Not helping is having a Thai photographer friend here who takes incredible photographs. He shoots with a DSLR, and I hold DSLRs with a certain amount of reservation. Not because of any fault with the medium, but because DSLRs have leveled the playing field so much, putting technical excellence in the hands of people with minimal compositional or imaginative skills.
Particularly lacking in the imaginative. Gorgeous, perfect shots that frankly bore me. Or worse, people using DSLRs and producing pictures no better than if they used a point and shoot. But his shots are just fantastic. Make me go 'why am I bothering?' which is, of course, the wrong attitude.
National Geographic channel recently aired two shows on photography, I hope it's a series and there's more, but they were really inspirational. If it's a series, it may be on the history of photography, and so the ones I saw focused on black and white.
They reminded me why I do it, and made me go through my fotolog and for once I was getting inspiration from my own photography, flatter myself not. But the feeling was, 'yes, this is why I do this'. A question someone asks in one of the programs is, "what is the language of photography?", and to me it was a no-brainer, the first thing I thought was that it's the language of memory. Or is that what he said? I forget.
Someone else reflecting on photography's early days said, "Back then, the feeling was that in the future people who didn't understand photography would become society's illiterate". Which is, I think, totally wrong. People who didn't understand photography didn't become society's illiterate, but people who did understand photography became able to manipulate society.
If there are more National Geographic programs, I'll lose interest once they start covering color, which usually means commercial and fashion photography. Color photography bores me. Although now with DSLR technical excellence, I can appreciate fine color film photography. Fine color film is just as good as DSLR, but even better because it's warmer, and you know effort when into creating the image. It wasn't almost automatic like with DSLRs.
As for black & white film, I like it because of its faults and unpredictability. Not that I wouldn't mind being able to come up with a sharp shot for once (should consider getting a much better lens someday), but a lot of times I get back a roll and am disappointed at first, but after I start working with them, I end up liking the feel.
Finally, another thing that made me relate and connect was someone mentioning that pushing the shutter is like an orgasm, a moment when you realize that's it. OK, maybe not quite like that, but I'm not a quick shooter. When I compose a shot, I hold it for quite a long time before I shoot, even though there might be no difference between the first second and the fifteenth second I'm holding the composition. I might even risk losing the shot. But when I shoot is a matter of feel, and it's got to be right or I won't shoot. I might even abandon a shot if I lose the moment. It's kinda zen.
 |
| FRIDAY, JUNE 13 - Bus commuting on days of rain. 12:49 a.m. - OK Mart convenience store on Sanmin Rd. Coming home I have to catch one of the last buses that run on Minquan Rd. that covers the west-east distance to work, and then I still have to walk between a kilometer and a mile south on Sanmin Rd. 4:56 p.m. - Xingtian Temple on Minquan E. Rd. Approaching work, I won't be considered late. |
 |
| SATURDAY, JUNE 14 - Keelung Rd. Is the human element the point or a distraction? Pentax ZX-5n, Kodak BW400CN. |
 |
| MONDAY, JUNE 16 - Nanjing E. Rd., Sec. 5. My neck of the concrete and steel woods. MRT construction making a daily mess of things on this major boulevard unless there is absolutely NO street traffic (but a human element present). |
 |
| The Living Mall |
