Are most photographers social Nerds ?

Or can you be a great photographer and cool as well ?

It is virtually impossible to be cool as well! You know all you talk about is photography and all you can think about is your next big shot

I like to think I'm pretty cool. . . I think a better question is if you can be a Birder and Be cool at the same time. . that's a tough one to pull off!

I'd guess that photographers run the gamut within society, but just like a lot of other fields have a leaning this way or that. So, I'd say yes, of course, but it's a little less likely than in some other fields. Are war photographers cool? Are sports photographers cool? All of this also depends on your definition of "cool".

Funny you should ask. All of my friends (both of them) from our old high school A-V club got together at the last Star Trek convention, and discussed that very question! We all decided we ARE cool.

Speaking of high school, that's probably the last time I seriously thought about being cool. Yeah, I was a school newspaper and yearbook photog, but also on two sports teams, and in a rock and roll band. One day, as I got up to leave homeroom when the PA announced an Honor Society meeting, a really hot new girl said "Funny, you don't LOOK smart." (I took it as a compliment.) It all depends on your personal point-of-view, doesn't it?

All photographers are the coolest!

When you wake up in the morning you need to look in the mirror and say to your self, I am a cool photographer.

I don’t know about you, but I have to fight off the girls after they learn that I’m a photographer.

Don’t ever forget this.

We ARE COOL!

We spend thousands of dollars on equipment most people don't understand, or even want to. We get up VERY early in the morning - or is it still night time? We hike miles and miles under sometimes adverse conditions. We then spend hours on a computer fretting over the smallest details the most people would never see - or care about. We hang our images in prominent locations and secretly watch who stops to look.

When the occasional person asks us about how we made an image we go on and on explaining the smallest detail until their eyes glaze over.

Yup! We are cool!

Richard Hartmann has it right on. I had two young girls trying to pick up on me at the beach a few years ago while in the middle of shooting a sunset and begging me to take their picture.

Gearheads = not cool. Photographers = cool.

Richard, I think the difference between gearheads and photographers pretty much sums things up. I know too many of the former and not enough of the latter.

Luke Ormand wrote:
I think a better question is if you can be a Birder and Be cool at the same time

Try Extreme Birding. It's like BASE jumping except you use binoculars and a field guide.

Richard Hartmann wrote:
I don’t know about you, but I have to fight off the girls after they learn that I’m a photographer.

Funny, I don't have that problem. Maybe my lens isn't big enough.

Like Wayne I stopped caring about being cool shortly after HS, but even so I've always been accepted by and ran with people who were considered cool by the status quo. So, maybe I am cool. Now that I've taken up photography I hope I don't lose my mojo!
:)

"Richard Hartmann wrote:
I don’t know about you, but I have to fight off the girls after they learn that I’m a photographer.

Funny, I don't have that problem. Maybe my lens isn't big enough."

You have a point Mark. Big lenses cost too much to be a profitable piece of gear for most, so there has to be other reasons for purchasing those.

It depends on location. If your standing elbow to elbow with other photographers at Mather Point in the Grand Canyon waiting for dawn that is definitely not cool, but setting up your tripod in near dark at the base of the Sierra all alone in a 20 degree windchill ( with inadequate gear to handle the cold) to prepare for Alpenglow that's cool.

Paul

I don't think I am a social nerd but I know that photographers have their own language that no one else seems to understand or comprehend.

For me though the bigger lenses aren't all that essential, it is how you use what you have

I don’t know about you, but I have to fight off the girls after they learn that I’m a photographer.

Funny, I don't have that problem. Maybe my lens isn't big enough.

Where's that rim shot emoticon?

I'm a total dork. One day I will have that 400mm f2.8 and then it all changes: I'll become a total dork with a $7000 balance on my Visa card.

Be cool? Sure. Just show up at the bar of the lodge at the National Park of your choice each night with a big honkin' 600mm. on the DSLR hangin' on your neck..... and your shutter finger in a big, white cast! Works in the ski lodge...or so I'm told. Can't tell...y'jes might get lucky!

Dave in SD

"Funny you should ask. All of my friends (both of them) from our old high school A-V club got together at the last Star Trek convention, and discussed that very question! We all decided we ARE cool."

LOL...that truly is the definition of a dork, no?

This has been the funniest and most enjoyable forum I have ever read. By the way Matt, as far as cool goes your website is the coolest photography site I've seen.

I prefer the term "Geek". Heck, it's even in the Bible - "The Geek shall inherit the earth."
I've been on Facebook for a while now. I have NEVER considered going back to a high school reunion in Wisconsin. High school wasn't "bad" for me, it just wasn't great either. I was a semi-jock: I swam and played soccer. The jocks made fun of us, and we made fun of the chess club/D&D players, and computer nerds. Ironies of all ironies, now we all wish we were those same chess club/D&D "dorks", because they wound up working for Google, Apple, and Microsoft & are considering VERY early retirement.
In high school, I remember wishing I could have what those jocks had. The cool car, the good life, the pretty cheerleader girlfriend(s?), rich family.
The same jocks that gave me a hard time, all added me as a friend on Facebook once they found me. 95% of them emailed me and said a version of the same thing. "Dave, you live in Alaska and obviously love your life. I wish I was you."
I've got the coolest job on the planet. In the most beautiful location on the planet. I've got great friends (some of whom I've met here!). I've got an amazing and supportive girlfriend. I love my life. I'm a cool geek/dork/nerd. Deal with it. Now somebody bring my Lambo up from the parking area, it's parked right next to my tie-fighter and tonton stable.

I am a proud nerd. I am working really hard to maintain this personality.

Hmmmmm....... I am a scientist and a photographer, so does that make me a double nerd? .....and of course we (me and all you other photographers who are passionate about our work) are cool because we are following our hearts.

Ditto what Eva said....FYI, nerds ARE cool

Cool is very overrated! I spent so much energy being popular in my teens and early twenties....luckily I gave all that up and started doing more productive things with my time

When I was in high school in the mid-sixties, I was one of just a few climbers there. We would think nothing of leaving school on Friday afternoons, drive six hours to Lone Pine, climb all weekend and barely make it back for classes on Mondays. I did the same thing in college, except that Sonora Pass, Yosemite Valley or Tuolumne Meadows was the mecca for us. Were we cool? Absolutely! Weird, but cool.

Now, I'm doing similar jaunts to make photographs. Is that cool? Absolutely! Weird, but cool.

I think that photographers; especially nature photographers, are 'social nerds' from the perspective of the general populace because, even though we get together in small groups, we are pretty solitary when making photographs. I wouldn't have it any other way!

I don't have a 600, but I do have some serious bellows extension. Does that count?

--P

If you ever met Varina and I, you would not be asking this question. We are way to COOL for our own good. I am COOLER of course!!

-Jay

Jay gets "cool points" for using CAPS on COOLER and mis-spelling "of"

I came back two hours late from a quick photoshoot grinning from ear to ear and got a decidedly frosty reception from my wife so I guess I am way cool!!