Beyond the obvious

Browsing social photography websites like Flickr and 500px is a frustrating experience. Overall the quality of photography is horrible. Home truths. Straight from the horse's mouth Nobody dares say anything negative. Often votes and comments are motivated by a desire for reciprocation rather than because the viewer actually likes the image. Many people spend less than a second viewing an image. It's so easy to click the fave icon on a page of thumbnails. People that receive a lot of votes/likes/favs are either good photographers or just good at playing the social game. This has all been said before and I really am not bothered by the social side. The thing that bothers me is the lack of interest, effort and passion for their images among so many photographers. Do they not see that when they push the saturation slider out near the maximum that the colours look awful, unnatural and garish? Do they not see that when they over-sharpen or over-use the clarity tool that...

Technique can be learnt but there are two other vital ingredients in an artist's makeup that you're born with, one of which is easily lost along long hard road of life. Flemish artist Willem Vermandere Creativity is something we all have in us. Some people are born more creative than others. There's a range but how creative we actually are depends on the third ingredient and that's passion. Without passion there is no drive, no new work, we become stale, copying our past successes with nothing fresh to show. I'm fortunate enough to know two living artists with real passion; Willem Vermandere and Magda Indigo . Both are absolutely driven to create new work every minute of every day. Naturally they do the things we all do, going to a restaurant, shopping and so on but all the time you know that what they really want to be doing is creating new work. They have a grand obsession in their lives. On the other side of coin you have artists who get off to flyin...