The summer is upon us, and that seems to signify ‘another’ year. I suppose that is how it is for us students.
Well then, may this year see much growth in photographic ability, and may the summer be a good start. I feel the need now to make sense of the photographic journey I have been on, for the last four years. Can I step back then, perhaps, and see my own work through a different lens? The thought is tempting, and the summer a good time to give it a shot. Wish me progress!
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A sudden realization hit me as my eyes distractedly ran through a series of smiling faces on my Facebook friends list. Everyone was smiling – every single one of the faces that I saw. Not surprising, you would think. But still, it hit that when people want to put their best face forward, they pick a smiling face. Why on earth? What is this universal tendency that attracts people to smiling faces? Not only their own but also of others. And how did this language become so universal when differences abound in every other realm?
We start out by taking pictures of the whole. Whole people from top to toe. Gradually we transition, realizing that the whole isn’t what the heart wants to see. It is this part. Or that. Or another. Slowly we are charmed. By the hand, the foot, this fingernail, that ear, the smile… The person pulls us in, and we slowly, slowly surrender. Hmmm.
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Have you ever seen Telegraph Ave this empty? I certainly haven’t. How I happened to have my camera with me on a weekday is beyond me, really. The combination of car-needing-service, camera-in-car, shuttle-to-and-from-school made it happen, and I am so grateful. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to find that I really want my camera and there’s really no way I can get to it. Well, today I realized how close I’d have been to that state, and it inspired oodles of gratitude.
Berkeley was quite Berkeley today. No pretenses, no split personalities. It was just plain old Berkeley, and that was a refreshing sight indeed. Protests, posters, people all over. And all I could think was – I love you Berkeley, I wouldn’t have you any other way.
This photo above is of the stretch of Telegraph between Durant and Bancroft that had been blocked off during the walkout. Well, you can stop cars, but you can’t stop the artist from finding his empty piece of land and making music to his heart’s content. Charming, very.
I just saw a video captured on a 5D Mark II. It was high quality and brilliantly edited, with a great soundtrack to match. Check it out here. It made me think about photo vs. video, and what is lost/gained in the bargain. As I saw this video, it gradually dawned upon me that there is so much more information to be shared in just two or three seconds of capture, as opposed to a photograph which is a single instant in time. A story takes so little to tell, and even just two points allow us to draw a line and expand our understanding by infinity.
In the video there were two girls taking a photo of themselves and immediately turning the camera around to see how the photo turned out. A photo wouldn’t show me how soon the camera was turned, for instance. Then there was a dog running across a field, and I wondered how a photo could have told me the gait of the dog. I could go on, but you get the picture.
[Pun intended ;).]
This photograph takes me back – in an instant – to the simple existence of Chhatangarh, the village near Jaisalmer where we spent an unforgettable few days and nights. It was taken in the interior of Mahesha Ramji’s house, where we were treated as nothing short of royalty. I was stunned at how impeccably clean and perfect the house was, even if it was rendered so in honor of our arrival. The colors were rich and earthy, and the textures of both the brick and the mud walls were ever so appealing.
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It’s a wonder I never thought of this before, after years of taking photos, but it struck me yesterday as I went through the photos of Ramu taken at Chhatangarh (near Jaisalmer). I had taken photos of him in varying contexts, and as I looked at each of these yesterday, I realized that I was seeing varying sides to him as well. Just as I am different with my parents, with my sister, my friends, when I’m singing, etc. so is he. And as I saw these photos, I realized that they helped me get to know Ramu better – after all these days of meeting him, and who knows if/when our paths will cross again. Yet, with these photos, I could ponder more deeply, and without limitations, over his life, how it must be in relation to the others, etc. This is one of the affordances of photo-taking that I’ve always taken for granted – this ability to ‘ponder’ at will, but it is indeed one of the wonders of photography, is it not? It aids us in our reflections thus, and gives us more time with thought-provoking subjects than we would otherwise be able to find. Most certainly an unexpected plus.
Given my current state of being – sick and quarantined, with the laptop thus as my best friend – I decided to update myself on the latest and the greatest in the field of SLRs. Now that I’m a poor graduate student, I can’t just walk into the store and buy a dSLR. If I could, however, I’d definitely go in for a 7D. This after considerable consideration of pros and cons wrt the 40D, 50D, 5D, and T1i.
Also, if I were to recommend a Canon entry-level dSLR, I’d most certainly pick the T1i over all others.
And for now, I’m happy with my Rebel XT. I might, however, invest in a 17-40mm L, depending on the kindnesses of the finance gods.
Photography is that marvelous means of communication wherein one need not know the language of the photographer to understand what has been photographed. A simple and obvious fact, but the implications are powerful indeed. Photography overcomes, then, language barriers and literacy barriers, thereby empowering even the illiterate to ‘communicate’ via pictures. Of course, what one photo may not accomplish, several may, and story-telling becomes an effective way of communicating. The Photovoices project is founded on this basis. I’m positively blown away!
In Calvino’s clever writing:
“…Because once you’ve begun,” he [Antonino] would preach, “there is no reason why you should stop. The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow. If you take a picture of Pierluca because he’s building a sand castle, there is no reason not to take his picture while he’s crying because the castle has collapsed, and then while the nurse consoles him by helping him find a sea shell in the sand. The minute you start saying something, ‘Ah, how beautiful! We must photograph it!’ you are already close to the view of the person who thinks that everything that is not photographed is lost, as if it had never existed, and that therefore, in order really to live, you must photograph as much as you can, and to photograph as much as you can you must either live in the most photographable way possible, or else consider photographable every moment of your life. The first course leads to stupidity; the second to madness.”
“You’re the one who’s mad and stupid,” his friends would say to him, “and a pain in the ass, into the bargain.”
“For the person who wants to capture everything that passes before his eyes,” Antonino would explain, even if nobody was listening to him any more, “the only coherent way to act is to snap at least one picture a minute, from the instant he opens his eyes in the morning to when he goes to sleep. This is the only way that the rolls of exposed film will represent a faithful diary of our days, with nothing left out. If I were to start taking pictures, I’d see this thing through, even if it meant losing my mind. But the rest of you still insist on making a choice. What sort of choice? A choice in the idyllic sense, apologetic, consolatory, at peace with nature, the fatherland, the family. Your choice isn’t only photographic; it is a choice of life, which leads you to exclude dramatic conflicts, the knots of contradiction, the great tensions of will, passion, aversion. So you think you are saving yourselves from madness, but you are falling into mediocrity, into hebetude.”
