unfollowfriday:

You insult other people’s photography constantly as if you’re the only person who understands how to take photos, and I just can’t stand it. Snobbery is not flattering. It makes you sound just as bad as Mary Rambin when you do it.

I’ll start out by saying that I’m not defending Mareen, simply offering my perspective.

I think perhaps these emotions are misplaced - and that it’s less about Mareen being a snob, and more about whomever wrote this being a little defensive and perceiving her blog differently than I do.

I, as an amature photographer look up to Mareen; she’s a professional photographer making something of herself. She takes photos for a living, and that works for her. I also think it gives her a little bit more credit in the photography area then say…me or my photo friends.

All in all, this just goes back to photographers in general. There is something very similar about all of us. We tend to get our toes stepped on too easily because there are too many of us in this niche. The SkillsUSA state level competition for secondary photography had 70+ participants and the other competitions had about 20 - 30 max.

What this boils down to is that we all think we have something special, we’re all our own best photographer. I don’t pretend not to fall victim to this mentality, I think it’s prevalent in a lot of hobbies, from web design to drawing, model making to graphic design. When the appreciation of the medium is so subjective to the person viewing it, it’s hard not to have conflict amongst people within the industry.

In the end, what I’m trying to say is that Mareen isn’t a snob, she’s just trying to share her experiences as a professional photographer with the rest of us. So you can either declare her a snob and learn nothing, or you can take something from it.