Where Credit is Due

It’s nice to be acknowledged for something you’ve worked on, and there’s nothing wrong with not being acknowledged either. Having something you’ve done be attributed to someone or something else however inevitable or justified— on the other hand, can be something of a downer indeed.

Some media frequently carry around a reputation for being supremely effortless hackjobs. (Percussion, for instance, is one such: “So you just bang around on drums and stuff? That’s awesome, man, I should’ve done that, it would’ve been so much easier”). People outside any given field don’t necessarily appreciate that there is a finesse to everything, not just what they themselves do. That’s how there are specialists, experts, professionals. Art is, after all, an art.

Another fallacy assumes that better work is the direct result of more expensive equipment. “The better the oddslot camera, the better the picture!” Friends, on occasion, will be all too glad to ooh and ahh over something I’ve shot. “But you have one of those big black cameras, don’t you,” they add, glancing at the incriminating SLR in my had, as if that explained everything. “That’s a really good picture,” I’ve overheard. Then, as an aside, “he’s got a nice camera.” But things don’t work that way, of course. Out of every hundred clicks of the shutter button and repeated trial and error might a small handful of images satisfactory enough to be post-processed and touched up be picked out. Or, as an oft-quoted anecdote from Sam Haskins puts it:

A photographer went to a socialite party in New York. As he entered the front door, the host said “I love your pictures— they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.” He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: “That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”

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TChen realizes she is probably preaching to the choir and apologizes for this overly short and rant-y diatribe.