Inspiration to work harder

The days run by me like sprinters doing the 100 meters over and over and ... "Stop!" I want to yell, because I really don't like to run that fast and it kind of makes me feel stressed out to not hang in there, to see time speed by so ... industrious. Shoot, I want to be as industrious and make a lot happen in the time, not to feel like I'm on a free joyride or a sad bystander... all along. But, the only true antidote would be to start being productive and cough up some good stuff. - Sigh!

To think about this rushing time made me want to photograph it. And that is really not easy to just "do". So I spent several days thinking about it in the back of the head, then went over to the road by the petrol station (yes, there runs a road there, for some reason) and shot a few shots with plenty of f in it, put them in my melting pot and stirred a bit, and even threw a few software spells in there too.


Doooobee-doobe-doo ...

Some of the "unproductive" time during my well earned holiday I spend reading Susan Sontag's On Photography. It is a very enlightening and rewarding read, the kind that make you hungry for more, and more, and more ... and the kind that make you feel like a tiny chihuahua underdog with a pit bull (named Susan) hovering above you growling out truths you would never have dreamed up if you got a thousand years of beauty sleep. (Even so I could like a thousand years beauty sleep! - Evil tongues would probably say I could need it too.)

Sontag's book is a collection of essays, seven of them, tangling with the photography and photographers as a phenomena that has changed how we humans see the world. I sense true concern from Sontag, as if she believes the change in perception is a danger and a dark, scary, evil thing. She never says as much straight out, but I sense this concern within her and want to comfort her and say to her,


"Hey, it can also be that computers and smart phones and tablets and ... and vacuum cleaners! have the same effect on us - and it is all part of the flow of time, the thing we learned from our parents to consider as progress and to consider as a beneficial thingy. Relax, flow with it and like the good things about it too, silly!"

But ... instead of talking down to a dead woman much smarter than me, maybe I should watch my own attitudes and thoughts and ideas and ... this concerned critique helps to understand photography better, exactly because it is critical and scrutinizes the image makers, light painters, photo artists as a group - and even make fun of the artsy snobs among them.


I've read the first four essays now, underlining most of the text in all four of them. But rather than siting her truths out for you all, I'd encourage you to read Sontag yourself. If you don't want to buy the book, go to the local library and borrow a copy to read.

- Hush, go now!

I used to collect quotes when I was younger, tons and tons of quotes - because they gave me something I needed back then. The strong urge to collect is over, also because quotes can be found all over the internet. But my previous hobby makes me understand the ones that collect photos - and for instance on Facebook or G+ there are tons of people collecting photos others have taken, because they find something in the images they think worth sharing and worth forwarding to others.

Because I have found so much joy in photography as a hobby I prefer to share my own images rather than other people's work. Not because I believe my snapshots to be better than theirs, but because the snapshots are mine, my expression, even if not unique or extraordinary, they are what I see. - And what I see, my view of the world, is what I wish to share with others, - good or bad! I still feel that I'm at preschool when it comes to many things about photography, that the process towards finding a genuine and true platform from where too make my expression is a far way off. Thank heaven I'm in no real big hurry to get there. (I'm enjoying the way there too much to get impatient.) So what's the joy in learning?

One inspiration to go on learning more, to get better, is the genuine feel of actually making improvement. "Hay! I took one good shot out of twenty instead of out of hundredandsixtyeight. Hey I managed to remember to do this and that and to think about DOF and lightning and composition all at once, hey I managed..."

Another inspiration to go on learning more, is all the different toys you can play with - time laps gear, remote controls, filters, blitzes, lights, software on your computer, new firmware on your camera and ... praised be the luminous photogs, maybe even a new lens or camera! (Sigh)

Yet another inspiration to go on learning more, is the fact that there is always more to learn around the next corner. And even though you may never hope to be in the same league as your photographic icons - whoever they might be - you might have a hope of at least creating something viewable to others.

- If you can see the rush of time in the photos above, then I caught a big one today! 

Now: Can you guess which one is my favorite?

Photgraphriends

How is it with you? Do you have friends that photograph as enthusiastically as yourself? Friends you can spend hours with discussing almost nothing else but f-stops, auto focus, lense choices, camera rumors and motives with? Friends you can photograph as they are photographing, so that you get a photo of your hobby without having to make self portraits or sneak around at photo happenings and shoot people sub rosa?

Of course, the most important part with a friend is to have the interaction in conversation, not to have them as motives. To discuss photography with others is a refreshment of the motivation to photograph too - if the person you talk to give you the same glow that you play up, mash together and throw at her.

To some extent you can find such friends online as well - or acquaintances if you want to use a more appropriate term for it. Sometimes they throw out a subject that really interest you in public and reap so many good answers you'd want to share the result with as many as possible. Here's one excample:

G+er Catherine Hall threw out the question What is your favorite photography online educational resource and why? and was answered by quite a few with good tips on learning resources on the Internet. It feels like it would be almost wrong of me not to share this.

But despite the possibility of sharing lots on the Internet, nothing compares with meeting a friend over a good cup of phototalk!

Yes I do have one of those look-like-a-lens coffe mugs!

Friday 22. June I had a day trip to Oslo to help someone who had to go consult a doctor there, and couldn't go alone. Luckily we came to the Hospital two hours before our first appointment, so we walked down to the Vigeland Park to see the angry boy and other sculptures.

"Sinnataggen" is one of the most famous of Gustav Vigeland's sculptures. If you look at his left hand it is worn as a result of tourists touching it.

As a contrast, just next to the angry boy, stands a quiet girl - and hardly anyone looks twice at her.

Anger fascinates us more than friendliness, obviously. What I found fascinating walking around in the park, was all the tourists wanting to see the sculptures. The weather was really good and the time of day kind of perfect for tourism - but even so it was quite crowded for a day just before the summer holidays start here in Norway. Quite a few of the tourists were Asian, by the looks of it. And quite a lot of the tourist took tons of photos. Well, then I didn't stick out much, did I.

The backdrop

Three new books have found their way into my home. They will not be alone, I love books of most colors and creeds. The reason I mention these three books in here, is that they are all about photography.

Susan Sontag's classic "On photography" (first published 1978) is a collection of seven essays she wrote on the moral and aesthetic problems surrounding photography as an art form. "A progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs," Sontag calls it her self in the foreword in my edition.

The second book is Vilém Flusser's "Towards a philosophy of photography". The publisher states that "Flusser shows that the change from a text-based to an image-based culture (from the linearity of history to the two-dimensionality of magic) and the change from an industrial to a post-industrial society (from work to play)  go hand in hand, and how this mutation can be seen with particular clarity in the case of photography."

The third book is Ian Jeffrey's "Photography - A concise history" - a work that wants to go deeper than describing the history of the technical developments of photography, rather explore the essence of photography and it's relation to other art forms.

Maybe you are sighing now, shaking your head a little and thinking that this blogger is trying too hard to show off as an intellectual. What is the point of all this philosophy crap, really? What is there to learn in such texts?

This is where the backdrop come into consideration. Have you ever taken a photo where, after development you discover that the backdrop ruined your motive entirely?

- No, never been so unlucky? Okey: An example from my own collection then:

This tranquil and serene photo of a pretty resting dove was totally ruined by a cheeky, scratching sparrow that decided to be the ugliest lens-bug ever, totally ruining my motive. The culprit can be very very happy that I didn't notice this intrusion of the lens before I came home, or...

Another approach is of course to look on the outcome of this photo with a humorous smile and let it stand as a fitting photography of a lens-bug more than an image of a dull dove.

To read about philosophical theory on photography is to create a backdrop in your approach to photography: This backdrop gives the motive, to become a good photographer, focus in a indirect but important way. Sure if you sit down and think very hard about photography, the world around yourself, life, the universe and everything, you may come up with a lot of the things books like these will tell you. But reading good literature spares you a lot of time and effort, surely.

Susan Sontag practically starts her book of by stating that

"In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe."

I was in Rome in April 2008. Needless to say, I took lots of photographs. There is one photograph I regret not taking, but I was stopped by simply having left my camera with friends as I went for an exchange machine in the end of a very busy town square, next to horse cabs and street artists and (of course) tourists. A gypsy was standing next to the horse's watering station, washing himself quite thoroughly. A bit too thoroughly as he proceeded. The seance came to it's crescendo when he finished washing his private parts under his trousers and, without rinsing his hands, swiped them over his face and hair. A loud and shock filled sigh went over the audience. A few seconds passed, and then the merchants, concerned that this demonstration of poor sanitarian judgement might disgust the tourist clientele, chased him off with hash words and strong hands, "Go, go, never come back, ugly gypsy good-for-nottin'," they might have said.

One of the photos I did take while in Rome

The scene is vivid in my mind, and as I said I regret not having a photo of the happening, because it was one of those strong moments when you go abroad and want to experience something "different" than what you see in your everyday life. Maybe the incident felt so strong because it was a very strong confirmation of prejudices. I'm not sure. Another one of those things I have to think about.

Are you well equipped?

OK, I know this question can make some think of quite different matters than photography. Only the most serious of photographers will keep a very straight face and answer the question without even the slightest sign of a smile.

I’m not sure that kind of seriousness is good for you!

Photography is a hobby or profession with need of at least some equipment, I hope we can agree that it is rather impossible to take a photography without no apparatus at all. - At least if photographic memory is to be kept as a separate issue. And why don’t we keep it at arms lenght at the moment, please.

The knack when it comes to equipment, is to know that there must be limits, - both ways; your kit can both be too sparse and too abundant.

A photo motive just popped out on my imaginative retinas here, a overloaded press photogapher - rather big, red in the cheeks, overloaded and crowded with gear around & about. And next to her, a thin, pale, kind of lonely character with a single camera & nothing more. A expensive camera, maybe, but nothing more. She could look a little lonely and wanting, maybe looking with a sceptical eye down on a Leica apparatus anyone would envy her.  The photo should state that none is better than the other, rather that happiness most likely lie somewhere between the two illustrated extremes.

I’m thinking his older sister versus his daughter.

Oh, I’d love to take this photo one day. I’d make sure to be well equipped before I took it, though. ;o)

These days I’ve been one lense short, so I’m not as well equipped as I am normally. My Sigma 18-125mm was acting strange, threw the lenses inside around at certain zoom-points, and placed there it acted as if the electronics inside was haywired. Since the lens is only a little over a year old, I sent it off to the camera doctor today, hoping the repair is covered by the guarantee. Either way the process got me in the mood to buy a new lens. … And a new camera … and a flash, and a new tripod, and some more lenses, and ...a photo studio, and …  some filters and extenders and photo bags and books and a new car to transport it all around with and … It may be a form of insanity maybe.

A good link for the photo insane: The Camera Wiki, a place to look up all sorts of camera gear.

One thing to consider when thinking about buying a new camera, is should it be full frame or crop sensor? And does it really, really matter that much, - really? To try and find out, I had to find out what really is the difference between a full frame and a crop sensor. So I read this page on the web. I found this article quite useful for teaching me something new and interesting, and now I’d like a 7D camera even more. I’ll just have to save up and start a campaign with the wife to get there.

After sending the Sigma 18-125mm off with the post today, I got an acute fit of separation anxiety. I had to quelch the symptoms by visiting my favourite photo shop in Sandnes and buy a new lens.

I ended up buying the Canon EF 17-40 f/4 L USM, much to my own surprise, who had promised myself a lightstrong lens with a wide zoom range. But when I tested the 17-40mm, I fell as long as I was flat on my back and said, gasping for air, “I’ll … take it. Please! ”

The evening has been used for testing it’s qualities.

Along with the lens (and the obligatory UV filter) I bought a remote control for the camera. Self portrait was never easier.

If the damaged Sigma is not repaired, I’ll have to look into getting hold of a new zoom lens for “everyday use”. I like the possibility that lies in a zoom lense too much to be without it! - I think. Maybe the 17-40mm will teach me otherwise. Time will show.

And anyway, to justify today’s purchase for both myself and the world around me, I’ll have to improve my photo skills. So off I go!

Why would an atheist go to church?

Don't worry, I'm not going to go all religious - or antireligious here. The point I'm trying to make is that regardless of religious conviction, a beholder of a architectural praise to the transcendent powers, will see something made with love and awe. Sure, you can find that love and awe outside of churches and mosks and temples, sure - but the point is non the less that it's almost sure to be found in the buildings raised to praise the unearthly, while it's far from sure in a ton of other buildings and structures. Or do you see this kind of symbolism in your neighbor's garage or at the children's school down the road?

The architectural praise is something worth trying to capture with your camera, something to hunt for in the photos of a church, mosk, synagogue or temple - if you find it there to begin with.

I went with a friend out on Jæren today, to a place called Orre. There we found Orre Old Church hanging around on it's usual spot - a building from ca 1250, a so called "long church". 

It is called a long church because of its long room in the middle, that symbolize the holy road (“Via Sacra”), from the west towards the sunrise in the east. This was the most common type of church buildt from the middle ages until the 20th century in Norway.

I had my 60mm macro lens hooked to the camera, and in the cold north wind I really didn't want to start to change lens. In addition I had just downloaded a free stitching program I happened to stumbled upon on the net, Autostitch. That made me want to make a panorama-image of the church in stead of struggling over barbed fences and trafficked roads to get to a distance where I'd get the whole church in view. So -  I set the camera to an appropriate M setting and shot ten images of the church, five at the bottom, five at the top, clockwise. 

After that I thought "if it works, then it works, and if it doesn't then I'll go back another day when the sky is blue and bring my wide-angel lens mounted on teh Camera". 

The windy walk around the white chalked old stone chapel might have stirred some biblical neurons in me mind. On the way home I shopped some groceries and happened upon the most tempting and delicious looking Argentinian Apples, four of those please!

And if the temptation of apples is hard to believe in, just look at this lot.

While the tempted struggled not to bite into the fruit, I stitched and stitched and ... to be honest Autostitch did all the stitching for me. And this is what came out:

Magic that a program can throw together ten loose images to this, right? Well I have copped it and done a little photoshopping, to be honest. But not much, nothing much indeed. 

Still, I was not pleased with the mood the image gave, it was to light, to bright, to ... realistic maybe. I tossed and turned and churned it a few rounds in Lightroom, until this image showed:

And then I was pleased and ... ate an apple! 

On the Beach

Wednesday I went to the beach with a friend to see if there was some cool photo motives to be clicked -  and to smell the weather. It was cold, it was a lot of North wind, but it was sunny, it smelled of Ocean and it tasted like ... beauty.

And it was nice! The beach is almost always nice, no matter the weather - or maybe it gets nicer the more weather there is? I'll have to think a little about that.

In the meantime I'm going to get all philosophical. Or at least I'm going to look at philosophic photography. I googled “Photo philosophy” just for fun and got close to twenty thousand results.

Some of the blogs pertaining to be photo philosophical, was nothing of the sort. Instead they were superfluous, rather boring and art wannabe-like. Thankfully in between there was gold dew to be shaken out of the web, like Shutterfinger's good posts.

Photo philosophy ... There is an aesthetic branch of philosophy, which date back to Plato and which have the giant Immanuel Kant as it's utter most important modern contributor. Check out his work "Critique of Judgment" if you want to know more.

- And just because I read about it the other day, I happen to know that Susan Sontag wrote five or so essays on photography that came as a book "On photography" in 1977. When you follow the link to the book you find that others have taken the subject up too, Scott Walden and Vilém Flusser for instance.

Why bother to read books about photography, when I could just take the camera, go out there and practice and get better as I click? It seems like the photography hobbyist is "supposed" to click herself into better photos, a hands on-attitude, learning by doing. It might be just as sensible with a brains on-approach, where I learn by studying and reading. Even though, of course, it's not as much fun as click-click-click all the time.

The way I look at motives and situations around me is influenced by what's on top of my head (and actually at the back of my head too) at any given time. To think that I'm not influenced by external impulses, would be overconfident - to say the least. That's my second reason to read about photography, to have it with me as a thought as I go clickety-click around & about.

If rather than going to the books, you'd like to stay on the Internet and read here, maybe discuss deeper things with regard to photography, maybe it's time to join a forum like Photo.net?

And if you'd like to explore the subject on your own, without discussuon, why don't start by visiting Steve Pyke's portraits of philosophers here?

I'm going to round this post of by getting a little philosophical about photography as a revelation, as a "peeping" business, as a way of invading peoples personal life by catching them off guard or in the act - and keeping them there.

Yesterday I found this note in a small wood next to a children's school.

It says: "To Sanna! Thousand thanks for the letter. I like you very much. What will you do after school today? I'm going to a party. Greetings Merete"

Now without the photo of the note, you'd have to take my word for it's existence. Now all you have to question is it's authenticity - and my translation of the Norwegian text. With Google translate the last bit should be easy peasy to verify.

Seeing the note, picking it up, reading it - it all gave me a feeling of intrusion into someplace secret. But taking the photo was the biggest step, the greatest breach of privacy this note could possibly suffer. Taking the photo transformed the note to a photo of a note, made the private message a photo object, a viewer's thing, unpersonal, public and ... kind of ... I don't know ... ridiculed?

Is it unetical to take a photo of this personal note and post it on the Internet? Is it wrong of me? I intend no harm, have no agenda to make fun of the sender or intended receiver of the note. I just happened upon the note, picked it up and decided to keep it because no one else seemed to want to take care of it. But maybe taking it's picture is far from taking care of it, maybe putting it back between the two tree trunks would be a better act, a nobler adventure.

Some equal consideration may be the wont of many a photo taken, do you agree?

Fire!

Today there was a fire at the neighbors. I think noone got hurt, thank goodness. But three firetrucks, two command cars, police, ambulance - and all the neighborhood came flocking. That made the neighbor dog kind of crazy. And that's no little deal, she is such a nut case already.

Of course I took a photo or two.

The bull that nests just across the road from us got so exited with all the commotion, he had to try and Beeeeeep the Ram. Poor Ram, he's not made for that kind of "fun".

And now for something completely different.

Or at least, now for some thoughts about learning curves. I'd like to take a photo to show learning curves one day. I'll just have to think a bit about how to approach the subject. (It should be someone really sweating over her work!)

The learning curve of photography is, I dear to say a pretty steep one as learing curves go. But even though it's hard to hang on to all the new stuff you have to digest as a green & ignorant newbie, it's fun. Not the least because there is a lot of people who want to share experiences, ideas and knowledge with you.
As a photographer - a drawer of light - you have to know a great deal about a great number of things to find the big and small differences between a good and an excellent image. Well, in the beginning maybe you have to learn how to separate really crappy photos from the good ones too. - And we have to know these things because knowledge gives us the tools to learn from our mistakes and to know how to avoid them in the future, and also knowledge shows us what we really want to catch in the Camera Obscura - what a good photography really is.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have been born with a single lens reflex camera in your hands; in other words, to have been born an improbably, naturally brilliant photographer, genius par excellence? I don't think anyone's experienced that just yet. So in the meantime, the rest of the photographer world have had to deign down to hard work and long hours of study and experiments and ... boring stuff. Anyone who chose to be a photographer rather than an art painter must at some point discover that the choice was a bad one, if it was made out of a dull & lazy hope of having to put less work and effort into their career.

I have to admit, amateur that I am (with a very long and hard way to climb on the learning path of my Mount Photo Everest), I have to admit that some times I loose my guts and feel that I lack creativity, I sense that I know too little theory, I notice that I take too many shortcuts and tend to do lazy but lousy choices, I don't think my gear is good enough ... But then, despite myself, I experience a general improvement in my photo abilities - not the least when I take the trouble of reading & studying a little beforehand and when I overcome the urge to do shortcuts and "the easy way".

"Oh noes, not another photo session Mama?"

Today's recommended web site: http://www.photoquotes.com/  - And from that site:

I think if I ever get satisfied, I’ll have to stop. It’s the frustration that drives you. 

- Eve Arnold

The Virgin Voyage

I hope this to be the first post of many here on Photomnia, dedicated in one way or another to photography. The plan is to post photos, of course (it would be a special but dull blog if no images were included), but also to say something about photography, share experiences, good links to information, inspiration and motivation. In short, I will make this blog into something I would have liked to read myself.

Hopefully so will others, so that I get to share some good stuff around. There is never too much good stuff to share around!

"Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst" 

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

In these digital ages, maybe we should up that to a million?