"Infer?" Watch the demo video and see it happen.

The thing about street and impromptu work like this is that to be good, it must be done gently. Otherwise it's only about you, the photographer, who has made a mirror of your subjects without knowing it. That's why I said it doesn't surprise me no one in any of these samples wears a genuine smile. I've made shots like those too, but I never thought them good enough to publish anywhere.

"Why don't you show examples of your own work so we can compare, then?" For one, because I have no such rights to the likeness of anyone who's put up with my lens. For another, no one here is really whose judgment I care about in this respect. When it comes to photography, HN's commentariat has always managed to be that rare broken clock which is right not even once a day, and not even for entertainment is it worth soliciting such a farrago.

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creddit 5 days ago | parent [-]

> "Infer?" Watch the demo video and see it happen.

I didn't know what you were talking about at first because I didn't remember seeing any video on the blogpost. If there had been video showing this happen, it would definitely be a good argument against it being inference! Instead, as best as I can infer, you mean the video on the home page and I watched the first ~1min where a photographer takes a photo and they didn't do any more fiddling than I have ever seen someone do with an iPhone and the couple having their photo taken didn't look uncomfortable at all! So not only is this not a video, afaict since I didn't watch the whole 5mins, of this particular set of photos being taken which means the inference made by the OP is very much so an inference but also I don't even think it shows an example of what they purported.

> That's why I said it doesn't surprise me no one in any of these samples wears a genuine smile.

Also, looks like you logged into your throwaway for this reply so now you've linked throwanem <> bdamm together.

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throwanem 5 days ago | parent [-]

When I see expressions through my lens like the ones on the faces of those folks being photographed in the video, I respond by apologizing.

This is not a throwaway and I am not Benjamin Damm, nor last I checked was he me. Are you quite well? Have you eaten anything today?

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creddit 5 days ago | parent [-]

Then why are you explaining why you’ve said something if I’ve never spoken with or interacted with you before as though I would know what you have said lol

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throwanem 5 days ago | parent [-]

It was more that you don't seem to know what you have said. But that two people happen to agree on a point and independently pursue it isn't close to the same as saying they are the same person.

My identity has been obvious from my HN profile for nearly that profile's entire existence. The identity of the person, whom you have accused of using me as a throwaway, is likewise quite visible. They are plainly not the same. So unless you mean me to go on under the conclusion you are incompetent to defame by virtue of being overtly delusional, I'm not really clear on your intent.

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creddit 5 days ago | parent [-]

This is a quote from your initial response to me and was quoted just above where I suggested it must be an alt:

> That's why I said it doesn't surprise me no one in any of these samples wears a genuine smile.

So I ask again, why are you explaining "why <you> said it doesn't surprise <you>..." when I've never interacted with you before that reply of yours and you didn't say that prior to this explanation in that post?

I guess that may just be your style of communicating, though? Like you're explaining what you said to yourself? In your post you it seems you were speaking to yourself for a lot of it - posing questions for yourself to answer, eg.

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throwanem 5 days ago | parent [-]

Well, I'm not really considering you as a person, any more than you could so consider me, we never having met. That's fair, in that this is a website intentionally privileging the quality of discourse in prose over the quality of credentials behind a screen name. (Historically, at least. I do get the sense being called a 'robber baron' enough might go to some people's heads, possibly coinciding with a noticeable increase in the occurrence rate of epistaxis. But never mind.)

In Hacker News threads about photography, there is invariably a sizable fraction of comments made by people who know nothing of the subject, have never engaged with it to a meaningful degree, and despite such radical ignorance nonetheless feel themselves empowered to speak as if they had any idea what they were talking about, or indeed understood even what they don't understand about it.

It's so common in fact as to qualify in practice as an archetype or invariant of the genre, and it's that to which I'm responding. You're right that I'm talking past you, but don't make too much of it. It's just that I've seen this all many times before.

For the same reason, I predict your next effort would have been to claim I have no stronger basis to speak on the topic than do you, and demand I distill the experience of ten years and something like a hundred thousand exposures into a tidy, ChatGPT-compatible bullet list which you can then performatively evaluate and find wanting. Oh, you won't do that now, of course. But you thought about it two paragraphs ago. Unfortunately, when asked the impossible, I am able to reject it as such.

If you want to see the conversation go a different way, then try taking it in a different direction. I admit you have already done this once! It's rare to see someone claim at once that two other people, strangers all, are both lying. I don't actually mind, being if anything ennobled by the association, though the gentleman with whom you confused me would be entirely reasonable to object.

But to answer your proximate question with respect to the distant antecedent, I referred to the quite long thread [1] in which I hashed out this whole question with the developer of the B2B SAAS for photographers, Candid9, which this article exists to advertise. I also offered some critique of the article itself.

You having spoken as if from great and very confident knowledge of so complex and nuanced a topic, I suppose it seemed reasonable also to expect at least passing familiarity with the actual conversations among which you were doing so. Excuse me. I do have this regrettable habit of assuming people intend to contribute to a discussion when they choose to participate in it, but I realize you're not alone in appearing to have other reasons.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44729594

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creddit 4 days ago | parent [-]

> Well, I'm not really considering you as a person, any more than you could so consider me, we never having met.

That's a really deranged way to approach interacting with people! It does, however, explain a lot about how you post: you're basically arguing with your internal constructions of how people on Hacker News are and not at all with what they say. Your posts, this one quite specifically, are just you disagreeing with your internal construction of posters:

> Well, I'm not really considering you as a person, any more than you could so consider me, we never having met

I do consider you a person, though! That's just a really weird thing you have decided on and it doesn't extend to everyone else.

> For the same reason, I predict your next effort would have been to claim I have no stronger basis to speak on the topic than do you, and demand I distill the experience of ten years and something like a hundred thousand exposures into a tidy, ChatGPT-compatible bullet list which you can then performatively evaluate and find wanting. Oh, you won't do that now, of course. But you thought about it two paragraphs ago.

I wasn't considering doing that at all! I don't care about challenging your photography knowledge. I don't know anything about it other than you claim to have a lot and I only got that because you made sure to tell me.

> It's rare to see someone claim at once that two other people, strangers all, are both lying.

I never claimed anyone was lying! I claimed, based on your reply implicitly asserting we had already conversed, the logical conclusion that you would have to be the other poster and were using an alt. Why else would someone explain to me what they have already said without having ever said it to me? Now you've explained that: you don't talk to people; you talk to ideas of people that you have internally constructed. That's not typical.

> You having spoken as if from great and very confident knowledge of so complex and nuanced a topic, I suppose it seemed reasonable also to expect at least passing familiarity with the actual conversations among which you were doing so.

I responded to one specific leap of theory of mind! It's actually a really narrow and simple topic: can someone infer from the blogpost that the boys were grimacing because the photographer was fiddling with a camera instead of fiddling with an iPhone. The answer, of course, is you can't with the knowledge presented.

> I do have this regrettable habit of assuming people intend to contribute to a discussion when they choose to participate in it, but I realize you're not alone in appearing to have other reasons.

I did contribute! I even went so far as to watch a large portion of the video you claimed showed that the stated theory of mind could be seen in action. I then wrote that the video doesn't show that at all. That's a contribution and a constructive one!

	▲	throwanem 4 days ago \| parent [-]
		> you're basically arguing with your internal constructions of how people on Hacker News are Yes. So are you. That's how language works in humans. This is a website. The words are mostly written by people, but only words are here. Hadn't you noticed? > and not at all with what they say Yet you fail to read what I actually wrote, in your haste to call me insane about it because of how much you dislike what you incorrectly assumed it to say. Have fun with whatever it is you're here to do.