The Best Photographers are Troublemakers

I thought of the singer Prince when I read this.

chauncey wrote in post #9752962
The line that separates brilliance and insanity is often quite blurred, to the point that you cannot have one without the other.

TooManyShots wrote in post #9756139
We are talking about artistic expression. The real artist. It is one thing that you shoot for a living versus someone's works that have a museum exhibition dedicated to them. We are talking beyond skills. We are talking about the artist's ability to look beyond our normal perspectives and to bring out a greater meaning or expression that makes us to really think about ourselves and our time. Do you really think a cover of a major commercial magazine can do that??? Ask yourself this question. When is the last time one of your photos change lives??? Or to change the world???

I think this topic means different things to different people. I love magazine covers, and if I can strive to be just as good a photographer as those people that would be fantastic. This is just my opinion, but I don't see how a photo can really "change lives" or "change the world". To me the most dramatic photos are photo-journalistic (say a photograph or someone dying in a war for example) stuff that documents real life. I have not studied the old photographers but at the same time i don't think I should have to for a real life daily perspective.

you know what? I woke up in a really bad mood today, possibly even suffering from depression. I saw a great cloud in the sky and took a few shots cause it looked like a bunny. I hoped they would chear me up, but I was still depressed. I decided to pay my bills since I was already in a bad mood and wouldn't you know it- I was broke cause I spent all my money on a new 5Dmk2. But the shots of the bunny cloud were fantastic!
Then I ate breakfast, drank some coffee, fealt better for having done so, took a second look at my bills and found a big error that left me enough to pay my mortgage and buy food, and decided to go ahead and do the post production and prints on the bunny cloud since I was already at the computer.
To my surprise they were all hopelessly overexposed, poorly framed, without merit, and ended up as scattered electrons in the recycle bin. Amazing how being happy and financially responsible turned my work to junk. I would have never beleived it, would you?