Inspiring Bloggerific Reading

I read a rather brutally honest blog the other day:
http://thecandidframe.blogspot.ca/2012/08/this-is-why-your-picture-suck.html?m=1

And then Zack Zarias pulls out something similar and explains why this guy isn't awesome:
http://zarias.tumblr.com/post/29345128234/hey-zack-i-love-what-your-doing-here-i-have-been

I'd say the themes are similar. There's nothing worse than photos that are ordinary. Blah. Properly exposed, busy, featureless, inexpressive meh. It's probably 99% of the photos that most people take most of the time. Every once in a while, a photographer will nail it, by luck or inspiration or alignment of the moon and the stars.

But instead you can drive the bus. The bus that takes you where you're going. You might get where you want to go if you're a passenger on the bus, but most likely you'll spend a lot of time being driven around and end up in the middle of nowhere. Drive or get off the bus.

The first post nailed me against the wall. I'll post photos after a wedding or some other event. I'll get a few likes and maybe the bride will make my pics their profile pic - but make no mistake. The professional wedding photographer wasn't beat. I might be first but that doesn't make my photos the best. He just hasn't shown up to the competition yet.

I regularly post portraits of my daughters, who in my humble yet biased opinion, are the cutest children this world has ever known. So its not hard to get likes, especially from family, and this doesn't really indicate my photos are good. They more or less indicate kids (most kids) are cute.

Another blog post here nailed another point.
http://strobist.blogspot.ca/2012/08/on-photographing-people-pt-2.html

If you hire models, they're pretty. And you can be lulled into thinking your photos are great because the models are photogenic. They model well (that's what they do after all) so they give you good looks/expressions without your direction. In the end you learn nothing (and pay lots). Learning to get great portraits from normal people is my aim. I'm tempted to get Peter Hurley's headshots for this reason.
http://peterhurley.com/dvd/

I realize that's what I want to photograph. People. Possibly ugly people - but I'll make them look good. This is where I want to go. This is where I want to drive.

That's it.