#PhotographerSnobRant

Finals week has made me obviously irritable and frustrated. (Thank god its Wednesday and I have only one final on Friday!) This is my first "real" college finals week too since I transferred to my current school from an art school in New York City. Finals last year consisted of spending countless hours readjusting my eyes in the darkroom and hunched over charcoal drawings. I loved every single second of it. Unfortunately, the school was extremely expensive, even with my scholarship, and I found I knew way more than my professors. The professors treated it as a joke and most often would agree that art school is a waste of time - creativity cannot be taught. Thus, my transferring schools and into a major in which I also care passionately about - environmental studies. (WATCH OUT FDA!) But, this year finals so far have consisted of my poor attempts at trying to learn ten weeks of cells and genetics information in less than a week. (oops)

Anyway, in the midst of all of this "learning" I have realized how much I miss photography and how important it is as an outlet for me. Unfortunately, I have found over the years as photography has become more and more accessible (via iPhones and less expensive DSLRs) that it has definitely lost its luster at times. All too often I am bombarded with "photographers" who take pictures of girls, who think they are models, and then the photographers edit the shit out of their images on photoshop. I find that this method of photography, although it does get a lot of likes on her Facebook profile picture and on the photographer's Instagram or Flickr, has absolutely no artistic mindset behind it. If I see one more photograph of a girl clad in some sort of underwear or UrbanOutfitters outfit taken by some self-taught photographer, who probably has no idea the differences between f-stops, ISOs, ASAs, apertures, etc. , I will probably shoot myself in the face.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for anyone to pick up a camera and get out there and get familiar with the art form. The problem is more when these individuals are self-proclaiming themselves as photographers when their body of work has no creativity behind it. I'm sorry but your work is just another image taken on your DSLR Canon/Nikon with some girl you kinda know in the center of the frame in some abandon warehouse or a field. Grrrrrrrr. Again, at the university I previously attended I also felt as though my peers' work was extremely uninspiring and that they were just pissing away their parents money… another reason why I left. There were/are a few photographers who are definitely a few exceptions, and thank god that I was lucky enough to get to know them. I look forward to seeing their work progress through the years. For the record, I'm not saying I'm the best photographer out there by any means, I just know that when I set out to take a conscious body of work, I do have some artist statement in the back of my mind that is forming.