:communing:

This past week I went to my first Meetup with other local photographers. I'm hoping to meet and talk to more artists, art by nature is a solitary activity, and it helps to get some feedback and other benefits from others who are hopefully of the same wavelength as your own.

I'm glad that I did it but have still some lingering mixed feelings about it. I'm sure I'm overthinking things. One thing that I know I need to learn is the more technical aspects of my camera(s), but I think sometimes some of the people there were focused more on that than the end product. I'm not so sure they shared my love of "happy accidents." I can't recall the ISO or whatever I used on each individual shot, and I don't see why I should. I detected a bit of "oh, really..." when I said that most of the shots that I showed were taken with my point and shoot camera. What does it matter what tool you use as long as you get the end result that you want? Probably because of this I didn't even bring up Instagram.

In the above photo, the critique was that the horizon line wasn't perfectly straight. I was like, really? I'm not one for rigid rules. There were lots of pictures of dogs and flowers which, while technically well-taken, were not very interesting to me.

Eh. As you see, I may be taking it a bit too personally. I'm just, and have been for some time, trying to find like-minded artists, and it's been very difficult. I think at the very least I'll learn more technical skills, and there are other Meetups to try out. There's a group in Salem that I haven't made it out to yet, maybe those in a spookier town will be more akin to me.