Fastinacting talk (at TED) by photographer/photojournalist Taryn Simon on the hidden and secret world that can be uncovered in photography. She also reinforces the idea that photography can expose a fantasy but also can be used to distort and fabricate truth or reality into a fantasy.

If you have a really dull and uninterseting photo (which honestly, 99% of all photographs are) try turning it upside down. BAM! Instant depth and interest (but not really). It's the equivalent of hitting an "awesome-ify" button.

Photography always has a style cycle, and right about now the "sweaty pig look" should go away. It has it's place — like if you want someone to look like a sweaty messy pig — but it's also overdone. Never use a style for the fact that everyone else is doing it.

There aren't many guarentees in life. Death and Taxes. And HDR. HDR is like spraying your eyes with liquid death aerosol while eating a scalding bowl of boiled taxes.

You cannot create anything that lasts, that's original, or has a voice unless you understand the rules — and then you can break them. You must learn the tools before you can master the trade.

"This is simultaneously photography’s great advantage and its Achilles’ heel: it is the easiest medium in which to be competent. Anybody can be a marginally capable photographer, but it takes a lot of work to learn to become even a competent painter. Now, having said that, I think while photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is probably the hardest one in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision."

— Artist Chuck Close (Thoughts on photography and its personal voice)

I've long been an admirer of the work of Chuck Close (since studying Art History in college about 18 years ago). I couldn't agree more with these sentiments.

I'm 87% sure the next version of Photoshop will be 1 button that says "Fix-ify" and BLAM — it'll read your mind and create an image (but then crash and output an HDR image of a cat on a macro-flower).

Photography is as much about what is seen as what is unseen. Never take for granted the power of inference and the imagination of the viewer.

I hate to say I told you so, but ... I told you so. Sure you still have to own a camera, and know how to take off a lens cap, and point it in the general direction of something, and upload it to some site where you lie about how it was all "in camera"; but the market for "real" (and by "real" I mean studied, experienced, full-time, paid, creative, technically able) photographers is shrinking like a dog's anus on a winter evening walk.