Ledgem, Here will do fine. Nobody reads the blog anyway.
Pictures that the facebook crowd take serve their purpose at least to extent. As long they don't shove their pictures in my face I don't care. I have a couple of times received about 60 MMS messages in a day though, containing photos of absolutely nothing. That somewhat pissed me off.
I think I'll add a paragraph or two to the article inspired by the latter part of your post. You made some good points I neglected to mention in it.
EDIT: I'll paste the addition here as well.
I’m a bit concerned about something I keep hearing. “I have a camera I can take the pictures.” Be that graduation, wedding, etc. photos, photos taken to remember a truly special occasion. No you can’t. Owning a camera doesn’t make you a photographer. Does owning a few brushes, some paint and a canvas make you a painter?
Portraits are something that I fear as a field. It’s in my opinion the most difficult form of photography. Well it’s relatively easy as long as your audience doesn’t know the subject. But when they do you often hear something that may sound a bit strange. “That doesn’t look like him/her.” Sure it does look like him/her. It’s a picture taken with a technical apparatus that’s purpose is to capture light and thus is quite capable of reproducing the image it sees. The problem is that The picture doesn’t feel like the subject. In effect to take a good portrait you need to do just what caused fear among many “primitive” people when the first cameras appeared - capture the soul of your subject. Portrait is not just a picture of someones face. You need to capture the personality of the subject - offer a glimpse to your subjects soul. Just owning a camera doesn’t give you tools to that. It’s not even just about timing. Every element in the picture can either contribute to the feel of the picture or contradict it. Taking a good portrait is a delicate balancing act and you need a shitload of experience to master it.