This weeks thoughts and opinions
I have mentioned before in other blog posts that I have been a member of the RPS for almost two years but don’t really feel I have had much benefit from membership. I have also commented that being a member of the RPS requires you to get involved and absorbed in what it has to offer and I have been responsible for not being as absorbed as I could have been. For this reason this past few months I have been assessing as to whether re-joining in October is for me. That said, recently some things have occurred that has made me question my support for the RPS and I want to talk about that.
What I am about to say may may upset or annoy some people but I don’t apologise for that. My opinions are exactly that, mine. I am of a generation and age that means I know how things used to be as opposed to the screwed up world I think we have now. The first thing that annoyed me was an email I received from the RPS and the lady who sent it signed off with her name followed by “Preferred pronouns Her/She”. It disappointed me that the RPS have subscribed to this nonsense.
A couple of weeks later I got another email inviting me to submit an image to the RPS International Photography Exhibition No 166. As I had just finished post processing a few images I thought, why not, and clicked through to the entry process. I submitted my image and then was directed to complete the entry form or “profile” as they called it. This is when I started to get angry. The entry form profile required information such as, age, ethnic group, gender identity, sexual orientation, any disabilities, and what my day to day situation is regarding employment. The one that really irked me was gender identity. The options for me were either “Man (including trans-man)”, or “Other”. I opted for “Other” and input “Male”. It seems that the RPS have seen it necessary to dispense with biological sex and replace it with contemporary woke ideologies. That annoyed me.
I then got to thinking. Why would any organisation need all this personal information in support of submitting an entry for a photography exhibition? Surely information on the image is what is important and not profiling the entrant on their age, gender identity or sexual orientation etc. Why do they need this information? Is there something sinister afoot? Lets take a hypothetical scenario and consider the situation where no matter how good my image is could it be rejected on the basis that they have already selected enough entries from senior, white, heterosexual males and need more entries selected from other ethnic, gender identity or sexually oriented groups? Are images categorised by profile before hand and the judges instructed to pick x amount from each pile so as to ensure a diverse and inclusive final selection, irrespective of overall image quality? I am not saying this happens and have no evidence to support that it does, but my suspicious mind started working overtime when I was being asked for all of this profiling data in support of my entry to a photography exhibition selection panel. I think my mind is now made up on the question of re-joining the RPS.
A real camera!
Last week was spent in a sunny and warm Tenerife. I took the Fuji X-100F with me this time rather than the Fuji X-T5 as my track record on taking photos on holiday is pretty poor. The first time I went out with it for some reason it was on movie mode which is strange as I have never shot video on it. I spent about 15 mins whilst walking along trying to get it back on to stills mode. I could not for the life of me remember how to get it off movie mode and ended up having to Google how to do it. The moral of this story is that knowing your camera is key to getting the shot and that just pressing random buttons does not always give the desired outcome!
Having fired off a few holiday snaps we headed back to the hotel for lunch at the patio cafe/bar. I put the camera on the table and the young waiter approached and said “Wow! A real camera, that must have been expensive” (his English was a lot better than my Spanish) . I informed him yes, it was.
I found it to be indicative of the times we live in that a young person sees an encounter with a real camera to be something of note. He was obviously of the camera phone generation and my “real camera” (to use his words), was something that he found interesting. I, like many of you, grew up posing for real cameras that my dad or other family members possessed and as such we don’t give them a second thought. I love using my camera phone but owning “real cameras” is something I don’t take for granted and will continue to use them as long as my health permits.
