I've always felt like everyone has a "mental disorder", if they feel like paying a shrink to put a name on it.
Well this is true. What's normal, does that just mean boring? We all have quirks that is guaranteed. The people I'm talking about we're seriously mentally damaged. Amazing artists but who cut themselves, drank and did drugs till they almost died, cover themselves in terrible tattoos, and just became shitty people for years and years on end. Granted not all did this, I had some artist friends that were pretty tame. I dipped my hand in photography but I never got the fire inside, I enjoyed more of the hobby side I guess. Went to art school for it and honestly I almost fought the teacher because I thought he was such an arrogant prick. He was an amazing artist but had the worst personality ever. He prided himself I'm just being a critic. He said "well I can't give people praise because if I do they're going to slack off, because my opinion matters". I mean who says that? Only a shitty person in my opinion.
My boss can be a bit harsh, come on the job and just nitpick it. I get it though, I tell the new guys that it's his job, push you to put out a better project. Nobody's perfect you could always do something better. Now he asks me if I'm happy with it, and I point out all the small stuff that could be better.
It sounds like what you do is precision based. Whereas the photography I was doing it could be precision based but it didn't need to be, it's art. There could always be one quirky thing under or overexposed that wouldn't break the image but it might draw someone's eye over to it which isn't the desired effect. Maybe that would take away from the images worth. You might be right, maybe I didn't try to understand the guy well enough. And I didn't try to see where he was coming from. I just thought he was an abrasive prick. Not a guy who was backwardly trying to make us damn good photographers so we could make the most money possible. Maybe a lesson learned too late.
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