I ask this in a light hearted way and don't mean to cause any offence - but:
"Have we lost the joy that actually taking a photograph can bring?"
I know that CiC has a tendency to err towards the technical and that a lot of the talk revolves around the physics of photography which I enjoy as much as the next man but I often get the nagging feeling that some members have lost the joy of going out with a camera and just taking photographs...surely the whole point of a camera.
I read posts about Depth of Field calculators, step wedges, dynamic range, iso, pixel density, circles of confusion, diffraction, sensor sizes, focal lengths, RAW processes, shooting to the right, shooting to the left, only ever shooting in a particular mode....the list is almost endless and I read them all. I even understand a fair few of them as having worked in the photographic trade for 20+ years one tends to soak up 'stuff' but what I love most about photography is going out (at any time of day and not just in the 'perfect light') and capturing what I see and feel. I love taking pictures more than anything else. I love spending a few hours somewhere with a camera and having photography as the overriding reason for being there, I love just wandering about and looking for a shot, taking the kids out for the day while keeping an eye out for a shot, driving to work on a morning and spotting something that makes me a few minutes late, taking the dog on one of a handful of routes and picking a different camera/lens each time to keep me on my toes and keep me looking for a picture. My Nikon has over 30k on the clock, the iPhone at less than a year old has over 5k on it and thats just two of the cameras I use to take photographs every single day. A huge proportion are snaps, a fair proportion are rubbish but a few I will keep forever. I don't mind as I love taking photographs.
I get the most joy from my hobby when I'm actually taking photographs.
Do you?