Sandman
In article <016p99ljucsvm9d5l1h0gucsv84m2tjgqh@4ax.com>, Tony Cooper wrote:

nospam
only because he refuses to learn anything new.

Tony Cooper
So what? Have you seen his images?

Why does he need to follow the herd in order to have machine-capabilities to process them any differently?

Sandman
No one wants him to follow any "herd". That's some awkward thinking you've got ther. We are challening his ignorant and stupid claims about things he knows nothing about.

Tony Cooper
Of course he's suggesting following the herd. His position that Floyd should learn something new is clearly saying that Floyd should use something other than Linux and Gimp.

Sandman
Maybe you need to quote nospam here, because the line above is nospam claiming that floyd *refuses* to learn something new, not that he should learn something new.

Tony Cooper
No, it follows the path that I've taken that good photography is seeing what is photographable and producing a good image from that. What goes on between the click of the shutter and the final image is immaterial to anyone other than the person with the camera.

Sandman
While I don't agree with that assessement on its own, it is also not related to the ongoing discussion about Floyd's lack of knowledge about an operating system.

Tony Cooper
He's an opinionated, egotistical asshole here, but so are you. The difference is that we know Floyd's photographic output is good and we don't know if yours is or not.

Sandman
And thus, for whatever reason, that means that nospam's opinion is worth less?

Tony Cooper
Yes, it does. We can see that Floyd can take a good photograph and produce a good result using his choice of tools.

Sandman
But when was Floyd's skill as a photographer, or his skill in using his choice of tools ever in question?

Floyd has made a series of outright incorrect claims about operaing systems he apparently does not use. His alleged skill as a photographer does not make them correct.

Nor does our ignorance about nospam's skill make his factual claims any less factual.

Tony Cooper
We don't know if nospam can do the same.

Sandman
Actually, we do. Or rather, we know that tools exists for nospam's platform of choice that are as good (and according to me - a lot better) than the tools available for Floyd's platform.

Their relative skill in using these tools are not in contention as far as I'm aware, the discussion has centered around the availability and ease of use of these tools.

Better than this:

Tony Cooper
Anytime you access a large body of work by any photographer you will find images in that body that you don't feel were processed to the best advantage.

Sandman
Well, that was the image on the very front page of his web site, the front and center image he choose to greet visitors with.

Tony Cooper
In some cases, the photographer may not have thought the image was worth more work than was done.

Sandman
If, for instance, it was to be used on the front page of his website...

Tony Cooper
You don't know what the photographer was going for in the image.

Sandman
True. But that doesn't exempt it from being judged, now does it?

Tony Cooper
The photographer may have had some concept about how the final image should appear that you don't agree with because agreement is a subjective analysis.

Sandman
As was your claim about his photographic skills. All I did was offer some counter examples to your subjective claim. It's not like I had to dig for hours to find some bad examples. I took the front page image and the first image of the first gallery and then I looked in the second gallery and found one that had very sub-par post processing since I felt it was on topic regarding processing tools.

I'm not entirely sure why you're giving Floyd so much credit here, Tony. I'm not the kind of person that would try to find faults with other peoples photography, but staying in topic, I can say that there is nothing inherent in Floyds photographs that show any sign of a superior workflow.

Tony Cooper
WTF has "workflow" got to do with why I give Floyd credit for being a good photographer?

Sandman
Sorry, I was trying to keep on topic here, by talking about the tools available to him on his platform. It wasn't meant to be a comment on anything you said.

Tony Cooper
Why should I, or anyone, give a rat's ass about how he got to where he did? My assessment is based on the final result, not the steps taken to get there.

Sandman
As is mine.

But I repeat - this thread hasn't talked about Floyd's skill as a photographer until you joined.