You seem to want to engage in a serious conversation about your work. I read NG and I read the posts here. I formed my opinions of the pictures on looking at them, and before reading any comments.
I think the basic problem I have with your pictures is that they are ordinary and mundane. The subjects look common, the background looks common, the photo technique looks like a cell phone camera.
Like lots of ** art, the first person to do it gets credit, and so, what's his name, the fellow you mention whose books now sell for lots of money, does mundane work, too. But, being one of the first to publish it, and by putting it in a book and making it "serious", it becomes elevated. I just visited MOMA for the first time, and it celebrates "originality" over any concept of quality. And, one need only be "original" at one point to validate whatever **** follows afterward. You cannot even claim to being early, let alone first. Your work holds no novelty. No novelty, no technique, and commonplace subject matter makes for uninteresting pictures. Merely imitating someone else, especially one whose only claim to fame is being "different" (ala Warhol - yeah, I can sell a lot of posters of Healthy Choice soup can labels), in no way validates your, diminutive, derivative, work. Your pictures certainly do not merit the mileage they're getting you in terms of two major photo groups' time, attention, and comments, except for your attempting to exalt your snapshots by cloaking them in some kind of artistic mantle.
The real question, for me, is whether an image makes we want to look deeper into it. Does the art of the photograph work with the subject to raise the total package beyond the everyday. Your work does not, not for me, anyway. I feel as if I see it all in a glance, and on second look, this perception is confirmed. That some, or even many, may enjoy the voyeuristic experience of seeing pretty girls being captured unawares (and vast amounts of Internet content are devoted to this fetish, and do it much better, if that's the word for being more purile, than you do) does not validate it as artistic, but merely establishes it as titilating. If you want to "improve", you can get more titilating candid shots on the beaches of Jamaica, for example.
BTW, I do think such shots can be very good; that street candids of beautiful women can be quite exceptional - even among the ranks of the best of all kinds of portraiture; my point is only that you are not doing it. Perhaps by getting more interesting lighting, more interesting angles, much more interesting expressions and settings, and, especially, by using a fast defocused lens, such as a 105 or 135 DC, or an 85 1.4, etc., your work might merit a second, or even a third look.
Dave Harris
