Well said and Thanks ncshutterbug, thats probably why I have gotten a little deffensive on this thread and another one that was started by the same writer

LOL to all of this. A little provocation never hurt anyone, but it does make for good reading. cat's babies flowers and sunsets are fair game for a camera. They have a tendency to be there when you want them, and the fact that there seems to be no end of them beimg in exactly in the right place at the right time, means that's exactly what we see an aweful lot of - endlessly.
. On the other hand I do sympathise with Eidera suffering sunset and petal burnout. Watching the blogs come up on the 'latest' browse makes 'deja vu' seem positively lacking compared to a good old English word like repetition. It's the way it is.
Eidea has too many ideas, and should develop some interests outside of photoblog, and those with thin skins should look the other way when he posts.

zed, you dead head! you nailed it in your charming way again! bless ya for that!
"sunset & petal burnout" - love that expression...

@ catdruid and shuttercritter, you're sweet, too. however. i have to admit, i'm not as democratic as you guys/girls are, and if i COULD, i actually WOULD put up a law that forbids taking pictures of any cheap and always available topic like babies, flowers, pets and beautiful women. yes, i would... i'm a jerk tyrant deep, deep in my heart, but thanks to social bindings and good friends never was able to live out that dark side of mine...

and furthermore - following richard feynmann, i don't really give a damn if my provocations upset anybody or if you look through them... i USE them as a technique to introduce an idea. there's worse techniques and probably better ones, but this one works for me.

i'm present in the internet since it became popular around 1850, and i know about flame wars, rants and what their power is. turns out you NEED a little provocation to get some brains going in the virtual domains... well, i got YOURS going, and i even got zed interested enough to post here... so what does a simple mind like me want more?

now, back to the argument.

i'm still waiting for someone to argue with me about what i find most dangerous about all this themes stuff - which is, to my personal opinion, the following:

by posting a picture to a theme, you "blow up" the meaning of this picture - it suddenly becomes part of a wider scheme... which is, of course, total bullshit (because we're way to fragmented in our view of the world and those so called bigger schemes was always turned out to be religious nonsense... oh geez, i guess that was offending to somebody... damn, can't get my finger on the "delete" button!). that happened in the "free tibet" case, and to some extend in the "flowers for peng che"case. to prove my thesis, just omit the "free tibet" title and reference from most of of the blogs and you'll get perfectly ordinary pictures with NO MEANING AT ALL... or at least nothing that would hint into the tibet or freedom direction. (don't get me wrong... pictures without meaning aren't bad... they have lots of value to me, i post them all the time)

second, by posting into a theme, you rip off one quality of the picture... which is that it's interpretation and meaning is in the eyes of the beholder! so, by pressing it into a theme, you restrict people finding NEW and interesting meaning in it that you might have not seen yourself... which is, at least for me, a huge fun factor in looking at pictures of other people... or have them look at mine.

third, by posting into themes you act like a sheep in a herd. some front sheep bleaks, you bleak back. and although that's in general a quite amiable social behaviour, it becomes extremely suspicious to me when it's done by the hundreds or thousands. i like same mindedness... but only when i'm drunk and depressed.

sorry, too long entry again - but i can't help it... the topics is not finished for me yet. love to hear your thoughts about this.

The horse has been dead for a long time now. It's time to stop beating it.

*yawn*

thanks for telling us! i wasn't aware you beating it up.

I think that themes are good and are a good excuse for people to focus! But that the best blog is the one that takes so long to read that one has fallen asleep before the end ...
BLogs are about expression! In whatever form! I quite like looking at people's cats pictures and flowers.
I am not really interested in them in the sense that I want to compete and take some cat pictures better than theirs, and win awards, but they are beautiful and I like to see them when I eventually get round to pressing the Browse button..
Most people woudln't like blogs like mine I suppose, because they are too long and the photos are usually shit, only because there is an idea that fits with the text and the moment's expression and this idea isn't developped properly. It is just a rough guide.
And I am glad nobody complains about them like you do about flower pictures!
So I say, Freedom and no totalitarism! That includes everyone including the theme bosses!

Yumm. Beat that horse well - makes great pate.

There was a neat scene set in Rome, from the film 'Catch 22', about flogging a dead horse.

I think this horse has a touch of the Trojan about it........

............because, and I hate to saddle you with this, but, never one to look a gifthorse in the mouth, I can feel a theme galloping towards photoblog.........


Tally ho!!

I think Eidea likes to stirrup a little trouble now and again, but that can be a good thing.

The mane thing is to hoof some compassion for Eidea with his anti-theme ways. We must not foal around anymore.

Emma! you're great!

Of course we might bridle at Eidea's provocations and want to rein him in. But let's buck up. We're not on this earth furlong, and it's all horseplay.

Hold your horses! I think we've been saddled too long with this rant. How about riding into the sunset with "Is Photography Dead?"

arzenteart wrote about this on his post and mounted the link: http://www.newsweek.com/id/73349/page/2

He wrote that he might jockey in a new endurance race here.

Neigh more!

Let this equine foolery

canter off,

into the susnset themed horizon,

and let the foal on the hill

rant no more

of petaled children,

and cats that bore

forsooth, the time on my brand new Rolex

draws late....(if a little slowly)

you say by doing themes you restrict people from looking at them and finding the meaning yourself... yet you want to restrict people who want to express themselves in this way and often on my themes I ask people to think outside the box and look at things from different perspectives...

what you really want to do here is restrict freedom and fit it to your wants and needs...

there are plenty of blogs ,plenty that have no theme if that is what you crave...


as far as sunsets..petals and the like .. they are beautiful and can be photographed in ways that to me no two look alike..


you might as well say don't photograph people ... flowers and sunsets are just as varied and even cats ...

How about if we just stop taking pictures all together, and just make this a word blog hahaha

*sigh*

case closed by horse clutter

Hey hey hey..............can't close it yet!! I am just now enjoying myself haha

Udder no more?

Ou e la vache? dove la vacca? Frontier or no frontier, an 'orse ain't a cow. ok!!

Ding Dong the Witch is Dead