to a piece written by David DuChemin titled Clubs, Competitions & Critiques. This is a subject right up my alley—my personal bête noire.

DuChemin is one of my favorite photography writers. Having said that I also believe that to sell photography instruction books, as DuChemin does, the author has to bow down to and espouse (I usually say regurgitate) some of the conventional impediments of amateur photography—the RULES. DuChemin hits the head, IMNSHO, a number of times. Having never been a member of a camera club, he also misses the mark very widely.

Some years ago, I proposed dropping ‘competitions’ all together. Wow, what a backlash to that one. My personal belief is that there is absolutely nothing that will impede photographic growth like entering amateur competitions. DuChemin attributes it to what I call homogenization, do it as everyone else does it if you are going to get a ribbon and I want a ribbon attitude. I personally attribute it to amateur photographers looking at amateur photography and aspiring to achieve only that level--amateur photographer. A great constriction on advancing. Please do not get me wrong. Some people only wish to become technically accomplished photographers, to have other photographers for companionship. There is nothing wrong with that. I am talking about people that yearn to move their photography farther into art. There is one club in the Houston area that has only one competition a year and another group that I do not believe has competitions at all. Unfortunately, both are a considerable distance from where I live.

If anyone would like to start a group in North Houston area, that actually discusses photography, the art of photography rather than the craft of photography, I would love to join.

DuChemin makes a statement near the end that hits the nail that disturbs me, “…temptation of popular photography culture is to forget the difference between teaching aspiring photographers to use a camera…” His sentence should stop here but it doesn’t. I have been a member of NWHPC for around fifteen years. They are still ‘teaching’ how to use a camera. At what point do camera clubs discover that using a camera is damn simple—point it, press the button and get the damn picture—and that learning to be a/an excellent, outstanding, acceptable photographer is not so damn easy. The reason for using a camera is to create an image. The camera is simply the means; the image is the end. The paint brush is of miniscule importance; the camera is of miniscule importance. It is the image that is important.

Clubs are craft guilds. If we were painters we would have spent the last fifteen years alternating classes between, what is a paint brush, how many hairs should a paint brush have, should the shaft be pine or oak, what is the optimal shaft length for painting sunsets, oh, how does a paint brush compare to a palette knife, does the width of the pallet knife distort vanishing points and (excitedly) today it’s going to be palette knives and how they are affected by the surface texture of the canvas.

At what point does a camera club become a photography club? Maybe it doesn’t.