My photography is better than yours – By Anil Mistry

My bokeh is smoother than yours.
Your bokeh may be buttery,
But my bokeh is like refined and clarified butter.
My bokeh is like the finest Ghee.
My bokeh is smoother than yours.

My inverted Puddle reflection shot is better than yours.
Mine features pigeons in the background,
Alongside a new york taxi –
And a cool lady with an umbrella.
My inverted Puddle reflection shot is better than yours.

My lens is sharper than yours.
Even at a large aperture,
My edge-to-edge sharpness
Goes beyond the edge and around the other side.
My lens is sharper than yours.

My camera bag is better than yours.
It is made from old lorry tarpaulin,
It can transform into a rucksack (and a tent)
And it takes pictures of itself and sends them to Japan Camera Hunter.
My camera bag is better than yours.

My camera is rarer than yours
My camera was made in small batches-
From Belgian adamantium-
By unknown female WWII SS agents (it says so on the engraving).
My camera is rarer than yours

My picture of a wrinkled old Asian woman is better than yours.
Yours is aged and wise,
But mine is aged, wise, and with a world-weariness that only she can portray-
And she’s missing more teeth, too.
My picture of a wrinkled old Asian woman is better than yours

My artistic nude is better than yours.
Granted, yours has a slightly edgy tattoo of some sort of skull on her shoulder,
But mine has larger breasts.
Plus she’s standing in a clearing near where I parked, looking all lost and stuff.
My artistic nude is better than yours.

My film is grainier than yours.
Your shots of a shed have a grainy raw feel,
Yet they don’t come close to the super heavy grain I’ve captured.
It makes my shot of a homeless guy look really gritty with an urban patina.
My film is grainier than yours.

My sunset shot is superior to yours.
Your Tokyo sunset does cast lovely shadows across the city
But my Croydon sunset has a silhouette of an old lady in it,
Sort of symbolizing the sun setting on her life and stuff.
My sunset shot is superior to yours.

My picture of poor but happy foreign kids is more real than yours
Your foreign kids are standing still and smiling,
But my foreign kids are running behind my taxi and laughing despite their poverty!
And I didn’t have to pay them much to do it.
My picture of poor but happy foreign kids is more real than yours.

My photography is better than yours.
Your photography is not bad,
But my photography gets more likes- I’ve counted them.
All from total strangers on social media. STRANGERS!
My photography is better than yours.

 

Anil Mistry is a creative director and photographer.
Find more content written for 35mmc here
Visit his website
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24 thoughts on “My photography is better than yours – By Anil Mistry”

  1. As an English student I enjoyed this very much. Stanza 5 made me think of all those horrible gold Zorkis you see being sold as ‘Kriegsmarine Leica’. I love the lines about bokeh and sharpness especially: ‘My edge-to-edge sharpness \ Goes beyond the edge and around the other side.’ Fantastic.

  2. You win! You may have my hand-ground 50mm f3.5 Elmer ( sand mined from secret WEtzlar quarry) supervised by Oskar’s nanny’s son in 1935.

  3. Very unusual contribution to 35mmc Anil, and virtually every verse made me smile. Photographers are often far too serious and focused on the wrong things, rather than just getting out and enjoying whatever cameras we love using most…

  4. Beautiful! Makes me think (again) why, when I scroll through flickr, that some obviously crappy stuff gets dozens of likes, while some really awesome shots (or a series of awesome shots by an obviously talented photographer) gets nothing.

  5. Entertaining, enjoyable, true. A sad reflection on the world we live in. The world is more connected then ever before, people are more disconnected, isolated and somewhat ironically competitive. For recognition by whom?

  6. I love this! I’m certainly guilty of the inverted puddle shot, but the ‘naked woman looking vulnerable in the woods’ trope really needs to die. At this point, it’s just derivative like-bait.

  7. This is not about photography – it´s about the character of people
    I quit posting at a Leica forum because a few users couldn´t stop bashing others
    and spammed the whole place with their idea of photography
    It´s the lack of tolerance and the stubborn keep of own view that mess up everything
    and probably mankind is not able to grow over it

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