tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46370281570486807572024-03-13T01:12:37.127-07:00Tao of PhotographyNguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.comBlogger102125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-35520150274538415392008-11-11T13:01:00.001-08:002008-11-18T06:32:09.136-08:00Experiential "Flow" in Photography<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SRpD6FYZ1EI/AAAAAAAAAnA/eQu43c_OhaM/s1600-h/Flow.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5267597379319223362" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 200px; cursor: pointer; height: 134px;" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SRpD6FYZ1EI/AAAAAAAAAnA/eQu43c_OhaM/s200/Flow.jpg" border="0" /></a>I am often asked, <em>"What do you think about when you do photography?"</em> To which I typically respond with something like, <em>"the less the better."</em> An answer which, unfortunately - more often than not - only leads to a protracted discussion (that my deliberately "short" reply is usually meant to avoid).<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">However, the truth is that while my reply is curt, it is far from flippant. Indeed, it conveys the very essence of what I love about photography. Apart from the signature theme of my blog ("Tao" / photography), and my lifelong predilection toward mysticism and spirituality, the one word - the one <em>idea</em> - that best describes what the "I" that the external world calls "Andy Ilachinski the photographer" experiences during (the most memorable moments of doing) photography is <em>flow</em>.<br /></div><br /><div align="justify">Here I am thinking of the word "flow" as defined by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, director of the <em>Quality of Life Research Center</em> at the <a href="http://www.cgu.edu/pages/130.asp">Drucker School</a> of Claremon Graduate University, and author of (among many other books), <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Mihaly-Csikszentmihalyi/dp/0060920432/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1226438143&sr=8-1">Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience</a></em>. In this book (and in his multi-decade long examination of the subject), Csíkszentmihályi describes the <em>supra</em>-conscious state (sometimes called the "groove" by musicians, or the "zone" by basketball players) that people "awaken" to and experience when completely absorbed and immersed in an activity. For me, of course, that "activity" is doing photography; or, more precisely, when I am out "shooting with my camera" (and eye/I).<br /><br />When I write, as I do in some of my blog entries and <a href="http://www.blurb.com/user/ilachina?profile_preview=true">Blurb books</a>, that my best moments as an artist - as a human being - are those when I entirely lose a sense of self, I do not mean this to be interpreted as poetry or metaphor; I mean this <em>literally</em>. If I come home from a day's worth of a photo-safari, armed with 10 or more GBs of RAW files, and know that I was <em>totally aware of what I was doing the entire time</em> (consciously thinking of f-stops, filters, and compositions), I will also know that there will be little chance of finding any soulful art in that huge digital pile. I was not in the <em>flow</em>. On the other hand, if I go out for a walk with my dog and camera, and come back with but one shot of <em>I know not what because my mind was lost while I was taking it</em>, I stand a good chance of savoring that precious gem of an image that is likely to emerge on my computer screen. Not always, of course, but the chances are usually good, if I lost myself in the process of capture.</div><br /><div align="justify">This experience, and my interpretation of it, is far from unique. It is experienced by everyone, at some point in time, though not everyone is always attuned to when (or why and how) it happens, nor appreciates what needs to be done to maximize the chances of it happening again. This is where Csíkszentmihályi's books come in handy, as they describe the nature of this experiential flow; how it comes about, what the tell-tale signs are, and how one might better prepare for the "ride."<br /><br />There is a wonderful <a href="http://blog.ted.com/2008/10/creativity_fulf.php">20 min long presentation by Csíkszentmihályi </a>on <a href="http://blog.ted.com/">TEDBlog</a>. A powerpoint presentation (in Adobe PDF) is available <a href="http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/csikszentmihalyipowerpoint.pdf">here</a>.</div><br /><div align="justify">Csíkszentmihályi identifies 8 conditions / dimensions of the flow experience: (1) clear goals every step of the way; (2) immediate feedback to one's action; (3) balance between challenges and skills; (4) focused concentration; (5) sense of potential control; (6) loss of self-consciousness; (7) time distortion; and (8) autotelic or self-rewarding experience. Critically, in order to maximize the potential for experiencing flow, one must eliminate (as much as possible) any anxiety or boredom, and strike a delicate (and typically dynamic) balance between the challenge of the activity and the available skills that one brings to bear on the required tasks. The purest - or deepest - states of flow are achieved when one is able to apply a maximal skill set (which can itself, of course, be achieved only through long study and practice; i.e., a total immersion to craft) to the most highly challenging activity. This is rare, but is a spiritual prize well worth pursuing.</div><br /><div align="justify">Among the several wonderful quotes that Csíkszentmihályi includes in his University of Pennsylvania's <a href="http://www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/csikszentmihalyipowerpoint.pdf"><em>Positive Psychology Center</em><em> presentation</em></a> are these three: one from an anonymous rock climber...</div><br /><div align="justify"><em>“You’re so involved in what you’re doing, you aren’t thinking about yourself as separate from the immediate activity. You’re no longer a participant observer, only a participant. You’re moving in harmony with something else you’re part of.”</em></div><em></em><br />...one from a surgeon:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><em>“You are not aware of the body except your hands...not aware of self or personal problems….If involved, you are not aware of aching feet, not aware of self.”</em><br /></div><br />...and one from poet Mark Strand: <br /><br /><div align="justify"><em>“You're right in the work, you lose your sense of time, you're completely enraptured, you're completely caught up in what you're doing…. there's no future or past, it's just an extended present in which you're making meaning…”</em></div><br /><div align="justify">These sentiments pretty much express my own experience of flow in photography. When in the flow, I do not know my name, I do not know where I am except for the "feel" of my immediate surroundings, I do not reflect on my problems or station in life, I do not worry about what "I need to do" after I've finished my photography. I am one with my camera, I am one with what my camera is pointed at, I have no conscious sense of self or awareness of being, apart from a pure primal joy in experiencing total immersion in what I am doing. I am focused, strongly and deeply, but not at all actively engaged in thinking about anything. There is no sense of time, not even as I press the shutter repeatedly or take long exposures and somehow, though only mechanically and utterly devoid of conscious reflection, tick off the required seconds. I know the flow has vanished when I hear myself ask, <em>"What now?" </em></div><div align="justify"></div><div align="justify"><br />Interestingly, Csíkszentmihályi's research suggests that it is highly unlikely that individuals will attain a sense of flow - in any field or endeavor - unless they've immersed themselves in it for at least 10 years. I can attest to this being true in my case, though (being a bit slow perhaps;-) it took me nearly twenty to reach this state. But, oh how I look forward to that precious, wondrous experience when it comes! Alas, when I am one of those (much, much more frequent) <em>non</em>-flow states, the best I can do is recall <em>having</em> the flow experience, not the flow itself. But I know it will come...</div><em></em><br /><div align="center">So, "What do <em>you</em> think about when you do photography?"</div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-14530426379404513072008-10-08T18:46:00.000-07:002008-11-18T06:32:09.158-08:00The Allure of Abstraction and the Difficulty of Defining It<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SO1imFq-TXI/AAAAAAAAAko/3MjW_wlzM2g/s1600-h/Abstract9.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5254964746708209010" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SO1imFq-TXI/AAAAAAAAAko/3MjW_wlzM2g/s200/Abstract9.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"Abstraction allows man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes... Abstract art enables the artist to perceive beyond the tangible, to extract the infinite out of the finite. It is the emancipation of the mind. It is an explosion into unknown areas."</span> - Arshile Gorky<br /><br />I have written about abstraction, at least as it applies to photography, a number of times on my blog. But always more implicitly rather than tackling the subject head-on; musings lurked in the background and served more as highlights and accents to the images rather than the main source of discourse. I've certainly posted more than a fair share of abstract images, since that is what my eye responds to most strongly. Indeed, my last three major projects were all heavily abstract: <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/12/micro-worlds-portfolio.html"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">micro worlds</span></a>, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2008/06/mystic-fire-portfolio.html">mystic flame</a></span>, and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2008/09/hidden-glyphs-of-invisible-meaning.html">glyphs</a></span>. So abstraction is obviously on (and "in") my mind, quite strongly. But I'm not quite sure whether it's more my inner "I" or my outer "eye(s)" that is responsible for abstraction being such a deep rooted meta-pattern in me. So that's the subject of this post.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPam43_AfAI/AAAAAAAAAl0/d7YqoRoIKAc/s1600-h/Abstract6.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257573111032740866" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPam43_AfAI/AAAAAAAAAl0/d7YqoRoIKAc/s200/Abstract6.jpg" border="0" /></a>So, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"What is an abstract photograph?"</span> A simple (but far from complete) answer is that it is any image that does not depict anything that is "obviously" representational. By that I mean, whatever shapes and forms it appears to depict, none (or, at most, only a small subset) of them are obviously something that is recognizable; or, if it is recognizable, it is not uniquely so, as the shapes and forms can be interpreted in multiple self-consistent ways. This loose definition also allows for innately recognizable "objects" to be assembled (or composed) in an otherwise unrecognizable way (or that renders the collective unrecognizable as a whole).<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPanGnNrDLI/AAAAAAAAAl8/8X3Gc2BTQks/s1600-h/Abstract2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257573347049016498" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPanGnNrDLI/AAAAAAAAAl8/8X3Gc2BTQks/s200/Abstract2.jpg" border="0" /></a>A recent editor's note in <a href="http://www.phototechmag.com/"><em>Photo Techniques </em></a>magazine (by Jerry O'Neill, Nov/Dec 2008 issue) revealed that Google is about to embark on a massive image cataloging task, in which it is anticipated that upwards of a trillion images will be parsed and indexed according to their <em>content</em>, rather then (as done now) by label. While the methodology to be employed is naturally left unspecified and proprietary, undoubtedly it will consist of some kind of AI-assisted pattern recognition of specific features and rudimentary scene analysis (such as facial contours, buildings, trees, water, and so on). It will be interesting to see what technique the Google researchers have come up for recognizing and indexing <em>abstract </em>images; i.e., images that do not contain anything "obviously recognizable." Will there be primitive categories of tone, shape, and texture? (Which apply equally well, of course, to non-abstract images!) How will an ostensibly "obvious" head shot of a horse, say, differ in Google's catalog from another one in which the contours are deliberately cropped (focusing, say, only on the mane of hair) and facial features either blurred or photoshopped away, rendering the image all but unrecognizable? At what point will one type of image transition into another? Even more simply, beyond referencing an image as "abstract" (by what measure?), what finer distinctions will be made in that class, and how will they be defined?<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPamUJtWlTI/AAAAAAAAAlk/VO4b85AT00g/s1600-h/Abstract3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257572480135370034" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPamUJtWlTI/AAAAAAAAAlk/VO4b85AT00g/s200/Abstract3.jpg" border="0" /></a>Google's laudable objective is to provide users with a way to find images according to what they innately depict, rather relying on someone else's depiction (via external label or reference) of what the images contains; and to do so automatically, by scanning the image itself. The problem, with both practical and philosophical components, is that the more abstract the image, the more difficult it becomes to distill it into a few simple features.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPanigGAZbI/AAAAAAAAAmM/TC_UNj6cZHs/s1600-h/Abstract5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257573826174150066" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPanigGAZbI/AAAAAAAAAmM/TC_UNj6cZHs/s200/Abstract5.jpg" border="0" /></a>In some ways, this reminds me of an idea in theoretical computer science that has do with how one can tell whether a sequence of numbers, say, is random. The mathematically precise way of distinguishing random from nonrandom sequences, is that nonrandom sequences may always be compressed into something shorter than themselves; a random sequence cannot. Thus an otherwise infinite sequence that starts out and continues ad infinitum as "111011101110..." may be compressed by the much shorter (than infinite) description, "an infinite sequence of the symbol set 1110." In essence, one exploits an inherent pattern or symmetry, and uses that innate feature to compress information; or to more optimally express the information content. But a truly random sequence cannot be compressed into anything shorter. In order to communicate what the sequence is to someone else, one must exhaustively list each symbol that appears, for as long as patience permits.<br /></div><br /><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPal2XTMS1I/AAAAAAAAAlc/nvfCTmUFii0/s1600-h/Abstract10.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257571968387664722" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPal2XTMS1I/AAAAAAAAAlc/nvfCTmUFii0/s200/Abstract10.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">However, some <em>special </em>random sequences, like the digits of Pi=3.14159..., may yield to a compressed description, such as "sum this infinite series..."; which raises the intriguing question of whether there are "special" abstract images in art and photography that similarly yield to "simpler" distillations? One possibility is that while some abstract images in the sense defined above are "random" (in a mathematical sense) and therefore are generally unyielding to distillations, there are also those that - despite not depicting any obviously recognizable <em>thing </em>- nonetheless evoke (in some quasi universal way that depends on the viewer's cultural background, for example) some obviously recognizable <em>feeling</em> (or a subliminal mood). A long time-exposure of waves in the ocean far from shore may not at all be "obviously long time-exposures of waves" (and thus not easily conducive to simple distillations: I wonder how Google's indexing will handle this case?), but may evoke very similar emotional responses in different people. An aesthetic compression based on <em>evoked emotion</em> rather than on the objective content may be much more useful in such cases. On the other hand, some other abstract, one that is perhaps created very artistically using some clever combination of light and shadow, may neither depict anything "obviously recognizable" nor evoke any universally shared feeling. A multiple exposure of a dozen separate shots, each of which is itself an "abstract" might be an example. I'd also be interested to learn how Google will handle such examples.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPanyyp_ZRI/AAAAAAAAAmU/tk7i4cp02Vs/s1600-h/Abstract7.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257574106034824466" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPanyyp_ZRI/AAAAAAAAAmU/tk7i4cp02Vs/s200/Abstract7.jpg" border="0" /></a>As for the philosophical dimension of abstraction, at least for me as a photographer, I tend to use abstraction in the classical (Alfred) <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steiglitz,_Alfred">Stieglitzian </a>way; i.e., as "equivalents" of my inner emotional or cognitive states. Of course, I fully understand that there is a much greater chance that the viewer <em>will not </em>respond to an image in a way that mirrors my inner state when I created it than that the image conveys to the user what I really felt when I pressed the shutter. There are simply too many variables impossible to account for or control. But it is also often true (at least for me) that it is impossible to convey the feelings I have about a subject or scene without resorting to abstraction. It is certainly not true in all cases (sometimes a red barn is exactly what I need to express the beauty of redness). But as I grow as a photographer, and experiment with new techniques and ideas for projects, I am finding my artistic path moving ever more deeply into the abstract part of the aesthetic forest.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPamqlSRNWI/AAAAAAAAAls/i3rs-horgSA/s1600-h/Abstract1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5257572865495086434" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SPamqlSRNWI/AAAAAAAAAls/i3rs-horgSA/s200/Abstract1.jpg" border="0" /></a>Perhaps, just as there are no "simplifications" of truly random number sequences, the purest form of abstraction is the one for which there is no better distillation than the abstraction itself. Then again, isn't that generally true of all art?</div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-56110230224597853712008-09-07T09:19:00.000-07:002008-11-18T06:32:09.172-08:00Abstract Glyphs: Mysterious Purveyors of Hidden Harmonies<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQLj5TpP6I/AAAAAAAAAkA/_v8iF0XDabI/s1600-h/GlyphProject1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQLj5TpP6I/AAAAAAAAAkA/_v8iF0XDabI/s200/GlyphProject1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243328577472642978" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">What does <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athens">Athens, Greece</a> have to do with the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpathian_Mountains">Carpathian Mountains</a>? </span>That's a trick question, of course, as the "connection" between the two depends on first unraveling the meaning of the enigmatic title of this short blog entry... which has to do with a lucky find of (ostensibly "hidden") glyphs, and musing on them as mysterious purveyors of some unfathomably deep cosmic truth. (Of course, one is free to just revel in their just-as-ineffable quiet beauty without succumbing to my usual Borgesian overtones of <em>over</em>-intepretation ;-)<br /><br />I have previously written about a trip my wife and I took to Greece earlier this summer. Though my discussion focused almost exclusively on <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2008/07/color-vs-b-heisenberg-like-uncertainty.html">Santorini</a> (the second leg of our journey), we also stayed in Athens and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crete">Crete</a>. While I have yet to "develop" the raw files from the other two legs of our journey (and the obligatory shots of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acropolis_of_Athens">Acropolis</a>, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knossos">Palace at Knossos</a>, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaria_Gorge">Samaria Gorge</a>), I wish to share a few images from a growing portfolio I've tentatively entitled <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.tao-of-photography.com/Portfolio/GlyphProject/AbstractGlyphProject.html">Abstract Glyphs: Mysterious Purveyors of Hidden Harmonies</a></span>, and which came about by chance in Athens.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQCkrj7W3I/AAAAAAAAAjo/nHLsOZAhp6Q/s1600-h/GlyphProject2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQCkrj7W3I/AAAAAAAAAjo/nHLsOZAhp6Q/s200/GlyphProject2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243318695358061426" border="0" /></a>After spending the first three nights of our trip in Athens, my wife and I took a cab to the <a href="http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=athens+greece&ie=UTF8&t=k&ll=37.942878,23.633099&spn=0.003681,0.006545&z=18&iwloc=addr">port of Piraeus</a> to catch a ferry to Santorini. Since the ferry was delayed a few hours, I had some time to prowl around with my camera. Indeed, I had the run of virtually the whole open dock area; but could not stray too far - say, back into the city - for fear of missing our ferry.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQOMO9lvzI/AAAAAAAAAkQ/DrfFVN0VtN8/s1600-h/GlyphProject5.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQOMO9lvzI/AAAAAAAAAkQ/DrfFVN0VtN8/s200/GlyphProject5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243331469503741746" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">So, what might catch a photographer's eye on a small city dock?</span> And what does this all have to do with glyphs and the Carpathian mountains? My eye quickly homed in onto the two dozen or so oversized rubber dinghies hanging over the side of the dock to prevent the moored ferries from slamming their hulls against the concrete overhangs (which you can just about make out from the link to a Google satellite view given above). Or, more precisely, my eye quickly homed in on the <span style="font-style: italic;">splotches of colorful paint</span> that adorned nearly all of the rubber dinghies on the dock. What immediately came to mind, as I approached the first dinghy for a closer inspection, is a marvelous - and surrealistically strange and funny - novel I had read last year by Polish novelist <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witold_Gombrowicz">Witold Gombrowicz</a> called <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Witold-Gombrowicz/dp/0300108486/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1220804290&sr=1-3">Cosmos</a></span>.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQF2sLfM_I/AAAAAAAAAjw/CbbNZQycAW4/s1600-h/GlyphProject3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQF2sLfM_I/AAAAAAAAAjw/CbbNZQycAW4/s200/GlyphProject3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243322303296517106" border="0" /></a>The novel begins as two young men meet - by chance - on the way to a Polish resort town in the Carpathian mountains. They are soon drawn to a particular rooming house as a direct (if unpredictable) consequence of seeing a sparrow hanged on a piece of wire hooked over a branch; an event that not only convinces the two that it has some deep hidden meaning, but is but a precursor of ever more bizarre and intricate "decodings of meaning" the two must make to understand their (increasingly confusing) lives. As the novel unfolds, our protagonists proceed to "discover" (though "conjure" may be more accurate) ever more recessed layers of "hidden meaning" from what (to all outside observers) are nothing but meaningless everyday things and events. They see arrows in ceiling stains that point in directions they must follow; and search through other people's rooms hoping to find important "clues," such a nail pounded partway into a wall just above the floor. Though disturbing on many levels (I'm leaving a lot out of this short description), the novel reminds us - and me, during the moment I took to walk over to inspect my first "paint splotched dingy" in Athens - that meaning exists in the world (or in a place, or encoded in a given object or symbol) <span style="font-style:italic;">only when there is someone to decode it. </span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQOuzUDU-I/AAAAAAAAAkY/FNMBs0ouZ2s/s1600-h/GlyphProject6.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQOuzUDU-I/AAAAAAAAAkY/FNMBs0ouZ2s/s200/GlyphProject6.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243332063377183714" /></a>There is no "meaning" in a signal without a receiver; and a receiver will interpret a signal as meaningless if it does not have the proper context in which to decode the signal's message. But what if there were no intended receiver, but there was a context in which a signal might nonetheless reveal a meaning? And what if there was no message sender (more precisely, no <span style="font-style:italic;">intentionally </span>sent message), but a receiver was nonetheless present; and - purely by chance(!) - was in the proper context to receive a "message"? Is the whole world, perhaps, best described as a vast surreptitious web of timeless "meanings" in search of local senders and receivers?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQLp1JkX3I/AAAAAAAAAkI/1tNTq5oY-v8/s1600-h/GlyphProject4.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SMQLp1JkX3I/AAAAAAAAAkI/1tNTq5oY-v8/s200/GlyphProject4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5243328679435853682" border="0" /></a>Such were my thoughts, and such was the state of my mind - which also provided an inner meta-context - in which I took nearly a hundred photographs of "Hidden Glyphs of Unknown Meaning" at the port of Piraeus in Athens. Were these messages, I wondered; encoded by some mysterious (perhaps long deceased) author? Were they clues to the evolution of the universe? Hints for my own life's journey? Or just random irrelevant scrawls of disinterested natural forces (that confuse and confound unsuspecting errant passerbys with their siren-song of illusory order when meaning seems to magically arise in an otherwise random context)? What cosmic messages are locked in these hidden glyphs of unknown meaning? <em>Is there perhaps an even deeper level of understanding - and by whom? - of the hyper-glyph that I unwittingly unleashed into the world by using my camera to muse on the indipherable glyphs I found in Athens?</em></div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-67124575035299302922008-08-24T19:08:00.000-07:002008-11-18T06:32:09.188-08:00"Boinga, Boinga, Boinga" Shots<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SLIUw0lPqLI/AAAAAAAAAi8/TRQpX6wDwcs/s1600-h/Adirondack2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SLIUw0lPqLI/AAAAAAAAAi8/TRQpX6wDwcs/s200/Adirondack2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5238272145566443698" border="0" /></a>My family and I recently returned from a "mini vacation" in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adirondack_Mountains">Adirondacks</a>, near <a href="http://www.lakeplacid.com/flash/home/z-home.htm">Lake Placid</a>, NY. The trip evoked many wonderful memories of taking similar trips with my mom and dad over 30 years ago. Though I haven't been in those parts for many years, the Adirondacks' unique charm and quiet ambiance almost instantaneously enveloped my soul. I felt as though I had come home.<br /><br />Since the trip was geared more for "family" and camping, I spent relatively little time prowling with my camera. Of course, I did manage to catch a few images of the "rocks and water" variety...particularly on the <a href="http://www.flyanglersonline.com/features/greatrivers/ausableny/">ausable river</a>.<br /><br />Indeed, there is a short story attached to the images I took there, which I'd like to share in this blog entry. The title - <span style="font-style: italic;">"Boinga, Boinga, Boinga" Shots</span> - refers to the "bounch" (translated as a "Boinga" sound) that all intrepid photographers perched on exposed trail bridges over the river go through while patiently waiting for the reverberations caused by (largely disinterested) passerbys to die down so that they can finally click the camera's shutter. Since I wanted to produce silky-smooth water flow, I needed my exposure times to be fairly long (> 5 to 10 sec). But, being the tourist attraction that it is, the ausable river trails are naturally overrun by adventurers; not all of whom appreciate the "fine art" of taking long exposures. Capturing a shot such as the one that appears at the top of this entry thus requires an enormous amount of patience; both on the part of the photographer and, unfortunately, on the part of the passerbys.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">This particular shot was the result of - what must have seemed to an outside objective observer - a comedy of errors. First I had to wait for the clouds to block out the sun. A process which played itself out multiple times over the course of a hour or more, as small bands drifted in and out of view. Next, I had to "coordinate" cloud-blocked composition opportunities with stretches of time during which the bridge was entirely free of passerby footsteps. This was far from easy. I had to make quick sideways glances to the left and right, while holding my camera in position for a preplanned shot. Of course, there were several "opportunities" which misfired. Typically, if I clicked the shutter and the bridge was free of hikers, a cloud would dissipate faster than I had anticipated and the shot was ruined. Just as typically, the clouds would stay in place and the light would be just right, but a hiker (or two, or three, or an entire family!) would appear - mysteriously - from out of the woods (and off the trail) and noisily make their way - <span style="font-style: italic;">boinga, boinga, boinga </span>- across the bridge.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SLYdKceET2I/AAAAAAAAAjI/_i17ux2TfyY/s1600-h/Adirondack1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SLYdKceET2I/AAAAAAAAAjI/_i17ux2TfyY/s200/Adirondack1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239407281770352482" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Once, just for good measure, a family of three started on their way from one end of the bridge toward me and my tripod near the middle, and stopped in mid-stride when they saw me lift my eye and head (and may have heard me mutter something like "Arghh" after missing a chance to get a shot). Seeing that the cloud cover was still good and that the party was (at least for the moment) motionless - and upon hearing one of them say to the others, "Hey, look, a photographer is taking pictures, let's be quiet" (which brought a smile to my face) I bent back over my viewfinder and was preparing to press the shutter, when - <span style="font-style: italic;">boinga, boinga, boinga </span>- forward (and onward and closer) went the boots.<br /><br />The unfolding events were far from over. I lifted my head, uttered another soft "Arghh" under my breath, and felt the group halt again (and heard the same member softly admonish the others, "Hey, he's not done, hold on a minute.") Back to my viewfinder I go, only to see the clouds break and the bright sun beat down on the water. I lift my head back up, this time because of the blinding light; but this time hear, "OK, he's done, let's go." Before his sentence is finished, the cloud cover comes back and my eye goes back to the viewfinder, only to see the effects of the - <span style="font-style: italic;">boinga, boinga, boinga </span>- footsteps coming closer to me. I keep my eye glued to the finder, hoping for a miracle. As the group passes me, one of the hikers accidentally trips over one of my tripod's legs (though there was ample room to maneuver around). I straighten up and accept the sincere and immediate apology; but as I do the cloud cover vanishes. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SLdqsGcKaBI/AAAAAAAAAjY/gUFO8SN2S5Q/s1600-h/Adirondack4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SLdqsGcKaBI/AAAAAAAAAjY/gUFO8SN2S5Q/s200/Adirondack4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239773997344385042" /></a>The group of hikers is now standing a few feet from me, and is both quiet and intrigued by what I am taking pictures of. I answer a few questions (while waiting for the clouds to come back to block the sun), and - seeing the cloud cover return - quickly turn back to my camera, and hear a "Hey, good luck with your shots fella" followed by the now omnipresent <span style="font-style: italic;">boinga, boinga, boinga </span> sound (and reverberation) as the group moves away. I lift my head (in half disgust, but with still a bit of humor at the Monty-Pythonesque predicament my desire to capture this little scene has placed me in) and see the group, once again - and for the last time, since they are now getting close to the other side of the bridge - stop, and no doubt seeing my increasing angst - sincerely wish to allow me to take a "quiet" shot. Gratefully, I bend down, see that the cloud cover is still good, and take my shot. As soon as I hear the click of the shutter after the exposure is complete (though there is no way the group of hikers could have heard from where they were standing), I feel the <span style="font-style: italic;">boinga, boinga, boinga </span> of their steps as they step off the bridge and move off into the woods and out of site. That whole process, to capture that one shot, took about 40 min.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SLYdW3bQWfI/AAAAAAAAAjQ/Pdw1jrZgzyg/s1600-h/Adirondack3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SLYdW3bQWfI/AAAAAAAAAjQ/Pdw1jrZgzyg/s200/Adirondack3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239407495164746226" border="0" /></a>When I got back to my car, and after I had a chance to reflect on my experience, I admonished myself for my infantile-like reaction to the not-always-accomodating natural elements (cloud cover vs no cloud cover) and the presence of hikers with heavy boots. Apart from the obvious fact that I had no more right to be on the bridge than the hikers (so that, in truth, they "owed" me nothing by way of accommodating <span style="font-style: italic;">my </span>purpose for being there) , we were all a vital part of a little self-contained "world" out there on that bridge. And the hikers, whose <span style="font-style: italic;">boinga, boinga, boinga </span> certainly affected my ability to capture an image <span style="font-style: italic;">at the instant that their boots were going</span> <span>"boinga, boinga, boinga</span>," actually helped me produce what I feel is a better image than what I was likely to have captured were it not for their presence.<br /><br />The simple reason is that the interplay between the bright sun, cloud cover and the <span style="font-style: italic;">boinga, boinga, boinga </span> all conspired to <span style="font-style: italic;">slow me down</span>. These elements collectively helped ease my mind and soul to a slower pace; one much more attuned to the Adirondacks' own natural rhythms. <span style="font-style: italic;">I</span> may have wanted to take a quick picture and go, but I didn't take the time to ask the ausable river whether <span style="font-style: italic;">it</span> wanted its picture taken in such a quick and impersonal manner. As a photographer, I ought to have known better. And I humbly and sincerely thank the merry band of hikers - who kept going <span style="font-style: italic;">boinga, boinga, boinga </span>- for reminding me of the need to just slow down, immerse myself in the environment and quietly listen to my subject.</div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-33849596436709941052008-07-20T17:27:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:29.030-08:00Color vs. B&W...a "Heisenberg Uncertainty"-like Relation?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SIPpyTJ-B5I/AAAAAAAAAi0/HzTgBj9Y1Kc/s1600-h/Santorini+BW+5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SIPpyTJ-B5I/AAAAAAAAAi0/HzTgBj9Y1Kc/s200/Santorini+BW+5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5225277043024725906" border="0" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;">In my last post, and immediately on the heels of returning from a trip my wife and I took to Greece, I noted that Santorini = geometry + color + shadow; emphasizing color, in particular, and brazenly declaring that Santorini is <span style="font-style: italic;">glorious, breathing, living, and sometimes blindingly bright color.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">While I do not back down from those words - indeed, as I look over my growing portfolio of finished images and a selection of draft prints, I am, if anything, even more enamored of the "full color" results - an interesting thing happened as I went back (a second time) to process a few images in black and white: they reminded me of how <span style="font-style: italic;">awestruck </span>I was when I first gazed onto the strange Escher-like Santorini architecture.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">To be sure, what struck my eye first (or so I remember) was Santorini's blazing color; and my first emotion was pure joy - joy at being on a long awaited and much needed vacation with my lovely wife, joy at finally arriving at such a magnificently beautiful place, and joy at looking forward to discovering yet-unseen but sure to be wondrous sites. Consequently, when we got back home and I started processing my images in my usual style, I was struck by how much of my raw joy was missing from the black and white images. However, the <span style="font-style: italic;">color </span>images instantly evoked many of the same feelings. My earlier blog entry thus followed naturally.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">So what happened afterwards, and what is the point of this new entry? The answer is both "simple" and subtle...and, for me, a source of an important lesson I ought to have learned long ago. After working on over a 100 or so color images, and taking a few days "off" (while working on other, much older images having nothing to do with Santorini or Greece), I went back for a second look at my Greece files. I must emphasize that as I managed my usual black and white workflow, <span style="font-style: italic;">I did nothing objectively different from what I had originally done upon our arrival home from Greece</span> (and what had originally resulted in my decidedly negative reaction, compelling me to work in color). But this time, even after completing only the first few files, I was struck by how powerfully the black and white images reminded me of the unbridled awe I felt at simply being in Santorini and finding myself amidst its magnificent architecture. This awe was not, strictly speaking, an <span style="font-style: italic;">emotional </span>awe; it was much more akin an <span style="font-style: italic;">intellectual </span>awe. My experience of witnessing Santorini's architectural splendor unfolding before me reminds me of the first time I gazed at an Escher print (which eventually resulted in a lifelong pursuit of math and physics). The point is that I had (at least) <span style="font-style: italic;">two layers</span> of experience with Santorini landscapes; and that both cannot be simultaneously expressed equally as strongly in a single type of image. While the color images most strongly evoke the purely emotional side of my experience, the black and white images most strongly evoke the purely intellectual and cognitive side of my experience. Interestingly, neither type of image - <span style="font-style: italic;">alone </span>- suffices to express the full depth of my experience. (This vaguely reminds me of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle">Heisenberg's uncertainty relation</a> between complementary variables, such as position and momentum, on the atomic scale).<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Why had I not noticed this the first time around? I think it is because my emotion - or, rather, my strong desire to <span style="font-style: italic;">express my emotion</span> of being in Santorini - was so overwhelming, that the secondary component of my experience in Santorini (a somewhat more detached intellectual "awe" of its geometry) was lost in the process. Yes, the color images vivdly convey the blazing light and glorious color of the island; but they also leave little room for any reaction other than a joyful exhuberance. The focus on color in my color images is necessarily so strong, and so dominant, that even the photographer's own eye is unable to discern the other - equally as important - dimensions of the original experience. In a sense, going back to the original files and "revisioning" them in black and white (although, truth be told, that is how I originally "saw" them while I was composing; I chose to retain the color afterwards only because the color reminded me of what I felt in Santorini, not because that is how I previsualized the images taken there) is my answer to <a href="http://www.masters-of-photography.com/W/white/white_articles3.html">Minor White's well-known admonition</a> to use photography to tell the viewer something about <span style="font-style: italic;">what else</span> the subject matter is. My color images show you what Santorini <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span>; my black and white images tell you <span style="font-style: italic;">what else it is</span>.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">By stripping away the color, by focusing exclusively on only two of the three dimensions - <span style="font-style: italic;">geometry </span>and <span style="font-style: italic;">shadow </span>- I can more easily express the emotionally less charged component of my experience. Since color is absent, it is no longer the "distraction" it is in the color versions of the same images. The viewer is forced to interpret an image in terms of form and tone alone; and, hence, in Santorini's case, in terms of geometry and shadow.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And as for my lesson...? The lesson - I warn you it is a "trivial" one, but one I obviously needed to "relearn" at best - is that a single image can be used to express markedly different emotions; the "emotion" being a function of how the original captured (or raw) image is processed. Indeed, since my experience of Santorini (as of any place I visit, including places I know as well as my own backyard) is obviously multidimensional and is far deeper than "mere" joy and awe, I suspect that I will slowly discover multiple versions of the same underlying "raw" image captured by the camera. Collectively, and over time, these "expressions" will tell an increasingly more refined (but forever incomplete) story of my experience in Santorini. And I will continue to search for ways to bring out (and discover!) certain aspects of my original experience; undoubtedly focusing on one particular dimension at a time, at the expense of another, complimentary one (perhaps best expressed by some other expression; or "performance", as Ansel Adams likened a print to a negative). But, of course, that is precisely what photography is supposed to be all about :-) (Shows how much I have left to learn!)<br /></div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-18095043942922619782008-07-14T16:14:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:29.230-08:00Santorini (Greece) = Geometry + Color + Shadow<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SHvegutVwdI/AAAAAAAAAik/Epo3k8ZX990/s1600-h/IlachinskiGreece2008i04.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SHvegutVwdI/AAAAAAAAAik/Epo3k8ZX990/s200/IlachinskiGreece2008i04.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5223012846741602770" border="0" /></a>Regular readers of my blog, and those that have seen my work in <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.lenswork.com/">Lenswork </a></span>, <a href="http://www.focusmag.info/">Focus</a>, and <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.bandwmag.com/">Black & White</a></span> magazine, know that I am primarily (indeed, almost exclusively!) a black and white photographer. While I have dabbled with color in the past, and print in color on occasion (the last time involving images taken in Hawaii, with an "explanation" provided by this <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2006/07/waimea-canyon-in-color.html">2006 blog entry</a>), almost everything I do "seriously" (and seriously try to sell) is in black and white. O'Reilly publishing also published a "color portfolio" (of sorts) of some <a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/digitalmedia/2005/03/16/featured.html">flowers</a>, but these were considerably older than the "2005" byline date would suggest, and - moreover - were never meant to be part of a larger body of work. Generally speaking, and without apology, color is simply "not my thing."<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">So, it came as somewhat of a shock to my system to learn that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santorini">Santorini, Greece</a> - a veritable paradise of color, geometry and shadow that my wife and I were fortunate enough to visit for a few days earlier this month - effectively makes a mockery of everything I held sacred about black and white ;-) Trying to render Santorini in black and white, even if duo- or tri-toned, would be like trying to convey to someone who had never heard of George Carlin what his "seven words you can't say on television" are without uttering what those words are, and doing so in a PG manner. Simply not possible.<br /><br />While I tend to "see" the world in tones, not colors (a habit I think I first picked up when my eyesight started going bad when I was five; since - without glasses - the world is made up mostly of featureless, colorless splotches in my visual field), I recognize that when color is the primary - or otherwise important - focus of my aesthetic attention and therefore needs to be expressed, it behooves me to render the scene in color. But color is by no means <span style="font-style: italic;">my </span>primary focus. And to the extent that my (mostly B&W tonal) aesthetics dictates how I perceive a photographic environment, and what grabs my attention in the photographic environment, it is simply a fact that I have seldomly produced a body of work consisting of color images. However, Santorini renders all such musings and intellectualizations absurdly moot. Aside from its intricate labyrinth of criss-crossed and interlocked walkways (that passerbys must occasionally share with mules), Santorini is <span style="font-style: italic;">nothing but color; glorious, breathing, living, and sometimes blindingly bright color!</span><br /><br />I am convinced that color is somehow born and nurtured here, before being unleashed in muted tones elsewhere in this world. A result partly of the eternally bright midday summer sun and partly of the bright local hues and saturation, Santorini is <span style="font-style: italic;">ablaze with color</span>. This is somewhat of a paradox, as most of the buildings are painted a bright white, and are devoid of any color; of course, this accentuates the omnipresent colors that much more and renders them, if anything, more intense.<br /><br />Since we were there for only a few days, I regret not having the time to "attune" myself to the fantastic - and phantasmagoric - <a href="http://www.mcescher.com/">Escher</a>-like architectonic forms. I was more in "point and shoot" mode, trying to capture as much of the colorful geometry as I could in the time we had, than in my more usual slow, deliberate, and contemplative frame of mind (which, had I followed, would have resulted in far fewer shots; perhaps none at all (!). As it turned out, I did manage to find several wonderful scenes that show some of Santorini's unique charm (though I'll let kind readers judge for themselves).<br /><br />On a <span style="font-style: italic;">physical side</span>, what I will always remember about Santorini is the <span style="font-style: italic;">steps</span>; endless steps, ups and downs, and more endless steps ;-) My wife and I needed about 80 steps or so to get down to our hotel room from the main desk (which is itself about 75 steps removed from the "top" of <a href="http://www.travel-to-santorini.com/place.php?place_id=3">Fira</a>, the town we stayed in), then another 50 to arrive at the hotel's restaurant for dinner. It is the first place either of us has stayed in with the amusing (and slightly surrealistic) property that, if - after locking your hotel room and before arriving at the hotel's restaurant - you suddenly remember that you have forgotten something <span style="font-style: italic;">absolutely vital for the rest of the day</span>, you will pause, in mid-step, for considerably more than a few minutes (partly to catch your breath and partly to just think), reflecting on the pros and cons of going back to the room for the item; and, 9 times of of ten simply decide to forget it. This place is just hard on the legs and lungs! Though we were both immediately winded less than half-way up the first series of steps the first day there, we soon acclimated to the mini-climbs and were hardly out of breath by the last day. Just in time to prepare for our hike down <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaria_Gorge">Samaria Gorge</a> on Crete, our next stop; but that's another story. (We also both found our thighs had expanded two or three inches in girth with pure muscle after we got back home.)<br /><br />I have posted a mini "point and shoot" portfolio of Santorini's <span style="font-style: italic;">Geometry, Color, and Shadow</span> - (no B&W to be found anywhere ;-) - <a href="http://www.tao-of-photography.com/Portfolio/Santorini/IlachinskiGreece2008.html">here</a>.<br /></div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-58197455832284780972008-06-09T17:34:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:31.628-08:00The Eightfold Path Toward Self-Discovery Through Photography<div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGqg54VN6I/AAAAAAAAAgs/auRgkLTWzBI/s1600-h/Tree12.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211133726114002850" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGqg54VN6I/AAAAAAAAAgs/auRgkLTWzBI/s200/Tree12.jpg" border="0" /></a>A while back, I posted an entry called <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2006/09/eightfold-way-of-artist.html">The Eightfold Way of the Artist</a>, in which I describe the basic "steps" by which most artists - and most photographers (not that there is any meaningful difference between the two;-) - typically develop an aesthetic language over a lifetime's worth of "seeing" and "expressing" their own unique vision. That earlier discussion, however, was fairly abstract; and emphasized how the evolution of one's personal art may be used to reveal, over time, the artist "behind" the emergent work. I'd like to revisit this idea, but from a slightly more practical (but no less philosophically deep) point of view: namely, how the nature of the expressed art form itself changes over time, and what we - as artists - can learn from the forms of change.<br /></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFHXnn8KYfI/AAAAAAAAAiE/9pgPRrk5hvU/s1600-h/Tree9.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211183319580566002" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFHXnn8KYfI/AAAAAAAAAiE/9pgPRrk5hvU/s200/Tree9.jpg" border="0" /></a>In keeping with this entry's more prosaic tone (though, as I glance ahead to what I wrote below, I'm not sure how much "philosophy" I've actually stripped from my earlier post; I'll leave that up to the patient reader to decide;-), I should note that it was prompted by a disarmingly simple and straightforward question my mom asked me a few weeks ago (well, it was straightforward, but only before I realized that <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">answering </span>it - in a meaningful way - would prove anything but). Having just seen my <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/12/micro-worlds-portfolio.html">Micro Worlds</a> portfolio, my mom asked: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"Andy, these are lovely, but why do you take so many pictures of the same thing? You used to show me such a variety of subjects; why the change?"</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGqrqVZEMI/AAAAAAAAAg0/rLqSzBTt8XA/s1600-h/Tree5.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211133910919483586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGqrqVZEMI/AAAAAAAAAg0/rLqSzBTt8XA/s200/Tree5.jpg" border="0" /></a>My immediate reply was accurate but shallow. I said that I no longer find individual images adequate to fully express what I want to communicate about what I'm seeing and feeling. My mom - who is not used to shallow answers about art, having lived with a rather deep artist (namely, my <a href="http://www.ilachinski.com/Flash/Papuulia/TaoOfDigitalPhotography_Sam.htm">dad</a>) for as long as I can remember - called me on my flippant reply, and probed for something deeper. I tried again: "I don't think in terms of individual images anymore; and when I see a subject that interests me, I want to explore it more, with multiple exposures and viewpoints." In some ways, of course, that was worse than my first answer...my mom countered with: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"Andy, you've restated my question quite nicely. Now, how about explaining <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">why</span> you don't think in terms of individual images anymore?"<br /><br /></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGrnvXeTpI/AAAAAAAAAhk/dTVlUQllX8E/s1600-h/Tree4.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211134943062544018" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGrnvXeTpI/AAAAAAAAAhk/dTVlUQllX8E/s200/Tree4.jpg" border="0" /></a>What follows is a summary of the deeper answer I gave my mom after I took a few hours to ponder her probing question. I concluded that my mom very perceptively discerned a genuine meta-pattern shift in the gestalt of my photography; and that the essence of that meta-pattern shift provides an important clue as to what stage I'm in, in my natural (and still very much ongoing) evolution as an artist. I also thought that it might be a worthwhile exercise to think through, and describe, the various stages that I suspect most (if not all) photographers gradually move through as they mature as artists. While my notes contain the germs of ideas for "stages of artistic evolution" whose numbers range from a only a few to more than a dozen, I eventually settled on eight stages (perhaps an unconscious homage to Buddha's </span><a href="http://www.thebigview.com/buddhism/eightfoldpath.html"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic;font-size:100%;" >Eightfold Path</span></a>).<br /></span><br /></span></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGqzTB0kDI/AAAAAAAAAg8/FHmIo-sSDAU/s1600-h/Tree11.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211134042102337586" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGqzTB0kDI/AAAAAAAAAg8/FHmIo-sSDAU/s200/Tree11.jpg" border="0" /></a>Let me begin by stating up front that my description of the "8-fold path toward self-discovery" in no way implies that I have any special insight into the deepest strata of art or photography; it is offered simply, and humbly, "as is" and is to be read - and understood - purely as an expression of but one point of view (which the reader is entirely free to disagree with; indeed, I hope does disagree, with at least parts of it, so as to foster a dialectic by which we can all collectively probe the meaning of art and photographer even deeper).<br /><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"A man's work is nothing but<br />this slow trek to discover,</span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">through the detours of art, these two or three </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">great and simple images in whose</span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">presence his heart first opened."</span><br />- ALBERT CAMUS<br /></div></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stage 1: Joyful snapshots of anything and everything. </span>What is the first thing anyone who gets a new" toy" (or serious tool) wants to do? <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Play with it</span>, of course; see what it can do, learn how to use it - mechanically, at least - and just have some fun with it. The beginning photographer - such as I remember myself being when I was barely 10 and my parents had given me a Polaroid instamatic camera for Christmas - doesn't really care much about anything other than taking pictures of whatever strikes their fancy. And that's precisely what they get: pictures of their dog or cat, their room, mom and dad, their own reflection, snapshots of their friends, a tree, a shoe, a baseball game, an apple, whatever. Everyone begins somewhere; and that "somewhere" for photographers is a joyful - but otherwise essentially indiscriminant - expression of a new found tool that takes pictures. And pictures they will take; all kinds of pictures, with hardly any rhyme or reason. In a basic sense, anyone who is alive and is the least bit curious about the world - and is given a camera, or any other artistic tool - instantly becomes a stage-1 artist.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGq8iOqhuI/AAAAAAAAAhE/8e9K-0cuMt0/s1600-h/Tree2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211134200801560290" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGq8iOqhuI/AAAAAAAAAhE/8e9K-0cuMt0/s200/Tree2.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stage 2: A passive stirring of aesthetic value.</span> As the photographer evolves from stage one to stage two, she still takes images of anything and everything that strikes her fancy but now finds that <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">certain objects draw a deeper attention</span> than others. Her gaze still falls on most everything that surrounds her, but her embryonic photographer's "eye" begins to discern that aesthetic value is not homogeneously distributed; certain scenes, and certain things, draw her eye more than others. For the first time, though perhaps weakly, some aspect of the environment draws the artist's attention. But the second stage artist is mostly passive, reacting to aesthetic stimuli as they appear and are recognized, but still largely undiscerning as to their relative merit and eager to "take in as much as possible." The stage-2 artist creates pictures in which others recognize that certain things are given more or less visual weight than others; but - because the stage-2 artist is still only a "beginner" - the pictures themselves are not necessarily as aesthetically pleasing as they could be.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGrFnGKppI/AAAAAAAAAhM/u_gyggyRZOo/s1600-h/Tree1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211134356726916754" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGrFnGKppI/AAAAAAAAAhM/u_gyggyRZOo/s200/Tree1.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stage 3: Willful engagement of the aesthetic environment.</span> The transition from stage two to stage three is both difficult to see "from the outside" (for observers of the artist's inner journey) and dramatic (as experienced directly by the artist). The transition occurs when the artist finds herself discontent with the merely passive capture of objects, and instead actively seeks objects she deems "interesting." She has started to categorize the world according to her own unique measure(s) of lesser and greater aesthetic value. Objects (or places, or people, or situations, ...) that the stage-three artist holds in high regard become beacons in the environment that both immediately draw the artist's attention, and are "attractors" toward which the artist actively makes her way. If the artist finds <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">trees </span>of particular interest, for example, she is no longer content with leaving a park with a "few stray shots of trees," but now deliberately goes to different parks (and other places that has lots of trees) to "see" as many different tree as possible. The stage-three artist begins to learn what she values most, and then goes out to find it. She also learns to better express what she "sees" and is better able to create aesthetically pleasing images. "Objects" of attention in the stage-3 artist's picture repertoire are no longer appreciated by others merely as objects that clearly "stand out" from the background, but as bona-fide "aesthetic elements" assembled by the artist's growing creative powers of expression.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGrR-ViIII/AAAAAAAAAhU/JG2wgyDMTsc/s1600-h/Tree0.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211134569123815554" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGrR-ViIII/AAAAAAAAAhU/JG2wgyDMTsc/s200/Tree0.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stage 4: Recognition of the power of expression.</span> The transition between stage three and stage four is marked by a gradual recognition of the power of using photography - traditionally, a print - to express not the object itself, but <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">what draws the artist's attention to the object</span>. In practical terms, this means that the stage four artist is concerned less with depicting trees merely as objects of interest (in keeping with our "tree" example) - being quite happy to display a set of "shots of pretty trees" that are otherwise unremarkable in any way - and more with finding the one shot (and the one resulting print) that best expresses to others why the artist loves to photograph trees. This subtle (and not so easy) transition represents a very significant worldview shift; as well as a shift in artistic sensibility. Indeed, many artists (myself included) find themselves "stuck" at the boundary between stages 3 and 4 for years, as they patiently develop and explore ways to express meaning, and not just being. Making matters even more difficult is that the stage 3->4 transition involves a gradual recognition of - and increased attention to - <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">two different worlds</span> of reality and expression: (1) attention to using a print to isolate the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">tree as it "appears" to us</span>, as an otherwise embedded feature of the external environment, and (2) attention to using post-capture tools (either in a traditional or digital "darkroom") to properly express the most "important" features of the<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> tree as captured in a photograph</span>. Again, this distinction is both subtle and deep. It is meaningful only insofar as the stage-4 photographer realizes there is an important aesthetic difference between using tools to render differences between trees and their environment (in order to "make them stand out" better from the surrounding clutter), and using tools to selectively render the inner parts of a given photograph (the first inkling to dodge, burn, and make other tonal "changes" to an image), so that the viewer can better "see" what the photographer is trying to express. The slow and careful learning, nurturing, and refining of these skills can (and often does) take years, if not decades, to develop fully.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGrbGmJLLI/AAAAAAAAAhc/k2i4oh_lh54/s1600-h/Tree3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211134725959789746" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFGrbGmJLLI/AAAAAAAAAhc/k2i4oh_lh54/s200/Tree3.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stage 5: One picture is not enough.</span> Sooner or later, but only after comfortably settling into stage 4, every artist yearns to go beyond the "image" - to go beyond just showing a single picture, or at most a few individual prints, of a subject the artist holds dear. More effort and more care are put into every single capture (and its attendant post-capture processing); and more and more finished prints are deemed "worthy to show others" by the artist. But the stage-5 artist also grows increasingly dissatisfied over what she is beginning to perceive as "too shallow" an expression of an inner vision that is slowly trying to make its own voice heard. "I like this tree," she finds herself thinking to herself more and more often, "but it doesn't - <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">can't !</span> - by itself express <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">why</span> I've been taking pictures of trees for as long as I have." She continues, "Each of my trees is lovely, and I'm proud to show them to others, but I'm somehow missing the bigger picture here. It is as though each of my pictures is a chapter in a book yet to be assembled." The artist may not yet quite know what this nascent "book" is, what form it will eventually take, or what it will "say," but her aesthetic eye has measurably raised its line-of-sight to higher levels. The stage-5 artist no longer thinks (or "sees") in terms of individual pictures. Rather, the world is seen as a<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> patchwork; a tapestry</span> <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">of overlapping images</span>. Or, simply, in terms of<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> groups - or portfolios - of pictures</span>.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFG12jVuvDI/AAAAAAAAAhs/XTOA4jR_Zpo/s1600-h/Tree8.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211146192648322098" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFG12jVuvDI/AAAAAAAAAhs/XTOA4jR_Zpo/s200/Tree8.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stage 6: Telling a story.</span> Inevitably, the artist becomes interested in not just putting together a set of assorted - but only marginally related - prints (as in collections of "best of" shots), but in carefully crafting and sequencing the images in a portfolio of prints to <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">tell a specific story</span>. If the original interest was (and remains) <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">trees</span>, for example, the artist now wishes to move beyond her ever growing collection of "individual trees," to a new form of expression designed to reveal both how "sets of trees" are related, and a bit of the process by which the artist's perception and expression of her general "love of trees" has itself evolved over time. The stage-6 artist thus naturally steps away from a focus on prints <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">as prints</span> (even if they are otherwise a part of a larger collection) and moves toward an increased focus on <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">portfolios of interrelated images</span>. It is no longer enough to just find that one "good" or "best" image - even if it is one for the ages (though any artist is always happy to find it! ;-) - the artist now first thinks in terms of mutually related groups of images. Ideally, each image both stands on its own and compliments and/or enhances all of the others. In more practical terms, the artist now wishes to express not so much her love of "trees" <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">per se</span>, as represented in the "best possible way" by a single image, but a deeper aesthetic experience of trees in general; as exemplified perhaps by a selection of personally meaningful images captured in a favorite park, or accrued over several weeks or months (or years) even as the artist explores other subjects and themes. The stage-6 artist's attention has moved from "pictures" to <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">projects that culminate in portfolios of interrelated images</span>; all motivated by a growing desire to use sets of images to tell a story about what the artist's eye (and heart) is drawn to, and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">why</span>..<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFHSIVb4aYI/AAAAAAAAAh0/m2Ex6S0lkkg/s1600-h/Tree10.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211177284479248770" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFHSIVb4aYI/AAAAAAAAAh0/m2Ex6S0lkkg/s200/Tree10.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stage 7: Portfolios of Portfolios.</span> The penultimate stage typically appears only when an artist has attained a certain level of "aesthetic maturity"; by which time a meaningful body of work - consisting mostly of portfolios (though "individually meaningful" images still pop up from time to time) - has naturally emerged. Each and every portfolio has both a story to tell, and is an element of an as-yet unrevealed and unrealized deeper story; a story about which the stage-7 artist hears the first faint murmurs of. A story concerning the truths of the world "out there" as revealed to the photographer through her lifetime's worth of aesthetic judgements as to what to shoot, what to keep, how to express, what to show, and what to sequence into portfolios. The artist realizes that her art has not only captured an aesthetic <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">impression </span>of the world - an aesthetic that is uniquely hers, though the details may overlap with that of other artists - but is a manifest imprint of a deeper <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">aesthetic order of the external world</span>. The artist begins to understand and appreciate certain universal objective truths by examining the subjective aesthetic order that she herself has "imposed" on the world. By studying her own <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">portfolio of portfolios</span> - as though her life's work was itself a "world" open to capture with an aesthetic eye and camera - the artist discovers universal truths about the world itself. In my own case (though I suspect I am far from moving into stage-5, much less stage-7), I can glimpse some of the feelings associated with a stage-7 worldview by looking inward to my motivation for creating my recent "portoflio of portfolios" called <a style="FONT-STYLE: italic" href="http://www.blurb.com/books/245471">Sudden Stillness</a>. <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Sudden Stillness</span> consists of four fundamentally interwoven portfolios called <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Chaos, Order, Complexity</span>, and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Entropy</span>. The subtitle of the book conveys the deeper meaning behind (and reason for the particular sequencing of images in) the book: <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">visual echoes of timeless rhythms</span>. Collectively, the four portfolios weave a "story" about the fundamental rhythmic patterns that regulate our world (from this one photographer's point of view, of course). In short, the stage-7 artist uses her own work - consisting now mostly of portfolios of portfolios - to transcend art and begin addressing deeper and universal themes and issues regarding the order of the world around her. Art is no longer concerned solely with the here and now - for its own sake, and regarding limited sets of objects, themes, and contexts - but assumes an added dimension of seeking a transcendent truth about the nature of the world itself. And part of that truth is revealed - to the artist - by the artists own body of work.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFHV-eDdhyI/AAAAAAAAAh8/20e6DlTgTDc/s1600-h/Tree13.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5211181513040561954" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: pointer; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SFHV-eDdhyI/AAAAAAAAAh8/20e6DlTgTDc/s200/Tree13.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Stage 8: Self-discovery.</span> Stage-8 is not all that different from stage-7, at least outwardly, and if measured objectively in terms of the artist's physical output (in terms of images and prints). The stage-8 artist still typically produces <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">portfolios of portfolios</span>, still diligently practices her artform, relentlessly striving toward perfection, and delights with each every "beautiful print" as though it was her first, just as she has always done and will always do; but the artist shows no outward sign of doing anything different from the stage-7 artist. Indeed, paradoxically, the stage-8 artist may even appear<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> to others</span> as being stuck on a plateau (albeit an aesthetically very high one), and no longer willing, or able, to "evolve" artistically. But something fundamental has changed - and in a dramatic way, but one invisible to anyone but the artist at first - in the way the artist understands and interprets her own work. Of course, all of the technical components of image capture and mechanical procedures of post-capture processing have long ago been turned into virtually reflex action on the artist's part. Without this being true - something that requires years and years of dedicated and full immersion in art - no artist can progress to stage-8 (this - namely, the need for <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">total immersion</span> - also appears to be universally true of any creative field, if the practitioner wishes to attain the highest levels of "creative accomplishment"). And what is the fundamental change that occurs? In the same way as we indicated that the stage-7 artist uses her art to uncover truths about the world, the stage-8 artist discovers <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">truths about her own soul. </span>The world, and the artist's own work, have both come full circle: the world revealed through an artist's vision; and the artist's expression of the world uncovering the depths of the artist herself. Seer and seen become one; and the seen brings the seer back to self.<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><br /></span><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"></span></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"></span></div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">“A man sets out to draw the world. </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">As the years go by, he peoples a space </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">with images of provinces, </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">stars, horses, and individuals. </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">A short time before he dies, </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">he discovers that the patient labyrinth </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">of lines traces the lineaments </span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">of his own face.”</span><br />- JORGE LUIS BORGES<br /></div></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"></div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-19368387624658776992008-06-01T09:57:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:31.911-08:00Mystic Flame Portfolio<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SELVGxTXPoI/AAAAAAAAAfc/uZ1Jt78biIM/s1600-h/MysticFire.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SELVGxTXPoI/AAAAAAAAAfc/uZ1Jt78biIM/s200/MysticFire.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5206958431484198530" border="0" /></a>After devoting almost four months of work to my <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/12/micro-worlds-portfolio.html">Micro Worlds</a> portfolio (which I'm delighted to announce has recently been published in <span style="font-style: italic;">Lenswork </span><a href="http://enhanced.lenswork.com/lwcollection.htm">issue #76</a>, print and extended DVD editions) - a project that required me to be painfully hunched over my tripod like a old pretzel - I naturally wanted to choose a follow-on project that would give some much needed rest to both my back and eyes. But I didn't necessarily want to back away from the kind of abstract images that make up <span style="font-style: italic;">Micro Worlds</span>. Indeed, while I've always been attracted to abstract forms (perhaps driven there by my admiration - awe even! - of <a href="http://www.ilachinski.com/Flash/Papuulia/TaoOfDigitalPhotography_Sam.htm">my dad's paintings</a>), I am finding my photography descending to ever deeper levels of abstraction.<br /><br />And so, in a step that seemed a natural one to take (at least I could temporarily free myself of a tripod and not be scrunched up for hours on end in some inhumanly back-breaking stance; see my attempts to photograph a <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2006/04/artist-at-work.html">time exposure of fast breaking waves</a> at Miami beach in a stiff wind to see an example of just how inhumanly scrunched up I can get!), I turned my attention to the wonderfully abstract and ephemeral patterns of <span style="font-style: italic;">fire</span>.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-style: italic;">“All things, oh priests, are on fire . . . </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />The eye is on fire;<br />forms are on fire; </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />eye-consciousness is on fire; </span><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />impressions received by the eye are on fire.”</span><br />- BUDDHA </div><br />All one needs to start a fire is some flammable or combustible material and an adequate supply of oxygen (or some other oxidizer). Subject the two to enough heat to initiate a chain reaction and...<span style="font-style: italic;">voila</span>. On a more <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire">technical level</a>, fire - or, more precisely, <span style="font-style: italic;">combustion </span>- involves a complex series of molecular interactions. The burning of even comparatively "simple" few-atom molecules may involve more than 100 unique chemical reactions. The flame itself is an exothermic, self-sustaining, chemical reaction that produces energy and glowing hot matter (a tiny fraction of which is plasma). It emits both visible and infrared light; though the actual frequency range is a function of the chemical composition of the burning elements and intermediate reaction products.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Aesthetically, flames can be quite mesmerizing; displaying rapidly shifting patterns and complex nested tones and textures. Of course, <span style="font-style: italic;">capturing </span>such patterns presents somewhat of a challenge, not unlike that of capturing images of flowing water and breaking waves. One cannot readily predict what specific patterns will arise. The best one can do is get whatever equipment will be used (camera, lens, tripod, exposure time) in place, and take as many shots as necessary so that interesting patterns can be "discovered" <span style="font-style: italic;">after the fact</span>.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">As I've only just started my new project - with the working title, <span style="font-style: italic;">"Mystic Flame"</span> - I can offer but a small preview of shots to come. But judging from the results thus far, I foresee this project consuming <span style="font-style: italic;">at least</span> as much attention of my photographic eye (and passion) in the coming weeks (months?) as <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/12/micro-worlds-portfolio.html"><span>"Micro Worlds"</span></a> did before it.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Please click <a href="http://www.tao-of-photography.com/Portfolio/MysticFire/MysticFirePortfolio.html">here</a> to see my - still quite nascent - <a href="http://www.tao-of-photography.com/Portfolio/MysticFire/MysticFirePortfolio.html">Mystic Flame</a> portfolio. What you will be seeing are actually <span style="font-style: italic;">digital negatives</span>. That is, a collection of <span style="font-style: italic;">reverse-toned images</span> in which the darkest portions (of the "real" image) appear the lightest, and the lightest portions appear darkest. The most striking feature of these photographs, at least from a philosophical point of view, is that they provide a glimpse of the unseeable. Because the exposure times for most of these images lie between 1/500th and 1/4000th of a sec - or, in a slice of time that is far shorter than what our eyes need to "see" (and/or discern) patterns - they depict a reality that is fundamentally inaccessible to us. Yet here it is...simultaneously a beautiful enigma revealed, and an invisible reality not quite completely exposed; for once a pattern is "captured" by the camera, its ephemeral form vanishes forever.</div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-31355615393951623182008-05-18T13:14:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:33.779-08:00Selection, Selection, Selection,....<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDClHhVBpXI/AAAAAAAAAew/ElOtitShcoU/s1600-h/flow+triptych+small.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDClHhVBpXI/AAAAAAAAAew/ElOtitShcoU/s400/flow+triptych+small.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201839118237148530" border="0" /></a>Michael Reichmann, author of the wonderful blog <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/">Luminous Landscape</a>, recently posted an interesting essay on the <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/convergence.shtml">convergence of still and video photography</a>. Citing such new cameras as Casio's <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/casio-exf1.shtml">EX-F1</a> and the <a href="http://www.red.com/nab/scarlet">Red Scarlet</a> (which can shoot 60 frames per sec and 100 fps, respectively, without mechanical shutters, and at speeds approaching 1/40,000 sec), Reichmann suggests that new technologies are harbingers of a future in which the distinction between still cameras and video cameras is blurred, if not made moot entirely.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">His assertion is both well argued and nuanced, and I encourage interested readers in clicking on the provided link to enjoy the article for themselves. For my purposes here, I'd like to focus on the <span style="font-style: italic;">aesthetic </span>issues that such a convergence of technologies portends; and will argue that the distinction between "still" and "video" is - artistically speaking - somewhat of a red-herring.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCjRBVBpPI/AAAAAAAAAdw/Tjig0SqgNCc/s1600-h/_MG_8052bw.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCjRBVBpPI/AAAAAAAAAdw/Tjig0SqgNCc/s200/_MG_8052bw.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201837082422650098" border="0" /></a>While still photography and videography obviously represent two objectively distinct modes of expression, the distinction has heretofore been largely a <span style="font-style: italic;">technological </span>- not <span style="font-style: italic;">artistic </span>- one (I hope to explain what I mean by this in what follows). Because the two technologies have up until now been sufficiently "different," they required an artist (note I do not say photographer or videographer, but <span style="font-style: italic;">artist</span>, because I think the category must now be made larger) to invest (sometimes huge amounts of) time and dollars in two sets of "still" and "video" equipment. What the technological convergence is leading to - indeed, what it already has led to, judging from cameras such as the <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/casio-exf1.shtml">EX-F1</a> - is a time when all serious artists can now use one and the same recording instrument to express their artistic sensibilities. The real issue is "artistic expression"; or what the artist wishes to convey with his/her art, be it still photography or videography. And what lies at the heart of any form of expression is <span style="font-style: italic;">selection</span>; indeed, an almost endless (and endlessly nested) sequence of selection upon selection upon selection. The fact that the act of "taking pictures" has now become essentially synonymous with "taking videos" only serves to emphasize the fundamental role that "selection" plays in the creative process. And <span style="font-style: italic;">that </span>part, at least, has not changed; if anything, it is becoming more difficult to do.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCkVxVBpVI/AAAAAAAAAeg/a8bOsIsUTDE/s1600-h/_MG_7705.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCkVxVBpVI/AAAAAAAAAeg/a8bOsIsUTDE/s200/_MG_7705.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201838263538656594" border="0" /></a>Consider the basic steps that any traditional photographer follows when approaching a subject and, ultimately - after recording and processing the images in either an analog or digital darkroom - using some medium (print, folio, gallery exhibit, or book) to express and communicate a "vision." Each step entails a myriad of decisions - or <span style="font-style: italic;">selections </span>- that a photographer needs to make to complete the work. The not-quite-infinitely-long chain of selections begins with a basic question: <span style="font-style: italic;">"What does the photographer wish to express?"</span> Is it a feeling? A thing? A sense of place? A sense of family? A still-life? The list is almost endless, but a selection must at some point be made. Once made, the photographer must decide on where to go to "find" (or "search" for) pictures.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCjcBVBpQI/AAAAAAAAAd4/pTtD4K6SuZs/s1600-h/_MG_7734.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCjcBVBpQI/AAAAAAAAAd4/pTtD4K6SuZs/s200/_MG_7734.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201837271401211138" border="0" /></a>Having arrived somewhere, the real work begins. In no particular order, and from a first-person perspective (speaking from my own inner experiences): What grabs my attention? Where do I look? Where do I stand? What light do I need? What do I exclude? What lens do I use? What f-stop/exposure-time combo do I use? Do I need to change the ISO? Do I need a filter? Should I shoot a sequence? Should I take a couple of different perspectives? Do I need to position my tripod any lower or higher? I could go on, but the point is clear. While most of this is automatic, much of the "creative process" consists of making a repeated series of <span style="font-style: italic;">selections</span>.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Of course, the need to "select" continues (intensifies even) after we get back to our darkroom. What images do I keep (and "work on")? What software do I use? What factors need adjustment? White balance? White/black points? Tonal distributions? Shadow noise? Global/local contrast? Dodging or burning? Toning? Sharpening?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCjlRVBpRI/AAAAAAAAAeA/qVQ3cUtRdjs/s1600-h/_MG_7693.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCjlRVBpRI/AAAAAAAAAeA/qVQ3cUtRdjs/s200/_MG_7693.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201837430315001106" border="0" /></a>Now, suppose you've processed dozens (or hundreds) of images for a shooting project, and are ready to start thinking about what needs to be done to "communicate" a vision to an audience. More selection. Which images do I use? What sequence of images do I combine? What manner of expression do I use? If a book, how many to a page, and in what layout? If a gallery, what is wall placement? One row or two? How large should the prints be? ...the list goes on and on.<br /><br />And so we come full circle to the new cameras, such as the Casio <a href="http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/casio-exf1.shtml">EX-F1</a>, that purportedly blur the distinction between still and video photography. While the fact that the distinction between these two technologies is becoming more and more blurred is arguably and demonstrably true, the deeper question is, <span style="font-style: italic;">"How does the lack of any distinction impact the creative process?"</span> If one accepts the premise that art, in the broadest sense, consists of however many <span style="font-style: italic;">selective steps</span> a given artist needs to go through in order to express (in some form, of the artist's choosing) an original idea or feeling, then the only way in which a convergence of still-video technologies impacts art is in providing the artist a richer set of technologies for recording and expressing images.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCjyBVBpSI/AAAAAAAAAeI/R9ggXcIK2Cc/s1600-h/_MG_7563b.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCjyBVBpSI/AAAAAAAAAeI/R9ggXcIK2Cc/s200/_MG_7563b.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201837649358333218" border="0" /></a>The question of whether what results <span style="font-style: italic;">remains </span>"photography" (albeit in a different form), <span style="font-style: italic;">changes </span>to videography (but, again, different from more traditional forms) and is no longer photography, or <span style="font-style: italic;">becomes </span>some as-yet undefined "hybrid recording process" (that is different from either of its two historical antecedents), seems to me to be the wrong (or, at least, not most meaningful) question to ask. A better question is, <span style="font-style: italic;">"In what ways will artists adjust their creative process to find a better way to express their artistic vision?"</span><br /><br />It may turn out that some photographers find great artistic merit in having not one image (or only a handful of images) with which to express their vision but an <span style="font-style: italic;">entire movie</span>; and/or find clever ways to combine still and "moving" images to expand their repertoire of artistic expression. The way in which they "do art" will therefore change, and the "art" that they eventually wind up doing may bear little or no resemblance to what may have in the past been called "photography." Other photographers, earnestly trying out the new technology for the first time, may find themselves overwhelmed with the now <span style="font-style: italic;">thousands </span>of images from which to choose the "right one" - where before they had to sift through a few or at most a dozen - and either walk away from the new technology or (regrettably) take a step <span style="font-style: italic;">backwards </span>as artists. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDDYzRVBpYI/AAAAAAAAAe4/AFgi2Jzz1xM/s1600-h/_MG_8407bw.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDDYzRVBpYI/AAAAAAAAAe4/AFgi2Jzz1xM/s200/_MG_8407bw.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201895944949441922" /></a>Annie Lebowitz, in a <a href="http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/database/leibovitz_a.html">PBS documentary of her life's work</a>, admitted to having virtually no editorial skill when it came to <span style="font-style: italic;">selecting</span> the one or two images that would make it into print from a shoot; a task she was more than happy to leave to the editors. Being good at <span style="font-style:italic;">one </span>aspect of the creative process - or being good at making <span style="font-style:italic;">some </span>"artistic selections" - <span style="font-style:italic;">does not guarantee the same success for other aspects of the creative process</span> or ensure that the photographer will be equally as adept at making all required selections. In the unfortunate event that some new technology enlarges the "selection space" in precisely the dimension in which a given photographer is least gifted as an artist, it behooves that photographer to proceed slowly.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCkKhVBpUI/AAAAAAAAAeY/-iK7nhv5Dsc/s1600-h/_MG_8698.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCkKhVBpUI/AAAAAAAAAeY/-iK7nhv5Dsc/s200/_MG_8698.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201838070265128258" border="0" /></a>For many photographers (particularly those still working with "analog" large-format cameras), the convergence between still and video recorders will likely make no difference whatsoever. Their art will remain what it is, and evolve as it has and will continue. Still others will inevitably forge a new and unanticipated path - and an entirely new form of art - for which we do not yet have a handy label or phrase, and the nature of which none of us, at the moment, are prescient enough to predict or imagine.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCj9xVBpTI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/wpANd5as0Ro/s1600-h/_MG_7742.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SDCj9xVBpTI/AAAAAAAAAeQ/wpANd5as0Ro/s200/_MG_7742.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5201837851221796146" border="0" /></a>Art, by its nature - and as <span style="font-style:italic;">life </span>- grows, adapts, and evolves. In time, perhaps the very words "art" and "photography" will be supplanted by something else; and, in some future time, be recalled by historians as archaic "symbols of something that used to be done using some older forms of technology." But whatever the new words will be that convey the essence of what we now call "art," I suspect that the creative process itself will remain fundamentally unchanged. And what lies at the core of that process is <span style="font-style: italic;">selection, selection, selection, ...</span> (as determined by the artist's soul).</div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-7418109966543365472008-05-04T10:50:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:35.360-08:00Finding New Things in Old<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB3_v-UjwXI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/5Yf6VVoIpAM/s1600-h/GreatFalls5.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB3_v-UjwXI/AAAAAAAAAcQ/5Yf6VVoIpAM/s200/GreatFalls5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196590744703582578" /></a><div style="text-align: justify;">I am always amused when I hear young photographers lament about there not being anything interesting left over to take pictures of (after they have spent all of a few hours somewhere taking pictures). The lament only deepens and becomes more poignant after a particular place has been visited a number of times (days, weeks); and reaches a fever pitch after visiting the "same old place" for months (or - goodness - <span style="font-style:italic;">years</span>!). To be sure, even experienced professional photographers go through inevitable dry spells, during which they find their wellspring of inspiration at a low ebb, and nothing seems aesthetically inviting or interesting (especially - so the argument goes - a place that the artist knows extremely well). <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB3_5OUjwYI/AAAAAAAAAcY/eJ19dSFA0I8/s1600-h/GreatFalls8.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB3_5OUjwYI/AAAAAAAAAcY/eJ19dSFA0I8/s200/GreatFalls8.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196590903617372546" /></a>But there are really two issues at play here: (1) the feeling that one's inner muse has temporarily put up an "out to lunch" sign and does not wish to be disturbed, and (2) that the worst place to find the muse quietly "munching on its lunch" (and in a receptive mood) is somewhere where the photographer has already "been" with his or her muse. An artist’s chagrin during such lows is certainly understandable, and (speaking as a photographer who has had his fair share of "searching" for his "lost" muse) immediate family members are usually the ones who suffer most since they must bear the brunt of the artist's unhappy "low tide" mood (never a pleasant experience for anyone involved! ;-) But it is still sad for me to see young photographers, who genuinely aspire to find and develop their artistic vision, continually lament the apparently dull visual landscape that they've convinced themselves is all their "day jobs" permit them to be surrounded by and in which to find their "vision." I suspect that the real problem is not the <span style="font-style:italic;">place</span> - per se - but what needs to be done to <span style="font-style:italic;">reconnect to the place </span>(the "connection" being what may otherwise, and more poetically, be called one's "muse").<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen."</span> - Minor White<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4AFuUjwZI/AAAAAAAAAcg/XJNCJ4l6u5Q/s1600-h/GreatFalls4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4AFuUjwZI/AAAAAAAAAcg/XJNCJ4l6u5Q/s200/GreatFalls4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196591118365737362" /></a></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style: italic;">“How many times can I go to that same park?”</span> one might ask; or, <span style="font-style: italic;">“I’ve shot a dozen rolls of film in that garden, and I’m bored; all the flowers are beginning to look alike!” </span>While there is no magic elixir to remedy such moments of temporary angst—which all artists, from aspiring to established, are destined to experience countless numbers of times in their careers—I can offer two useful pieces of advice: (1) the angst is temporary, and requires nothing more than simple patience for its effects to wear off, and (2) to accelerate its disappearance, remind yourself that any place in nature, no matter how small or transient or seemingly devoid of any interesting features, can be perceived in an infinite number of ways, in an infinite number of contexts, and yield to an infinity of interpretations.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4AQuUjwaI/AAAAAAAAAco/rEi2Fn-xlP4/s1600-h/GreatFalls7.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4AQuUjwaI/AAAAAAAAAco/rEi2Fn-xlP4/s200/GreatFalls7.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196591307344298402" /></a>Case in point...not far from where my family and I live in Northern Virginia is <a href="http://www.nps.gov/grfa/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Great Falls</span></a> state park; indeed, I have written about it several times (<a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2006/11/rocks-leaves-water.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Rocks, Leaves & Water</span></a> and <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/11/staccato-flow.html"><span style="font-style: italic;">Staccato Flow Abstracts</span></a>). Because parks and kids go rather well together, and my wife and I have two, we visit this park often all year round. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4Af-UjwbI/AAAAAAAAAcw/DBig8DSumTE/s1600-h/GreatFalls6.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4Af-UjwbI/AAAAAAAAAcw/DBig8DSumTE/s200/GreatFalls6.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196591569337303474" /></a>It is no exaggeration to say that both my wife and I are familiar enough with this park’s many paths and walkways to be able to navigate it in the dark. As such, one may be forgiven for believing that my intimate familiarity with the sights of this park robs me of my photographic muse. <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4A_uUjwdI/AAAAAAAAAdA/NvPJaAF3Re4/s1600-h/GreatFalls9.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4A_uUjwdI/AAAAAAAAAdA/NvPJaAF3Re4/s200/GreatFalls9.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196592114798150098" /></a>But - perhaps paradoxically - not only does my familiarity <span style="font-style: italic;">not </span>diminish my desire for picture taking, it — if anything — <em>amplifies my ability to tune out distractions</em> and focus entirely on what intuitively catches my inner eye. Familiarity, in other words, somehow (for me) breeds detachment. A detachment (i.e., an "objectivity") that, in turn - and involving yet another seeming paradox - enhances my subjective artistic/aesthetic sense. Despite frequenting this park dozens and dozens of times over the years, I have never failed to see something entirely new, or failed to reinterpret—contextually and photographically—something that I may have seen and photographed many times before.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4BTOUjwfI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/OVQ8WWIMrHE/s1600-h/GreatFalls3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4BTOUjwfI/AAAAAAAAAdQ/OVQ8WWIMrHE/s200/GreatFalls3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196592449805599218" /></a>Perhaps the most visible benefit of my frequent visitation of Great Falls (at least, from the point of view of the <em>consumers </em>of my photography, namely my family;-)...is that sometimes (but <span style="font-style: italic;">just </span>sometimes;-), I manage to leave the park with images that actually <span style="font-style: italic;">look like something that was photographed in the park</span> (rather than my usual "abstractivization" that robs photographs of all possible clues as to where they were taken; see <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2008/04/not-taking-pictures-of-what-were-taking.html">previous blog entry</a>).<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4BeOUjwgI/AAAAAAAAAdY/mJL9TpcGtEU/s1600-h/GreatFalls1.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/SB4BeOUjwgI/AAAAAAAAAdY/mJL9TpcGtEU/s200/GreatFalls1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5196592638784160258" /></a>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-55914960577194737532008-04-01T18:52:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:36.980-08:00Not Taking Pictures of What We're Taking Pictures Of<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_LxmKuh84I/AAAAAAAAAaw/hV3Zvqolex4/s1600-h/fairchild+water+triptych.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_LxmKuh84I/AAAAAAAAAaw/hV3Zvqolex4/s400/fairchild+water+triptych.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184471759073702786" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Brooks Jensen, editor of <a href="http://enhanced.lenswork.com/">Lenswork</a>, recently posted a humorous podcast entitled <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.lenswork.com/podcast/LW0407%20-%20Thats%20Not%20What%20We%20Do.mp3">"That's Not What We Do"</a></span> in which he recounts an incident while shooting in a park with a friend. He and photographer <a href="http://www.joelipkaphoto.com/">Joe Lipka</a> were photographing at <a href="http://www.parks.wa.gov/fortworden/">Fort Warden</a>, WA. At some point, Joe went to the tourist center and got noticed by the woman at the service counter, who inquired about what he and Brooks were doing. Upon explaining that they were both photographers, the woman suggested they talk to the park manager, who was interested in buying some tourist shots to sell. Joe politely explained that neither he nor his other photographer friend take those kinds of pictures. Seeing that the woman was puzzled by his answer - after all, he <span style="font-style: italic;">is</span> standing there with a bunch of camera equipment; what would all that gear be used for if not "taking pictures"? - Joe offered a the following line (that I suspect is familiar to most fine-art photographers placed in a similar situation): <span style="font-style: italic;">"We make pictures that don't look like pictures of what we're taking pictures of."</span> I only wish I were there to see the look of confusion on the poor woman's face!<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">I've already blogged about my <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/10/on-art-of-finding-rust-in-landscapes.html">personal favorite</a> story of this type, namely the one about Brett Weston returning from a trip to London with a handful of pictures of rust from the London bridge.<br /><br />Here are a few from my own archives. Any one of my numerous trips to <a href="http://www.nps.gov/grfa/">Great Falls State Park</a> in Virginia typically result in shot after shot of totally "unrecognizable" shots of rocks; big rocks, small rocks, rock formations, you name it. <span style="font-style: italic;">"Where were these taken in again?"</span> I'm usually asked.<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_LrgKuh8yI/AAAAAAAAAaA/BVKhC415Ryc/s1600-h/Great+Falls+Shot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_LrgKuh8yI/AAAAAAAAAaA/BVKhC415Ryc/s200/Great+Falls+Shot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184465058924720930" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_LrsKuh8zI/AAAAAAAAAaI/RFJvkgj61VU/s1600-h/Great+Falls+Shot+2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_LrsKuh8zI/AAAAAAAAAaI/RFJvkgj61VU/s200/Great+Falls+Shot+2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184465265083151154" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Last year, in the autumn, when my family and I all went to <a href="http://www.coxfarms.com/">Cox Farms</a> for hay rides and pumpkin picking, "daddy the family photographer" was busy clicking away with his camera, but not necessarily at the kids or the rides they were going on. Among the <span style="font-style: italic;">more </span>recognizable shots I came away with that day was this one...<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_Lsrauh80I/AAAAAAAAAaQ/sNB1RiVf8sA/s1600-h/Cox+Farms+Shot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_Lsrauh80I/AAAAAAAAAaQ/sNB1RiVf8sA/s200/Cox+Farms+Shot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184466351709877058" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">...which at least has the virtue of being recognizably "something" (if not exactly declaring, <span style="font-style: italic;">"I was taken at Cox Farms!"</span>).<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">When we took a similar family outing to a local apple orchard for apple picking, daddy got two shots of an old barn (recounted in a <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/10/on-art-of-finding-rust-in-landscapes.html">previous blog entry</a>) and this "Shot Taken While Apple Picking" shot...<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_Ltmquh81I/AAAAAAAAAaY/OlmzWzUiQvM/s1600-h/Apple+Picking+Shot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_Ltmquh81I/AAAAAAAAAaY/OlmzWzUiQvM/s200/Apple+Picking+Shot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184467369617126226" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">And then there are my "beach" shots. Sand, water, waves, toddlers frolicking on the shore, sunbathers,...? Nah! Sissy stuff for fine-art photographers ;-) Here's a keeper from last summer's sojourn to a beach in <a href="http://www.key-biscayne.com/">Key Biscayne</a>, Florida:<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_Lud6uh82I/AAAAAAAAAag/0dxdqwqovig/s1600-h/KeyBiscayne+Shot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_Lud6uh82I/AAAAAAAAAag/0dxdqwqovig/s200/KeyBiscayne+Shot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184468318804898658" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">...which I was "lucky" enough to find just inside the entrance to an out house. And, speaking of outhouses, here's one of my favorite shots from a trip my wife and I took to Hawaii to celebrate our tenth anniversary in 2006 (this one from a Oahu beach outhouse, though whether any "beach" is evident in the picture, or any hints of a beach in Hawaii, I leave up to the viewer to decide):<br /></div><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_Lu-6uh83I/AAAAAAAAAao/D80sPF2AY-Y/s1600-h/Hawaii+Beach+Shot.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R_Lu-6uh83I/AAAAAAAAAao/D80sPF2AY-Y/s200/Hawaii+Beach+Shot.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5184468885740581746" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Oh, and the ripple-triptych at the top of this blog entry was a quick series taken a few weeks ago at <a href="http://www.fairchildgarden.org/">Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden</a>, though - again - I'll admit that <span style="font-style: italic;">deducing </span>that it was taken at Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden may not be that - <span style="font-style: italic;">Ahem </span>- obvious. Then again, with some of my shots, such as the ones in my <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.tao-of-photography.com/Portfolio/Micro%20Worlds/MicroWorldsPortfolio.html">Micro Worlds</a></span> portfolio, most people are mystified even <span style="font-style: italic;">after I explain</span> what the shots are "shots of"! Par for the course, I'd say, for a fine-art photographer ;-)</div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-85919251266863161342008-03-02T17:37:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:38.431-08:00Wittgenstein's Sublime Dialectic<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tWrIrqRGI/AAAAAAAAAYw/Xj9VIaVfbI8/s1600-h/Wittgenstein.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tWrIrqRGI/AAAAAAAAAYw/Xj9VIaVfbI8/s200/Wittgenstein.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173323896030119010" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">"1 The world is all that is the case; 1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things; 1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts; 1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case; 1.13 The facts in logical space are the world."</span> - Ludwig Wittgenstein (<a href="http://www.voidspace.org.uk/psychology/wittgenstein/tractatus.shtml">Tractatus Logico - Philosophicus</a>)<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Wittgenstein devoted his life to understanding "language games," as logico-cognitive attempts to make sense of the world. There is no essential type of language for Wittgenstein; language consists of multiple games in which meaning (of words and sentences) depends more on their relationship to other language games than on a one-to-one correspondence of the words and sentences of any one language to reality.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8th8orqRII/AAAAAAAAAZA/Tv1zpkxYjss/s1600-h/Wittgenstein2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8th8orqRII/AAAAAAAAAZA/Tv1zpkxYjss/s200/Wittgenstein2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173336291305735298" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">"What can be said at all can be said clearly, and what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence...It will therefore only be in language that the limit can be drawn, and what lies on the other side of the limit will simply be nonsense."</span> - Ludwig Wittgenstein (Preface to <span style="font-style: italic;">Tractatus</span>)<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tmNYrqRNI/AAAAAAAAAZo/IpB0SC3WytY/s1600-h/Wittgenstein7.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tmNYrqRNI/AAAAAAAAAZo/IpB0SC3WytY/s200/Wittgenstein7.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173340977115055314" /></a>Language can only describe <span style="font-style: italic;">facts </span>about the world, not the physico-logical structure the underlies those facts, or that defines the world <span style="font-style: italic;">out there</span>. Indeed, the world - <span style="font-style: italic;">as itself </span>- cannot be described at all; it can only be pointed to, or shown implicitly and indirectly, and always in relation to other self-consistent "pointers."<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"Feeling the world as a limited whole -- it is this that is mystical"</span> - - Ludwig Wittgenstein (Preface to <span style="font-style: italic;">Tractatus</span>, 6.45)<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tjeIrqRJI/AAAAAAAAAZI/LbSW-iSoIhw/s1600-h/Wittgenstein3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tjeIrqRJI/AAAAAAAAAZI/LbSW-iSoIhw/s200/Wittgenstein3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173337966342980754" /></a>Mysticism, for Wittgenstein, is a kind of knowing that transcends prepositional logic and knowledge; a sense that despite the "fact" that the limits of the world cannot be articulated in any language, those limits nonetheless exist and can be known. Science and all conventional forms of language, however, must by their nature remain silent on the deepest truths about the universe. At best, they are signposts towards the <span style="font-style: italic;">sublime</span>.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tkTYrqRKI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/9zQAjX9IrPI/s1600-h/Wittgenstein4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tkTYrqRKI/AAAAAAAAAZQ/9zQAjX9IrPI/s200/Wittgenstein4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173338881171014818" /></a>The word "sublime" means, literally, "up to the threhold" (<span style="font-style: italic;">sub </span>= "up to" and <span style="font-style: italic;">limen </span>= "threshold"). "Sublime" therefore means "up to the boundary, but no farther"; referring, in Wittgenstein's world, to taking meaning right up to the limit of what can - and cannot - be thought, and language to the interface between the representable and nonrepresentable. (A fascinating book, by the way, on precisely this notion of "representability of the sublime" has recently been written by James Elkins: <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Six-Stories-End-Representation-Photography/dp/0804741484/ref=pd_sxp_f_pt">Six Stories from the End of Representation: Images in Painting, Photography, Astronomy, Microscopy, Particle Physics, and Quantum Mechanics, 1980-2000</a></span>; highly recommended).<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tk0YrqRLI/AAAAAAAAAZY/LjVfERiNO4U/s1600-h/Wittgenstein6.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tk0YrqRLI/AAAAAAAAAZY/LjVfERiNO4U/s200/Wittgenstein6.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173339448106697906" /></a>And from these thoughts - these pointers to the <span style="font-style: italic;">sublime </span>- it seems to me, emerges a deep yearning for photography and art...for what is art if not an attempt to communicate meaning <span style="font-style: italic;">beyond what is possible</span> using conventional language? The precise meaning may not be conveyed (indeed, it is unlikely the artist fully comprehends that which he or she is trying to communicate), but the <span style="font-style: italic;">meaning of art</span> lies in this attempt to communicate something beyond the categories imposed on the world by words and sentences alone.<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tlAIrqRMI/AAAAAAAAAZg/jpcwce1MlwQ/s1600-h/Wittgenstein5.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8tlAIrqRMI/AAAAAAAAAZg/jpcwce1MlwQ/s200/Wittgenstein5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5173339649970160834" /></a>In the end, of course, I always fall back on the sage words of Ansel Adams: <span style="font-style: italic;">"When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence."</span><br /></div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-20435570991662494342008-01-26T07:59:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:38.734-08:00Hawaii: Visions of Primal Serenity<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R5tacfOAYXI/AAAAAAAAAYc/QdsopqjCgPM/s1600-h/hawaii+cover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R5tacfOAYXI/AAAAAAAAAYc/QdsopqjCgPM/s200/hawaii+cover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5159817243546116466" border="0" /></a>I've recently self-published a <a href="http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/165616">book of photographs of Hawaii</a>, taken while my wife and I were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary back in the summer of 2006.<br /><br />Hawaii is an indelible part of me. More so even than my blood, my skin, or any of my physical possessions, for these are all far more transient and ultimately communicate far less about who I really am. But the depth and timelessness of my affection - my <span style="font-style: italic;">reverence </span>- for these sublime, preternaturally beautiful islands, speaks volumes about the nature of my soul.<br /><br />I visited the islands for the first time in the early 1980s as a beginning graduate student in physics. As soon as I stepped off the plane, and saw the gentle giant green mountains, the billowous clouds serenely floating over them, the deep inviting aquamarine blue water lapping the ragged shore - its dull roar echoing somewhere off in the distance - and tasted that intoxicatingly sweet scented tropical island air, I knew my soul had found its home. It is sublime, it is mysterious. There is an abundance of raw wild energy; and an immersive transcendent tranquility that subsumes all. <br /><br />God, Yahweh, Buddha, Brahman, Tao, Ein-Sof, or whatever other linguistic "label" one is comfortable in using to refer to the infinite, attains a physically manifest luminous form in this paradisical oasis. <span style="font-style: italic;">Hawaii is magic</span>.<br /><br />At the end of the book, I've included a section of <span style="font-style: italic;">much older</span> images, taken during my first series of visits to the islands between 1982 and 1988. The time I took to design the layout of the book, and to select the images for it, gave me an opportunity to compare my "eye" and aesthetics as they are now to what they were about 25 years ago; and to reflect on my own evolution as an artist (as well as to learn something about the creative process in general).<br /><br />Something immediately struck me as I was viewing my large collection of "old" and "new" shots. The much older shots, which were all taken at a time when I was (possibly) a technically proficient photographer but had not yet matured as a "fine-art" photographer, were <span style="font-style: italic;">technically </span>well executed "depictions of what I happened to be looking at" at the moment, in this case being Hawaii. While most are better than standard postcard fare (at least I hope so ;-), the truth is that, if I give an honest self appraisal of my earlier work, I see "scenes of Hawaii" and little more. Yes, they're pretty; yes, a few might (and do!) look nice on a wall. But they are <span style="font-style: italic;">pictures of Hawaii</span> and little else. It is not false modesty for me to assert that any technically competent photographer, with a requisite skill level, could easily have reproduced (indeed, surpassed) many of my earlier photographs. <span style="font-style: italic;">So how are the new ones different; and in what way do I think they are "better"?</span><br /><br />Well - jumping 25 years or so forward in time (and, in my case, about 75 thousand or so more images, give or take a few thousand, film and digital) - what I see myself doing more and more of (at least trying to) is <span style="font-style: italic;">incorporating the scenery "out there" </span>into my bag of photo tools that I use to express what I feel "on the inside" when otherwise looking at the scenery. This represents both a subtle and profound shift.<br /><br />The <span style="font-style: italic;">scenery</span>, in an important sense, has become an integral part of my photographic toolkit, as important as - and distinct from - my usual assortment of purely technical tools (such as camera, lenses, filters, and so on). The scenery itself is no longer the core "object of focus" for my other tools. It has become an <span style="font-style: italic;">essential part of my toolkit</span>.<br /><br />It no longer really matters to me, in the deepest artistic sense, whether I am in Hawaii, or here in Northern VA, or Florida or anywhere else, in particular. My "goal" as a photographer is no longer to <span style="font-style: italic;">"show someone what I'm looking at."</span> Rather, my goal is to communicate - express - a bit of <span style="font-style: italic;">"what I felt"</span> when taking a picture to someone viewing the resulting photograph or print. I am much less concerned with whether the viewer "likes" what he or she "sees" - or identifies, objectively - in a photograph; and much more interested in conveying a feeling, a mood, a state-of-mind and/or heart, that <span style="font-style: italic;">persists even as viewer steps away from the image</span>.<br /><br />What is of lasting value (to both the viewer as an "involved interpreter and recipient" of an art work, and the photographer as its author) is not the fact that a particular photograph contains, say, a recognizable image of a "door," but rather the subjective emotional impression that the image of the door imparts to the viewer both while the viewer is actively viewing the photograph and afterwards, when the physical photograph is transformed (during the act of viewing) into a hybrid objective-subjective memory in the viewer's mind. It is my <span style="font-style: italic;">feeling </span>that I am trying to convey; not the "object" that I took a photograph of to express that feeling.<br /><br />What the viewer objectively "sees," of course, is the "object" (or objects) in the photograph; just as what I objectively "see" before I press the shutter is the (almost, but not quite identical) "object." Art, when it happens, depends on the simultaneous appearance of <span style="font-style: italic;">two </span>transformative acts: (1) the photographer uses "objective reality" as an implicit tool to craft and communicate certain elements of his own - inner, subjective - reality; and (2) the viewer sees past the "objects" in a photograph and feels something - a residual imprint, perhaps - of what is, objectively speaking, not physically present, but hints at what the photographer felt while taking the photograph.<br /><br />Of course, the degree to which the viewer "feels" what the photographer does (or what the photographer wishes to express) is impossible to measure. That is as it should be, for were this to be possible, art would be reduced to an "objective" science, which would be a pity. While I would certainly be delighted to know that someone resonates with one of my photos for exactly the same reason as I (or at least, in the same way I remember resonating with a "scene" while capturing it with my lens), it is not imperative that this is the case.<br /><br />In truth, at this current juncture of my ongoing evolution, what I strive for in all my work is to convey the simplest <span style="font-style: italic;">feelings of calm</span>. I understand that each viewer will take away from my images what he or she is predisposed to feel. Perhaps some find <span style="font-style: italic;">disharmony </span>in what my eyes sees as serene patterns. But even in these cases, if viewers react more on an <span style="font-style: italic;">emotional </span>level to my photos (even if the emotion they feel is different from the one I wish to convey) rather than in some detached, emotionally sterile or empty, fashion, I am still partly satisfied as an artist. For my goal is never the object, <span style="font-style: italic;">but a feeling</span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">So, getting back to the <a href="http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/165616">Hawaii book</a>, why include my old pictures at all?</span> Collectively, these early images define the first real "breeding ground" for my art. For it was in Hawaii that I first turned my camera onto something that I was truly impassioned about. Rather than taking the "same old" tired shots of "emotionally inert" subject matter (that may nonetheless have been a part of an otherwise valuable learning experience in a photography workshop, for example), I found myself taking shots in Hawaii for reasons that emerged quite naturally out of my own soul. In short, somewhere in the mists of time, lost among these old photos, is a magic Borgesian moment - well-defined but impossible to directly point to - during which <span style="font-style: italic;">I was born as a photographer</span>.<br /></div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-82147378566529422902008-01-15T15:11:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:40.194-08:00Landscapes of the Soul<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8dTTF6ArJI/AAAAAAAAAYo/7tbPe_MEhGI/s1600-h/landscapescover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R8dTTF6ArJI/AAAAAAAAAYo/7tbPe_MEhGI/s200/landscapescover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5172194284526414994" border="0" /></a><em>"The physical object, to me, is merely a stepping stone to an inner world where the object with the help of the subconscious drives and focuses perceptions, becomes transmuted into a symbol whose life is beyond the life of the objects we know."</em> - Clarence J. Laughlin, Photographer (1905 - 1985)<br /><div align="justify"><br />For all those who've expressed, privately and publically, an interest in seeing some of my images in print - apart from my contest-winning <em><a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/11/sudden-stillness-book-to-be-published.html">Sudden Stillness</a> </em>book, to be published in short order by <a href="http://web.mac.com/ephraums/Whats_your_book/Home.html">Envisage Press </a>- I offer the following. A self-published collection of photos, entitled <a href="http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/176451"><em>Landscapes of the Soul: Reflected Shadows of Self</em></a>.<br /><br />The book consists of four visual landscapes: <em>Water Flow</em>, <em>Entropic Melodies</em>, <em>Spirit & Light</em>, and <em>Micro Worlds</em>. Each offers an interpretation of spirit made manifest, and is introduced by a short essay. There are a total of 120 pages, 52 duotoned images, four essays and a short introduction.<br /><br /><em>Water flow</em> shows glimpses of dynamic processes at work; though the processes themselves understandably remain hidden.<br /><br /></div><p align="justify"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R41A6tC32cI/AAAAAAAAAX8/qHDfSon_UQI/s1600-h/LandscapesOfTheSoulIntroPic1.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5155848525677320642" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R41A6tC32cI/AAAAAAAAAX8/qHDfSon_UQI/s200/LandscapesOfTheSoulIntroPic1.jpg" border="0" /></a><em>Entropic Melodies</em> hints at the boundary between life and death. (A few images from this series appeared in a portfolio in issue #41 of <em><a href="http://www.bandwmag.com/back_issues/back_issues2.html">Black and White Magazine</a></em>.)<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R41BINC32dI/AAAAAAAAAYE/KvMtWPJP6b4/s1600-h/LandscapesOfTheSoulIntroPic2.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5155848757605554642" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R41BINC32dI/AAAAAAAAAYE/KvMtWPJP6b4/s200/LandscapesOfTheSoulIntroPic2.jpg" border="0" /></a><em>Spirit & light</em> reveals the physical magnificence and splendor of sacred spaces, as created by human hands, though the spiritual object of devotion lies only in the heart of the observer. (Some of these images were featured in <em><a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/08/spirit-light-portfolio.html">Lenswork Extended Edition #71</a></em> (July-August 2007)<br /><br /><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R41BTdC32eI/AAAAAAAAAYM/IQxXzaDgWAg/s1600-h/LandscapesOfTheSoulIntroPic3.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5155848950879082978" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R41BTdC32eI/AAAAAAAAAYM/IQxXzaDgWAg/s200/LandscapesOfTheSoulIntroPic3.jpg" border="0" /></a><em>Micro Worlds</em> shows the extraordinary resplendent beauty that may be found even in abject banality, but only if the self recognizes that it is its own landscape of the soul. (These are taken from a growing series I'm still working on, and have previosuly featured in an <a href="http://www.tao-of-photography.com/Portfolio/Micro%20Worlds/MicroWorldsPortfolio.html">on-line gallery</a>.)<br /></p><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R41BkNC32fI/AAAAAAAAAYU/X7jGEjlxWqA/s1600-h/LandscapesOfTheSoulIntroPic4.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5155849238641891826" style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center;" alt="" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R41BkNC32fI/AAAAAAAAAYU/X7jGEjlxWqA/s200/LandscapesOfTheSoulIntroPic4.jpg" border="0" /> </a><p align="justify"><em>"To the vast majority of people a photograph is an </em><em>image of something within their direct experience: a more-or-less factual reality. It is difficult for them to realize that the photograph can be the source of the experience, as well as the reflection of spiritual awareness of the world and of self</em>." - Ansel Adams, Photographer (1902 - 1984)<br /><br />My original intention for this project (when I started a few weeks ago) was to merely find an "easy" way to archive some of my work; for my own records. Indeed, I honestly wasn't expecting much by way of quality, although I grew increasingly intrigued by seeing references to the "quality of <a href="http://www.blurb.com/">Blurb Books</a>" on various forums and chat groups. Having my "test case" book in hand from this on-line publisher, I can now attest to its overall quality. Very impressive, actually.<br /><br />Compared to the often less-than-stellar quality of books one sees even on the shelves at Borders, I have no qualms about offering the book for sale. While certainly not as good as fine-art prints (even the best books typically fall far short of that Holy Grail of course), nor even as good as the finest pigment-based ink jets I can produce for exhibits, the images in this volume stand on their own as beautiful book-form reproductions. Of course, the subject matter may not be to everyone's taste, nor the images themselves, but about that I have far less control;-)<br /><br />For those who find my aesthetics pleasing, I am sure you would find this <a href="http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/176451">little collection</a> of some of my recent images very enjoyable.<br /></p>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-72157471078027851502008-01-12T12:46:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:41.093-08:00George Barr's Stunning New Book on the Creative Process in Photography<div align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbOW1gAcWiNl0BA0B7nkYepgrjb6rA_1Szt4ndteLtbyER4nQnQmJNH5nrrV3LVSvMkjG4U5OjHYiUdCGFFShAzOdvWfT-4ILil-igvhtN33iHs8rFpTc55H5x5DqHFy-55T2hlxpt7R7/s400/P1010314.jpg"><img style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 200px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDbOW1gAcWiNl0BA0B7nkYepgrjb6rA_1Szt4ndteLtbyER4nQnQmJNH5nrrV3LVSvMkjG4U5OjHYiUdCGFFShAzOdvWfT-4ILil-igvhtN33iHs8rFpTc55H5x5DqHFy-55T2hlxpt7R7/s400/P1010314.jpg" border="0" /></a>George Barr's stunning new book - <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Take-Your-Photography-Next-Level/dp/1933952210/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1200170822&sr=8-1">Take Your Photography to the Next Level</a> - is an impressive debut for George in the world of art instruction in book form, and a "must-read" book for photographers at all skill levels. George is already quite an accomplished master of photography in traditional print and Blog forms. Indeed, according to his <a href="http://georgebarr.blogspot.com/">Blog</a>, the idea for this book, and a bit of its substance (though markedly enhanced and expanded) came about partly from the many insightful entries he's posted on his Blog over the years.<br /><br />Apart from his obvious writing skill, one of George's great strengths as an artist/communicator is his ability to articulate some of the core - and often <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">mysterious </span>- qualities that describe the process of art in general; and photography in particular. Though he doesn't shy away from philosophical issues (and addresses such questions as <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"What is a fine-art photograph?"</span> head-on), he has a veritable wellspring of practical advice to impart photographers, ranging from complete novices to seasoned professionals.<br /><br />That this book is <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">special </span>is immediately obvious. It is neither an all too common <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"How To.." </span>instruction manual on what f-stop to choose or what lens to put on your camera, nor is it yet another <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"This is how it is done in Photoshop..."</span> guidebook (though some allusions to both sets of "problems" are sprinkled throughout). What this book does, and does <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">exceedingly well</span>, is address the much more difficult <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">subjective </span>components of fine-art photography: the nature of creativity in the photographic process, where to "look for" images, and what to do when you find them (and when you cannot!), how to compose your shots and why, how to assess your imagery, and to learn to develop your own "style," and the differences between purely technical acumen and aesthetic vision.<br /><br />Such matters are rarely if ever are given the attention they deserve, and if they do appear in other books - typically as short side-bars or quick asides - do so more as after-thoughts than substantive discussions. In fact, I know of only perhaps three or four other books (none of which are as well-written as this one, by the way) that similarly delve deeply into the creative and aesthetic parts of photography. It is thus a book that is long-overdue; and I am delighted that a photographer of George's unique blend of artistic skill and expository ability has taken up the challenge.<br /><br />I am also impressed by the utmost care and attention that has been put into the design and content of the book. The image selection is excellent throughout; and (in another rarity for books in this admittedly small genre) include many "don't quite work" photographs simply because George wants to show what works, what does not, and why. Even the captions to the photos show a consistent deliberate attention. Each tells a succinct story about what is being shown, and makes a point all its own that compliments the accompanying text. If all one did was to skim the book reading its captions, and nothing else, one would arguably still learn a great deal of the subject. Another nice feature is that many of the sections include simple but marvelously effective sketches to illustrate the finer points of, say, cropping and composition. While most authors would have contented themselves to include an image example or two and leave it at that, George goes that extra step for the reader. Finally, there is also a generous selection of "portfolio" images, each accompanied by its own "story" of how it came to be, in two-page spreads that appear throughout the book. My personal favorite (and one that, as George reveals, turns out to be among George's all-time popular images) is <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Windowpane</span>, that appears on page 193. Indeed, it is this particular image, that I first saw in Focus magazine a few years ago, that introduced me to George's photography, and compelled me to become an avid reader of his <a href="http://georgebarr.blogspot.com/">Blog</a>.<br /><br />If you are either a budding photographer who wants to learn about the "art" in fine-art photography, or a long-practicing photographer (perhaps even a pro), and are wondering where to look for advice to improve your own vision; or your skill level is anywhere in-between, know that there is no better place to learn, and no better guide to turn to for guidance, than George's superb new book. On the basis of this book alone, I'd say George is about to embark on yet another career track (in addition to already being a physician and photographer); namely that of well-known, accomplished <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">teacher of fine-art photography</span>. Well done George.</div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-88372508974243467322008-01-09T17:12:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:44.077-08:00Physics vs Photography: Which is Harder?<div align="justify"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WPn9C32VI/AAAAAAAAAXE/yh3KYhcnDOg/s1600-h/Physics.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5153683265159682386" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WPn9C32VI/AAAAAAAAAXE/yh3KYhcnDOg/s200/Physics.jpg" border="0" /></a>George Barr, on his <a href="http://georgebarr.blogspot.com/2008/01/medicine-comp-to-photography.html">Behind the Lens</a> blog, posted one of those wonderfully thought-provoking (and ultimately unanswerable) questions about the relative "difficulty" (as an activity) of one's day-job (in George's case, being a medical doctor, and in mine a physicist) and fine-art photography. While I couldn't resist leaving George a stream-of-consciousness comment on his own blog, his interesting question kept haunting me even as I focused attention to other matters.<br /><br />My "answer" to George was (and remains), though not quite as strongly as when I first composed it, that <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">photography is harder</span>. The really hard part is explaining (if only to myself!) what I mean by "harder" ;-)<br /><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WP2tC32WI/AAAAAAAAAXM/sALBIrezhZ4/s1600-h/PhysicsPhotography.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5153683518562752866" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WP2tC32WI/AAAAAAAAAXM/sALBIrezhZ4/s200/PhysicsPhotography.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="justify"></a>So, here are a few thoughts. First, the creative aspects of both professions, for me, are, on a meta-level, roughly equivalent. That is, in their respective domains, both physics and photography tap into the same ineffably non-objective part of our brains; it could take minutes to find a "solution" (to a physics problem or compositional one), or it could take days, I just don't know...but the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">process </span>by which I search for a solution is, at a deep level, equivalent, and equivalently exhilarating. Indeed, it is precisely this "all but impossible to describe" process of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">finding </span>a mathematical solution to a problem or finding that "just right" sequence of photographic steps (subject matter, composition, exposure, raw processing and photoshop manipulation, and print expression) to get a "print" that draws me both to physics and photography. So far, so good; and so far, about even.<br /><br />On a more pragmatic level...it is a fact that physics pays the bills (at least for me; though I understand there are fine-art photographers who make a comfortable living doing precisely, and <em>only</em>, that, as their day job). In my case, I <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">know </span>that while I'm wearing my physics hat during the day, I will have loads and loads of time (for which I am well compensated) to just <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">think</span> and ponder problems (mostly of my choosing). I have that luxury. But in photography, the time I have is the time I both <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">make </span>(by myself) and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">borrow </span>(and/or negotiate with my family). I therefore know - and am almost always consciously aware of the fact (even as I wander around with my camera) - that I <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">do not</span> have precious loads of time at my disposal; that each moment is that much more precious, and can ill-afford to squander any time.<br /><br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WQBtC32XI/AAAAAAAAAXU/n4484TWOxh4/s1600-h/Complexity.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5153683707541313906" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WQBtC32XI/AAAAAAAAAXU/n4484TWOxh4/s200/Complexity.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="justify"></a>I would be less than honest if I didn't admit to sometimes feeling that doing photography on "borrowed time" represents something of a small advantage, creatively, since I am compelled to learn to make the "best possible use" of whatever time I get. There is also the implicit understanding that when I am doing my photography, I have <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">no pressure to perform</span> (unlike my day-job); I do it on my time, of my choosing, and lose nothing, really, if a particular day (or week) leads to abject creative failure.<br /><br />On the other hand (just how many sides to this are there? ;-), I am my own harshest critic when it comes to photography, and I always have to come up with lame excuses to myself about why a photo-safari day came to naught. Over the long haul that too takes its toll (as my standards inevitably creep upwards, even as my perceived "quality" either stays the same or diminishes (as I get lazier, or tired, or just older).<br /><br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WQOtC32YI/AAAAAAAAAXc/x9gPdK6GfjA/s1600-h/PhotographyComplexity.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5153683930879613314" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WQOtC32YI/AAAAAAAAAXc/x9gPdK6GfjA/s200/PhotographyComplexity.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="justify"></a>So, which is "easier" when all is said and done; <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">physics </span>or <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">photography</span>? I think I'm still siding with George on this one. Its not that when I'm doing physics I'm "going through the motions" (I certainly hope not!), but my "day job" has the virtue of having much of its substance (and most of its activity) predefined for me. I waste little energy - creative or otherwise - worrying about what problem to think about, or even whether today is a good day to start a new research topic or write a paper. I'm not even speaking of the mathematical techniques and computer modeling tools I'll likely be using. I <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">know </span>what they are, and I know (in most cases) how to apply them to the problems at hand (and if not, I know where to turn to learn about them, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">almost </span>as though on auto-pilot).<br /><br />But photography...well, in an important (and to non-photographers, paradoxical) sense, most photographers are happiest when they are enshrouded in the totally <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">unknown</span> (which can make life hard)...we peek around that perpetually elusive corner in hopes of finding something we hope we never really find: something absolutely new that we've never ever seen before, and have little or no idea about what to do with if we find it. We keep looking for the "next best shot" and the "next best processing" steps and/or tools to apply to what we've caught on film (or CCD/CMOS). We both seek the unknown (with a passion!) and are afraid of it (because the unknown always throws you off balance). And there is always the spectre of losing one's muse and no longer being able to produce good work; and simply not being up to the technical task of expressing what one's Ansel-Adams'like "previsualization" of the final print ought to look like.<br /><br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WQhtC32ZI/AAAAAAAAAXk/xPeSO-EHTvQ/s1600-h/PhtographyPhysics.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5153684257297127826" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WQhtC32ZI/AAAAAAAAAXk/xPeSO-EHTvQ/s200/PhtographyPhysics.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="justify"></a>We <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">want </span>to be tested, creatively, again and again; but the better we are at achieving our elusive goal, the more uncertain we are of our ability to keep going, and the more difficult it becomes to maintain one's focus and connection to the magic muse. Minor White may have said that <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minor_White">"Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen,"</a></span> but that - unfortunately - says nothing about the poor photographer who keeps working, hunting, worrying, praying that Spirit never leaves! For that's precisely when Spirit suddenly decides it has better places to visit. It's something all photographers worry about, at some time; and the likelihood of doing so - constantly - only increases as one grows older and yearns to do great things. Needless to say, such worrisome states are not terribly conducive to genuine creativity or works of lasting value. I do not generally find myself thinking or worrying about such almost mystical matters in my day job.<br /><br />Certainly, in physics, as in all sciences, there is a superficially similar (perpetual even) yearning to "learn more"...but learning is a process that most physicists have mastered long before they stumble upon the "metaphysical" dimensions of yearning (and finally succumb to it). In photography, on the other hand, there is a perpetual and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">utterly insatiable </span>hunger to "find something new", which is a very, very hard thing to do, much less master.<br /><br /></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WQudC32aI/AAAAAAAAAXs/WKttstKhYdM/s1600-h/Photography.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5153684476340459938" style="DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; CURSOR: hand; TEXT-ALIGN: center" alt="" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R4WQudC32aI/AAAAAAAAAXs/WKttstKhYdM/s200/Photography.jpg" border="0" /> <p align="justify"></a>So, as I sit here, at the "wise old age" of 47, and look back on 20 years as a physics PhD and about 35 years as a photographer (well, 36, if I include that sensational abstract I got of my bedpost with my very first polaroid;-), I'd say that photography is marginally more difficult than physics. The really fascinating thing is, though, that it only seems hard when I ponder the question of how hard it is. When I'm doing it, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">its effortless</span>; and the same goes for physics, of course;-)<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"></span><br /><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Postscript: The images are screenshots from a presentation (<a href="http://www.tao-of-photography.com/Ilachinski_Lecture_PDFVersion.pdf">pdf link</a>) I gave at the Smithsonian a few years ago, entitled Nature's Way: The Art of Seeing. Perhaps if there is an interest, I'll post some notes to summarize the main points. What I discussed was the creative dynamics that lies at the cusp of science and art. The last screenshot contains (in the top "bubble") the <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0GER/is_2001_Winter/ai_81790169">fifteen properties of life</a> that architect <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2006/02/transcendent-new-vision-of-nature.html">Christopher Alexander</a> expounds upon in his Opus <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Phenomenon-Life-Nature-Building-Universe/dp/0972652914">Nature of Order</a></span>.</span></p>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-63072758695165550032007-12-30T09:41:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:45.922-08:00Doors of Perception<div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3gKv9C32UI/AAAAAAAAAW8/lu3L8okN_Z4/s1600-h/Door5.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3gKv9C32UI/AAAAAAAAAW8/lu3L8okN_Z4/s200/Door5.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149877992854903106" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception"</span> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley">Aldous Huxley</a> (1894-1963).<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3gJ1NC32SI/AAAAAAAAAWs/ftOS34dG6M0/s1600-h/Door3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3gJ1NC32SI/AAAAAAAAAWs/ftOS34dG6M0/s200/Door3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149876983537588514" border="0" /></a>A camera is a portal to both ordinary worlds and otherwordly mysterious realms. Sometimes the two coalesce, but only for an instant, and hint at other unfathomable and inaccessible universes; all teasingly poised just beyond the impenetrable boundary between what we see and ... ?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3fbqdC32MI/AAAAAAAAAV8/79Hk_QbhDeM/s1600-h/Door2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3fbqdC32MI/AAAAAAAAAV8/79Hk_QbhDeM/s200/Door2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149826221319116994" border="0" /></a>What lies beyond the door of perception? What meets our silent inquisitive gaze as we gently push it open?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3fautC32LI/AAAAAAAAAV0/IYeS0ayGBf8/s1600-h/Web1.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3fautC32LI/AAAAAAAAAV0/IYeS0ayGBf8/s200/Web1.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149825194821933234" border="0" /></a>Would what we newly see change everything we've ever known? Would the world we leave behind seem as incomprehensible to us as the one we enter? Are all but Shamans truly blind?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3fcU9C32NI/AAAAAAAAAWE/Yj5p7O4smNM/s1600-h/Door6.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3fcU9C32NI/AAAAAAAAAWE/Yj5p7O4smNM/s200/Door6.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149826951463557330" border="0" /></a>How shall we describe what lies beyond? Will our old words and concepts be enough? Or will they merely be useless relics of the past; meaningless symbols of a misaligned reality?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3ffLNC32PI/AAAAAAAAAWU/5reG-RyexSo/s1600-h/CoralGables3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3ffLNC32PI/AAAAAAAAAWU/5reG-RyexSo/s200/CoralGables3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149830082494716146" border="0" /></a>What happens when we discover a new language to express our strange perceptions (assuming that such a language even <span style="font-style: italic;">exists</span>, or that we are clever enough to find it)? Will new categories emerge, subjectively partitioning our world into newly objectified parts?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3gIatC32RI/AAAAAAAAAWk/Lgoi0pn26Ok/s1600-h/CoralGablesAbstract2.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3gIatC32RI/AAAAAAAAAWk/Lgoi0pn26Ok/s200/CoralGablesAbstract2.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149875428759427346" border="0" /></a>Or will the new, still unrecognizable abstract forms suddenly revert back to old meanings (or appear to), subtly revealing even deeper recessed mysteries to be explored...?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3fgd9C32QI/AAAAAAAAAWc/AmEsMfk7cFs/s1600-h/KapaRelicColor.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R3fgd9C32QI/AAAAAAAAAWc/AmEsMfk7cFs/s200/KapaRelicColor.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149831504128891138" border="0" /></a>What was the world like, I wonder, before I stepped into this one? Is there anyone left to understand my answer?<br /></div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious."</span> - <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Schweitzer">Albert Schweitzer</a> (1875-1965).</div>Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-12070427430309774352007-12-19T18:38:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:46.239-08:00Coral Gables Photo Exhibit Follow-up<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R2naINC32II/AAAAAAAAAVE/sOkuq1Iwc80/s1600-h/BooksAndBooksIlachinskiExhibitWeb.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R2naINC32II/AAAAAAAAAVE/sOkuq1Iwc80/s200/BooksAndBooksIlachinskiExhibitWeb.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5145883883723020418" /></a>One of the joys of photography, as a public art form, is attending an opening of an exhibit of one's own images; a rare privilege and honor I had on Dec 7, as my family and I greeted invited guests and any and all interested bookstore customers at <a href="http://booksandbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=storeinfo&page=281555">Books & Books</a> in Coral Gables, Florida. Twenty seven photos were exhibited in all (two are "invisible" in the picture shown above, hidden by the angle of the shot by the protruding wood panel on the left). About a dozen or so were taken in the Miami area; which was no easy task, given that I live in northern Virginia (though visit Miami on a regular basis).<br /><br />It was fun to both "observe" people looking at my work, and to chat with them about what they "see" (often, and unexpectedly, at great length, with the added benefit of gaining new insights into my own imagery). One individual, for example, a local psychiatrist, was particularly mesmerized by a shot of an old boat on a beach, facing an endless ocean ("Patient Longing").<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R2naWNC32JI/AAAAAAAAAVM/ULwELNUTBtE/s1600-h/Books+%26+Books+59.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R2naWNC32JI/AAAAAAAAAVM/ULwELNUTBtE/s200/Books+%26+Books+59.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5145884124241189010" /></a>He pointed out something about this photo that I confess had escaped my notice (at least consciously). Explaining that he had grown up relatively poor in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominican_Republic">Dominican Republic</a>, he said this photo evoked strong memories of longing he experienced as a youth. Longing for escape, both physically and psychically. While I could understand why he was drawn to this image, with its obvious symbolism, his reasoning was far subtler than mine. He said he was drawn more by the <span style="font-style:italic;">rope than the boat</span>. While he agreed that the boat conveyed a strong message of longing toward the mysterious, "unknown" horizon, he suggested that the rope injects a deeper melancholy by reminding the viewer that even if the boat were seaworthy (which it may not be), the rope might still prevent a traveler from using it to escape. The two <span style="font-style:italic;">combined </span>- dilapidated boat & rope - were enough to elicit very strong memories of his "longing for escape from entrapment" in his youth. From my perspective, it was enlightening (thrilling even) to hear about how one of my images so touched another person. A perfect example of the power of art to tap into universal patterns and experiences.<br /><br />On the other hand, I also learned a few lessons about human nature on the other side of the spectrum (the slightly "shallower" end;-) There was a harmless, but misguidedly belligerent, individual who - apart from being dressed as though he had slept three nights at the bus depot (which he may well have done), and apart from the fact that he neither bothered to even <span style="font-style:italic;">glance </span>at the exhibit, nor was polite enough <span style="font-style:italic;">not to pile</span> enough au devours onto his plate to feed a small army (along with a more-than-generous helping of the "free" wine) - proceeded to corner "the artist" (literally, in a corner) to inform me that <span style="font-style:italic;">his</span> pictures are the ones that belong on the wall. As I was desperately trying to think of a witty and pithy response, he snapped open a large wallet of post-card sized snapshots of old photos of Cuba and embarked on an unfathomable soliloquy about his early years as a photographer. <span style="font-style:italic;">"So this is what an opening night of an exhibit is like,"</span> I thought to myself. (Thankfully, everyone else I met that night was, Ahem, slightly more socially adept ;-)<br /><br />The exhibit runs through the end of December. I plan on being back in Coral Gables (and to hopefully chat with a few more interested passer-bys at the exhibit) 24-29 Dec.Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-30796914426409543202007-12-01T08:53:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:46.385-08:00"Micro Worlds" Portfolio<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R1K5yaCaslI/AAAAAAAAAT4/shVOKMyK1aE/s1600-R/MicroW.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R1K5yaCaslI/AAAAAAAAAT4/XyCUAm7QuO0/s200/MicroW.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5139374400417215058" /></a>I've been experimenting a bit more with my <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/11/indras-net.html">Indra's Net</a></span> shots, and have put together a <a href="http://www.tao-of-photography.com/Portfolio/Micro Worlds/MicroWorldsPortfolio.html">sample portfolio</a> of some of my recent favorites. The portfolio is as much a display of my growing archive of these "micro worlds" as it is a test for a wonderful, and freely available, JAVA-based album creator, called <a href="http://jalbum.net/">JAlbum</a>.<br /><br />After installing the program, creating the portfolio could not have been easier. You simply drag your selected images into the JAlbum window (once opened, of course), select an <a href="http://jalbum.net/skins/">album skin</a> you like (I chose one called <a href="http://jalbum.net/skins/skin.jsp?id=85">LightBox2</a>, drawn to its simple elegance), go through the available options (row, column, display text, EXIF data, and so on), and click <span style="font-style:italic;">make album</span>. I changed the background color and added a few lines of text in a standard HTML editor, but that's about it. Technology as it should be: it's there to provide all you need with minimal hassle, and the artist can just focus on the art. Highly recommended for those of you looking for simple - but elegant - album generators.Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-86518613024153717872007-11-28T17:53:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:47.162-08:00Photo Exhibit at Books & Books, Coral Gables, Florida<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R04igVQt4pI/AAAAAAAAATY/V306TGjFVeo/s1600-h/BooksAndBooksAnnouncement.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R04igVQt4pI/AAAAAAAAATY/V306TGjFVeo/s200/BooksAndBooksAnnouncement.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138082163734733458" /></a>I am very pleased to announce that 24 of my photos (a mix of of landscapes, still lifes, and abstracts) will be on display 7 - 31 Dec, 2007 at <a href="http://booksandbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=storeinfo&page=281555">Books & Books</a> in Coral Gables, Florida. For those of you in the area with an interest in my work, please stop by for the opening of the exhibit on Friday, December 7, from 7 to 10 pm. Since Books & Books also has an <a href="http://www.booksandbooks.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=storepicks&page=278904">in-house cafe</a>, there will be ample - and <span style="font-style:italic;">free </span>- (courtesy Dr. Rosa Abraira) munchies and drinks! :-) This wonderful local bookstore was founded by (current, and two-term, <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.bookweb.org/index.html">American Booksellers Association</a></span> president) <a href="http://news.bookweb.org/news/3443.html">Mitchell Kaplan</a> in 1982, and has since grown to become one of the best known and well-respected independent bookstores in the country. I am honored, and humbled, at having been given this rare opportunity to display a few of my works at this venue.<br /><br />The photos will be grouped into two parts: (1) <span style="font-style:italic;">Natural Order</span>, consisting of images that evoke a sense of spontaneously organized "orderliness" in an otherwise "random" natural environment...<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R04gl1Qt4mI/AAAAAAAAATA/y30gAatpfd4/s1600-h/LuminousBoundary.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R04gl1Qt4mI/AAAAAAAAATA/y30gAatpfd4/s200/LuminousBoundary.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138080059200758370" /></a>and (2) <span style="font-style:italic;">Imposed Order</span>, consisting of images of the natural environment upon which an implicit human presence has somehow knowingly, or unknowingly, imposed a nonrandom element.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R04hh1Qt4nI/AAAAAAAAATI/-vWv8Rvdp4c/s1600-h/GodelianTunnel.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R04hh1Qt4nI/AAAAAAAAATI/-vWv8Rvdp4c/s200/GodelianTunnel.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138081089992909426" /></a>The pictures are all duotoned digital prints, using 100% cotton rag, acid-free fine-art paper and archival pigment-based ink (to maximize fade resistance).<span style="font-style:italic;"><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R04iNlQt4oI/AAAAAAAAATQ/jX2RQN4mTI4/s1600-h/GhostlyDeparture.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R04iNlQt4oI/AAAAAAAAATQ/jX2RQN4mTI4/s200/GhostlyDeparture.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5138081841612186242" /></a>So please come, have some free food and drink and (hopefully) enjoy some photos!</span> (I plan on being there for the opening, and will likely stroll in a few times on the weekend as well;-)Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-13396003613235532332007-11-25T18:56:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:47.578-08:00Staccato Flow Abstracts<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R0o19VQt4iI/AAAAAAAAASg/07C7Y0Bjeb4/s1600-h/staccatoFlow0.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R0o19VQt4iI/AAAAAAAAASg/07C7Y0Bjeb4/s200/staccatoFlow0.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136977652765024802" /></a>An alternative title for this blog entry could well be, <span style="font-style:italic;">On the art of transforming a visual vice into a virtue</span>. The "visual vice" in this case (at least for this photographer ;-) being a bright, sunshiny day on the shores of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potomac_River">Potomac River</a> at <a href="http://www.nps.gov/grfa/">Great Falls</a> park, Virginia. While there were plenty of areas of shade in which I could park my camera and tripod, and I could always use my <a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/330874-REG/Lastolite_LR1250_EZ_Balance_Grey_.html">light balancing disk</a> to locally block out the strong sun to take closeups of plants or leaves, what I deliberately set out to capture one particular day a few weeks ago was the <span style="font-style:italic;">flow of water</span>. Unfortunately, this is virtually impossible to do (at least in the manner I was envisioning) without cloud cover to provide ample diffused light. <span style="font-style:italic;">So, what to do?</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R0o7R1Qt4jI/AAAAAAAAASo/K8werrgcA50/s1600-h/staccatoFlow2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R0o7R1Qt4jI/AAAAAAAAASo/K8werrgcA50/s200/staccatoFlow2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136983502510481970" /></a>Having hiked down some steep rocks to get close to the river, I was more or less committed to either taking some close-ups of rocks and crevices (which I did), or find a way to capture (and communicate) the flow of water without the diffused light I so craved. A mini epiphany saved the day, and planted a seed for future excursions.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R0o8BFQt4kI/AAAAAAAAASw/tF8-YMUqU34/s1600-h/staccatoFlow3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/R0o8BFQt4kI/AAAAAAAAASw/tF8-YMUqU34/s200/staccatoFlow3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5136984314259300930" /></a>My epiphany consisted of exploiting the fact that since the sun was so intense, it naturally left a strong visual trace of its cacophony of specular reflections. Ordinarily, such reflections show up as unwelcome burned out highlights. But what if I used them to accent the flow without bringing undue attention to themselves? Such as by showing / printing the digital equivalent of an analog negative? Blacks become whites, and burned-out whites become blacks; individual "points" tracing - in a vaguely pointillist fashion - the beautiful dynamic patterns of the flowing water. The images here are just a few samples of my (still ongoing) experiments with <span style="font-style:italic;">staccato flow abstraction</span>.Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-22522052990572226122007-11-11T17:34:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:48.617-08:00Indra's Net<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAJS51WOEVZsL5HUoNAtWUufCUATqltaDcJOU_4sZBdljfJO0cNUF73U0ubCos0hyl3Yard7eX-166YmGlRuh3GA02qT0rkHl0FyV_IGGBAUH1GpMKEvMN2bnLPRBjlvXuU69YFQh7gYk/s1600-h/IndrasNetWeb.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAJS51WOEVZsL5HUoNAtWUufCUATqltaDcJOU_4sZBdljfJO0cNUF73U0ubCos0hyl3Yard7eX-166YmGlRuh3GA02qT0rkHl0FyV_IGGBAUH1GpMKEvMN2bnLPRBjlvXuU69YFQh7gYk/s200/IndrasNetWeb.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131761637624137698" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">"Far away in the heavenly abode of the great god Indra, there is a wonderful net which has been hung by some cunning artificer in such a manner that it stretches out infinitely in all directions. In accordance with the extravagant tastes of deities, the artificer has hung a single glittering jewel in each "eye" of the net, and since the net itself is infinite in dimension, the jewels are infinite in number."</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RzeuQiqQSAI/AAAAAAAAARo/y4t40xl9Thk/s1600-h/IndrasNetWeb3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RzeuQiqQSAI/AAAAAAAAARo/y4t40xl9Thk/s200/IndrasNetWeb3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131761899617142786" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">"There hang the jewels, glittering like stars in the first magnitude, a wonderful sight to behold. If we now arbitrarily select one of these jewels for inspection and look closely at it, we will discover that in its polished surface there are reflected all the other jewels in the net, infinite in number."</span><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RzeugSqQSBI/AAAAAAAAARw/OFaZKJin0qI/s1600-h/IndrasNetWeb2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RzeugSqQSBI/AAAAAAAAARw/OFaZKJin0qI/s200/IndrasNetWeb2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5131762170200082450" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">"Not only that, but each of the jewels reflected in this one jewel is also reflecting all the other jewels, so that there is an infinite reflecting process occurring."</span><br /><br />(Text quoted from Francis H. Cook, <span style="font-style:italic;">Hua-yen Buddhism: The Jewel Net of Indra</span>, Pennsylvania State University Press, 1977; <span style="font-style:italic;">Avatamsaka Sutra</span>, page 2)Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-72747222145358325462007-11-06T12:19:00.000-08:002008-12-09T21:50:48.764-08:00"Sudden Stillness" Book to be Published<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RzDOQJ6QIeI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/aa6tRnjSB3Y/s1600-h/SuddenStillnessMockup.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RzDOQJ6QIeI/AAAAAAAAAQ4/aa6tRnjSB3Y/s200/SuddenStillnessMockup.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5129826752508469730" /></a>Though I can still hardly believe it, I have been told by the publisher (Eddie Ephraums, of <a href="http://web.mac.com/ephraums/iWeb/Whats%20your%20book/Home.html">Envisage Books</a>) sponsoring the British <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.thegmcgroup.com/item--Black-and-White-Photography--1003BW.html">Black & White Photography</a></span> journal's <span style="font-style:italic;">"What's Your Book?"</span> contest, that my book idea submission has won!<br /><br />While there were several stages to the judging (see my earlier <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/06/whats-your-book-contest.html">blog post</a>), the last stage consisted of a two month long on-line vote (by readers of the journal) for one of three finalists selected by a panel of judges. Well, the voting site has closed, the votes have been counted, and my book idea seems to have bubbled ever so slightly to the top! In truth, as I had written before, I was thrilled beyond measure at just seeing my name on the shortlist of three finalists, with two other obviously gifted photographers. <a href="http://web.mac.com/ephraums/iWeb/Whats%20your%20book/crone.html">Trevor Crone</a> and <a href="http://web.mac.com/ephraums/iWeb/Whats%20your%20book/copsey.html">Michael Copsey</a> both had superb entries, and beautiful photographs. I am also sure that both will also soon have their work published in a book, as the quality simply speaks for itself. It is a sincere honor to have shared a temporary spotlight with these fine artists.<br /><br />My own entry consisted of six sample images (supplied on a CD), 20 additional images for a later stage of judging, along with some fine-art prints sent via mail, and the following title, strap-line and "short description" of what I envision a book of my photos looking like:<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Sudden Stillness: Visual Echoes of Timeless Rhythms</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">Simple, Zen-like meditations on the mystery of nature's primal patterns, expressed in four movements (each introduced by a short essay): Chaos, Order, Complexity, & Decay. "Chaos" is disorganized and formless; "Order" is imposed structure; "Complexity" is self-organized and emergent; “Decay” is entropic death, but presages rebirth. These interpenetrating primal patterns drift quietly on an ineffable meta-pattern of energy. Collectively, the four movements quietly weave a visual narrative to reveal nature experienced as sudden stillness.</span><br /><br />The final pool of images from which Eddie Ephraums and I are currently sequencing a selection for the actual book, consists of about 90 photos (though only about a quarter of these will appear in the final version). Eddie's working design for the book is quite interesting. He plans on creating a <span style="font-style:italic;">concertina</span>-style - i.e., fold-out - book, a mockup of which appears above. I am told that these kinds of books are notoriously difficult to produce, particularly when using heavier than normal paper stock, which Eddie wants to use because it allows the book to stand up by itself when open. Fully extended, the book will span almost two meters in length! Eddie is also trying to achieve the finest possible tonal reproductions, so that the relatively small number of pages (about 20) is more than made up for by the quality of the photographs.<br /><br />As this will be a very limited initial run of about 200 copies (!), one thing I must be mindful of is the potential audience and general level of interest for the book before it is published. I therefore humbly ask those readers of my Blog who <span style="font-style:italic;"><span style="font-weight:bold;">might be</span></span> interested in purchasing a copy to please leave a comment, or email me privately. I will be more than happy to put you on my list, keep you up to date on the book's progress, and let you know (as soon as I do) of when it will be available for purchase.Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-32248293450962705542007-10-22T08:23:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:50.400-08:00Borgesian Labyrinths of Mystery<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0Bgd1iKRI/AAAAAAAAANA/yuIdpFJEibM/s1600-h/Borges1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0Bgd1iKRI/AAAAAAAAANA/yuIdpFJEibM/s200/Borges1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124253608294099218" /></a>One of my favorite authors is <a href="http://www.themodernword.com/borges/">Jorge Luis Borges</a>; though the "category" of creative endeavor to which Borges belongs - or, better, the creative endeavor that Borges <span style="font-style:italic;">defines </span>- is infinitely richer than what is rather blandly suggested by "mere" author. For Borges is philosopher, mathematician, dreamer, mystic, seeker, visionary ... (the list goes on, perhaps endlessly). If there is one word that immediately comes to mind when Borges' name is mentioned, even before author or philosopher, that word is surely <span style="font-style:italic;">book</span>; for Borges adored books. He adored writing them (or at least <span style="font-style:italic;">writing stories about books</span> that would later appear in them), collecting them, thinking about them, even working with them (as when he was Director of the <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.bibnal.edu.ar/">National Library of Argentina</a></span>). Among Borges' well known tales and musings about books and libraries are the <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://jubal.westnet.com/hyperdiscordia/library_of_babel.html">Library of Babel</a></span> and <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Sand">Book of Sand</a></span>.<br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"I pray to the unknown gods that some man -- even a single man, tens of centuries ago -- has perused and read this book. If the honor and wisdom and joy of such a reading are not to be my own, then let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my own place may be in hell. Let me be tortured and battered and annihilated, but let there be one instant, one creature, wherein thy enormous Library may find its justification."</span> - Jorge Luis Borges<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0F1N1iKTI/AAAAAAAAANQ/3YTqHVVWpeM/s1600-h/Borges3.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0F1N1iKTI/AAAAAAAAANQ/3YTqHVVWpeM/s200/Borges3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124258362822895922" /></a>Borges naturally came to mind recently, as I stumbled onto a lonely, deserted, out-of-the-way dilapidated two-room shack, full of withered old books, somewhere off Route 66 in northern VA. How perfectly Borgesian I thought to myself, as I gingerly stepped into a roomfull of dry, pebbled, half-decayed tomes, most strewn haphazardly over the sunken floorboards. Even more in tune with the "Borgesian" rhythms echoed by the physical forms of the books, was the <span style="font-style:italic;">kind </span>of books that adorned this deserted little shanty. For these were not your run-of-the-mill thrillers and boddice rippers. Rather, almost all were on subjects distinctly Borges-like, and ranged from <a href="http://dostoyevsky.thefreelibrary.com/">Dostoyevsky</a>, to <a href="http://www.kafka.org/">Kafka</a>, to <a href="http://www.philosophypages.com/ph/kant.htm">Immanuel Kant</a> and <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/">Georg Hegel</a>, to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlos_Castaneda">Carlos Castaneda</a>, to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritjof_Capra">Fritjof Capra</a>, to <a href="http://www.holotropic.com/">Stanislaw Grof</a>, to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bohm">David Bohm</a>, to a study of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Study-Dreams-Cognitive-Development/dp/1557989354">Dreams</a>, to the latest (c.1980) research on <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consciousness/">consciousness</a>. <br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">"A book is more than a verbal structure or series of verbal structures; it is the dialogue it establishes with its reader and the intonation it imposes upon his voice and the changing and durable images it leaves in his memory. A book is not an isolated being: it is a relationship, an axis of innumerable relationships."</span> - Jorge Luis Borges<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0GFd1iKVI/AAAAAAAAANg/BQKqlDjwcrg/s1600-h/Borges2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0GFd1iKVI/AAAAAAAAANg/BQKqlDjwcrg/s200/Borges2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124258641995770194" /></a>All arguably and quintessentially Borgesian subjects and authors, except for - ironically - Borges himself. Try as I might, I could not find a single volume of Borges' stories anywhere on these shelves. It is impossible to imagine the former owner/occupant of this decaying Borgesian labyrinth of books, which still palpably pulsates with ideas and visions that only a lover of Borges can appreciate and understand, not having the collected works of Borges standing somewhere on the shelves. But then, there is also the basic mystery of what happened to the owner. Why are his/her (remaining?) books still here, neglected and/or forgotten after all these years, quietly turning to so much dust? Did the owner seize his one prized volume of Borges' stories - which <span style="font-style:italic;">had </span>to exist! - before being forced to quickly abandon this tiny shack for some mysterious reason? Why did the owner (or someone else?) return - looking at the empty carton apparently being readied for storing books - only to vanish once again? Or is the carton empty only because new books were brought in to replace those that had fallen (or stolen)? In either case, why? How long have these books been rotting here? Why are some shelves completely empty, while others are still full? Why does each of the five books lying flat on the floor with exposed pages contain the word "secret"?<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx36ld1iKYI/AAAAAAAAAN4/6VI_NT2JV4I/s1600-h/Borges4.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx36ld1iKYI/AAAAAAAAAN4/6VI_NT2JV4I/s200/Borges4.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124527472588761474" /></a><span style="font-style:italic;">"The composition of vast books is a laborious and impoverishing extravagance. To go on for five hundred pages developing an idea whose perfect oral exposition is possible in a few minutes! A better course of procedure is to pretend that these books already exist, and then to offer a resume, a commentary . . . More reasonable, more inept, more indolent, I have preferred to write notes upon imaginary books."</span> - Jorge Luis Borges<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0VxN1iKWI/AAAAAAAAANo/dsawobpViLA/s1600-h/Borges6.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0VxN1iKWI/AAAAAAAAANo/dsawobpViLA/s200/Borges6.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124275886289463650" /></a>I was entranced by the siren call of the ghostly volumes beckoning from the shelves, and silently reaching out from broken drawers. Are they all clues to some unfathomable puzzle? Is their "orderless" arrangement perhaps a clever illusion, and not entirely random? Are they a subtle palimpsest of eternal truths and wisdom, fiendishly encoded by some long dead genius that history has failed to record (or intentionally wiped from memory)? Did I unknowingly break some sacred code when I accidentally kicked a small rock off a page of an old Bible, thus relegating its cosmic message unintelligible to the one destined to decode it? Or did I just as unknowingly, and merely by entering, encode my own presence onto this living labyrinth, ineffably committing the one cosmically meaningful act my birth was prophesied to yield in this incarnation? Or is the reason why all these volumes are here, in this particular place and time, in this particular arrangement, itself but an infinitesimally small piece of a larger, even deeper, puzzle? A puzzle to be only discovered - <span style="font-style:italic;">but never solved!</span> - by someone whose birth the puzzle master himself had not foreseen? Or has the destined solver unexpectedly, and prematurely, passed through this as-yet unripened riddle; unwittingly rendering forever unsolvable the very puzzle he - and he alone - was born to solve? Is the puzzle-master, perhaps, the solver? <br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0arN1iKXI/AAAAAAAAANw/3aiw9T83DNc/s1600-h/Borges5.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/Rx0arN1iKXI/AAAAAAAAANw/3aiw9T83DNc/s200/Borges5.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5124281280768387442" /></a>Such was the gravity of my thoughts and emotions as I solemnly packed up my humble gear and bade farewell to this Borgesian labyrinth of mystery. A single eye, staring upwards from the cover of a dusty book (whose spine had inexplicably entwined the rubber on the heal of my shoe), seemed to follow me before the light finally grew too dim for it to see. I imagine it shifted its gaze back inward toward itself, to continue meditating on the unimaginable fate that awaits these relics, trying to remember its own long forgotten role in creating them.Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4637028157048680757.post-54032147833719242262007-10-19T05:13:00.000-07:002008-12-09T21:50:50.775-08:00On the Art of Finding Rust in Landscapes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RxigKt1iKII/AAAAAAAAAMA/T60e2_aAgJ0/s1600-h/Old+CarDoor.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RxigKt1iKII/AAAAAAAAAMA/T60e2_aAgJ0/s200/Old+CarDoor.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123020682097207426" /></a>A few months ago, I posted an entry about my family's <a href="http://tao-of-digital-photography.blogspot.com/2007/07/blackberry-picking-and-abstracts.html">blackberry-picking trip</a>, during which I managed to snag some shots of rusted relics in an old barn and peeling paint off an old door (startling the proprietors of the farm into thinking they had a madman on their property, interested more in old doors than blackberry bushes!) Well, a similar thing happened to me this past weekend, though thankfully minus any startled proprietors this time ;-) Perhaps there is a pattern to my madness...<br /><br />Our most recent outing was apple picking this past weekend at <a href="http://www.striblingorchard.com/">Stribling Orchard</a>, in northern Virginia. And again, though I took a few pictures of the kids and even helped out with a bit of the picking, my "photographer's eye" soon strayed elsewhere, with nary an apple in sight. Eventually I stumbled (quite literally, while backing out of a hole in the ground I accidentally stuck my foot into) across a dilapidated barn with some old equipment. My eyes immediately popped open with anticipation and excitement. <span style="font-style:italic;">Rust, beautiful rust!</span> I was in heaven :-)<br /><br />I am reminded of a story I once heard during a <a href="http://ventanaeditions.stores.yahoo.net/brwephdvd.html">documentary</a> on <a href="http://www.photographywest.com/pages/weston_bio.html">Brett Weston</a>, the second of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Weston">Edward Weston</a>'s sons and, of course, an accomplished photographer in his own right. Brett, who like his dad, spent most of his time taking photographs in California (in places like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Lobos_State_Reserve">Point Lobos</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur">Big Sur</a>), was one day invited by a friend to join him on a trip to Europe. Agreeing to go, after some cajoling, Brett and his friend visited Ireland, then Scotland, and later London. But Brett's eye, perhaps even more so than his father's, was tuned strongly toward abstraction. Thus, despite traveling though some of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet before arriving in London, Brett had not once pulled out his camera to take pictures! "And what did he eventually come home to California with?", you may be wondering. Why, <span style="font-style:italic;">rust</span>, of course! Brett had been so mesmerized by a patch of rust on the London bridge, that on one of the very last days of their trip, he finally whipped out his camera and spent several hours in photographic ecstasy, exploring nothing but a small dilapidated metal plate.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RxivQd1iKOI/AAAAAAAAAMo/o3stJ2Gelc8/s1600-h/BarnEquipment.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_qDidGRcO644/RxivQd1iKOI/AAAAAAAAAMo/o3stJ2Gelc8/s200/BarnEquipment.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5123037273555871970" /></a>All fine-art photographers have been afflicted with this strange disease at one time or another (though some more so than others, much to the amusement and consternation of their understanding spouses ;-)Nguyen Hoanghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13645684915641725134noreply@blogger.com0