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On Plants and Stones

Posted by MadScientist (Düsseldorf, Germany) on 21 June 2008 in Architecture and Portfolio.

Many of my colleagues at work are dedicated amateur photographers. Most of them have some features in common: they are married for some years and usually are about 40. Their favourite photography subject is 'fashion and beauty', that means: making photos of preferably pretty young women. They make huge efforts on this, are very busy with contacting models, organizing their shootings and locations, and of course working on their portfolio.

Maybe it's not always the glamour of Vogue or Playboy that might come from this work, but usually their photos are quite amazing and I can surmise what keeps them them sticking to this often arduous work.

Their comments on this model or the other, their reports about missed deadlines and stressful shootings often result in short and explicit comments on these young women. Sometimes I listen to comments of exhaustion where the photographer says once he's fed up with all this beauty stuff he'll return to 'birds and bees' photography.

Poor guys, indeed! Is this an insult? If fashion and beauty photography is that arduous, why do they take on this burden? Hitting 40 means to enter a critical age in a man's life, as you might probably know. (For the records: I'm 42.) Obviously, the preoccupation with young women has its advantages, and a beauty shot certainly has more glamour than a landscape capture.

However, I can't avoid the impression that at least some of my colleagues try to get something back from their life while doing these shootings. But as the leopard can't change its spots (nice proverb, btw) their machismo peeks through - and suddenly the glamour's gone. What remains is their reservation (if not condescendence) against the birds and bees photographers.

As regulars here know, my favourite subjects are made of stone or herbal tissue. They usually don't pose for me; most of them I know only by accident. I have to take them as they are, there is no make-up artist and generally I don't have to consider queasy questions about nudity, recklessness and the like. My models are either short-lived or way too old for glamour shots. I wouldn't want to look down at a nudie photographer because I'm preferring photos of sacral architecture and primeval plants. It's just my strange little world as the glamour is theirs.

I've posted so many pictures of this beautiful church that you certainly recognize it immediately: Il Gesù, exactly.
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Canon EOS 300D
1/10 second
F/3.5
ISO 200
20 mm

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