I just don’t have a clue what went wrong. It was obviously an error in what we IT types politely refer to as the “keyboard-chair interface” (meaning yours truly) and I had absolutely no solution. I knew I placed the image for the CD art correctly in inDesign, but it could not be seen when I converted it to a PDF. After a few precious days of battling this problem (see, I Love It When a Plan Comes Together) I gave up and sent the file to the printer. They said it worked perfectly. They could make it work. I could not. Technology.
Expertise is now acquired quickly rather than through a craft honed through years of practice. The definition of photographic experience has changed. Being a master of version 1.0 doesn’t hold much credibility when the rest of the world is operating at version 8.4. In the world we now live in, experts come and go with amazing speed.
I shall not discount the value of the experts because we all need teachers to guide us through the next version of whatever it is we need to learn. But lest we not forget, learning and mastering the tools is the basest part of the task. To me, the technical part of photography is about ten per cent of the process. The remainder of the task is using the tools to create and distribute your vision to the world.
What story are you telling with your photograph? How are you going to make your audience feel what you felt when you made your photograph? How do you do this and make the experience different from other photographers? These questions have haunted artists for a long time. No experts can answer these questions for you. These are questions you must answer yourself.
This part of photography will never be overrun with experts. Content is still something we have to figure out for ourselves. It does not come as easily as software training.
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