It is not often that I change my opinion on something after speaking to someone for 15 minutes on any subject, let alone one that I am quite passionate about, but today, it happened. And I am not sure if i am happy about it or not.

I was invited out for a coffee with a local who is quite a big wheel in one of the local camera clubs. I had never met him before, and I consider him to be quite the bohemian, judging by his photos and a couple of chats I have had with him on the phone. I have 2 mobile phones, one work, one personal, and the personal phone had the work number on redial in case I needed to get out with dignity.  As it turned out, he was a terrific bloke. He has been taking photos with all sorts of cameras for near enough to 40 years. He was interesting and obviously very smart. His name is Bruno.

The premise for the meeting was to talk about my entries in a recent competition at the camera club. Bruno has been putting pressure on me for a few months now to take an active part in the club. I’m not the most social bloke in the world, and sitting around critiquing other peoples photos isn’t exactly my idea of a good night out. I would much rather be out and about taking them. Also, sitting around with people with 40 years experience sort of intimidates me. I don’t know much about the famous photos or photographers, and what I do know, doesn’t impress me a great deal.

Then we got to talking about good photos, and who takes them. I had, up until this morning, always thought it was something you could learn. You know, don’t cut off heads, try and get horizons right, stuff like that. Bruno is of the opinion, and I have to say he made a bloody good arguement about it, that people have either got a good eye for photography, or they don’t. My arguement was based around people going to university, art school or night school to learn how to take good photos. Well, Bruno took that point of view and wiped the floor with it. Certainly, people can be trained to take good photos technically, but subject matter, compostion, understanding light and numerous other things are done more by instinct for the better photographers according to Bruno.

I have mentioned on Flickr and other sites that I have been told that I have a good eye, but that is from people that only see whats on Flickr. And that, I can say with some certainty is but a pinch of the photos that I actually take. I would estimate that 1 in 30 or 40 photos I take makes it on to Flickr. And that is the cream of the crop. The rest are rubbish. But after a few more minutes of chatting to Bruno, I think he has a point. He gave me a few photographers to look at, all very well credentialed, and told me to look at their photos, and see if I thought they took good photos. Five or the six I looked at, didn’t take very good photos, in my humble opinion anyway. They looked forced. Some looked like they had tried too hard to make a certain type of photograph, and failed.

So, now I would like to hear other peoples points of view. Lets have it.