Go Flack Yourself

I took a bit of flack recently about some images that I did in black and white.

The person giving the flack basically felt that black and white sucks the big fat one and should never be used on anything ever, then they asked me to surrender my camera, my lenses, my memory cards and my broken tripod so that I could never inflict this kind of infectious torture on another image ever again.

The person receiving the flack (that would be me), pumped out her fists, squared her shoulders, narrowed her eyes and growled from deep in her gut,

"You wanna' a piece of me!?!  Bring it!"

Okay.  Okay.  I'm just joshin' with ya'.  I don't actually growl from my gut.  It usually more of a throaty thing.  

I did take some flack, though.  That part is true and real and actual.  I've come to realize that people have very different opinions about black and white images.  Some people really love them.  And some people really don't. 

For me, a lot of photography is about form and light.  The shapes.  The lines.  The story.  Taking the color out of an image can help you see that more clearly sometimes, which is what I was trying to explain to my flack-giving opponent,

who did indicate that he thought that when he looked at my images.

I didn't mind it.  I felt confident in my black and white choice.

Anytime you put something out there, people are going to have opinions of it.  It's just the nature of the beast.  You can take it to heart and get upset and defensive.  Or you can roll with it and realize that it really has nothing to do with you and everything to do with how they have chosen to interpret the work.

People are free to voice their opinions and I, in turn, am free to nod,

look interested

and then starting wondering when my new True Blood disc is going arrive from Netflix.  It's been at the top of my Queue for, like 2 weeks.  Come on, already.  I'm needin' me some Eric.

Then I nod some more,

through in an "Mmm-hmmm,"

thank them for their input and interest in my work, and excuse myself to go shove my head in a case of wine.

No problem.