What a nice way to finish, Maris. "I could be wrong" sounds like a bloke who thinks he isn't and is looking for someone to disagree with him.
Well let me tell you. I agree with you.
You are soooooo wrong you could be talking about the price of fish.
Welcome back Tom. It's not about the price of fish but it is fishing. Casting a hook inviting disagreement sometimes gets a bite and the fish I land might teach me something.
Firstly, how do you distinguish between art and commerce? Cannot art and commerce come together?
Easy! Motivation is the key. Art is what you create as if money didn't exist. Commerce is what you create only if money exists. Getting paid for art doesn't turn it into commerce because you'd make it anyway. I believe an artistic impulse genuinely exists. As Picasso famously and coarsely put it, "If you are truly an artist then you know you have to make art like you know you have to piss."
Secondly, you express your opinions as though they are facts."it invites laziness ..." Indeed. How do you know this? Do you regularly see photographers snapping away then falling on the grass in a sleeping stupor?
I've seen it innumerable times over the decades: "Don't think, just shoot." The money shot will turn up on the contact sheets. Or, these days I suppose, it can be either found or synthesised in post. Insofar as art is a mind-map of the artist the absence of thought dictates the absence of art. Or, more informally, if a putative artist is too idle to bother putting a picture through their own mind I won't be bothered putting it through my mind either.
And what's this supposed to mean?
"There is courage in photographing without "coverage". There is no artistic safety net in declaring a cycle of photographs coherent, complete, and fully realised. But there is artistic integrity. It's a high stakes game not always won."
Courage indeed. This isn't a battleground or suicide mission. It's just photography. And integrity as well. I guess that leaves me out. No integrity here.
Photography exercised as a life committment to art
is a battleground and in a sense a suicide mission too. The Buddhists are wrong. You don't get your time over. If you never make your mind up about your pictures, never take a stand and risk the sting of adverse criticism, and just faff about with cameras then that's a wasted life; better a committed fishmonger than a photo dilettante.
So, are you saying you preconceptualise so accurately that no matter what, you wouldn't consider looking around and shooting off a few just for a bit of a look later? I suppose if you're rigging up the 8 x 10 glass plate and you have one shot at it you might do that. Is that what you meant? Don't you think that was done as a matter of necessity more than integrity? We've come a long way. Just in case you didn't notice, your camera has the capacity to take more than one shot. You can even change your mind while shooting. Heaven forbid! You might even save yourself the return trip with some digital insurance.
Yes, I preconceptualise as determinedly and as accurately as I can. Some photographs need and get a year of pre-planning. Yes, I use an 8x10 camera (no glass plates, too heavy, too fragile) and 90% of my photographic effort is dedicated to intense looking at and for subject matter. The technical side of picture making is largely unchallenging, easy, and error free.
Then again, I could be wrong. Now that's a courageous statement, isn't it?
Self-delusion isn't unique to the arts and I daresay it happens to photograph-makers. I could be daft but if so how would I know it? Instead of bellyaching about that question I make photographs, not diffident, not provisional, but final, that declare what I am. And I'm willing to cop the consequences, good, bad, or indifferent.
Maybe this thread could do with some decoration. Here's a picture that needed reference to an astronomical ephemeris and a few months of waiting until the moon would be in the right place at the right time. I'm uncertain what I could have shot by way of "coverage" to make it better.
Winter Moonrise, Alexandria Bay
Gelatin-silver photograph on Agfa Classic MCC 111 VC FB photographic paper, image size 19.5cm X 24.5cm, from a 8x10 Kodak Tmax 400 negative exposed in a Tachihara 810HD triple extension field view camera fitted with a Fujinon-W 300mm f5.6 lens and #25 red filter. Titled, signed, and stamped verso.