July 31, 2016

Keith A. Boas,"Photography is the ideal medium in which to challenge assumptions, because of all art forms, it is one people most expect to represent reality... The creative photographer grapples with these expectations, shaping or altering reality by the way he or she approaches a subject."

Imagery becomes another reality from experience. Like a talisman it is a good luck piece that gives you an illusion of connectivity to the real experience. But in short it is not a representation of that experience it is an antidote to your life's time line. 

It is only a memory in a physical form. A remedy for your willingness to pursue surface experience instead of the emersion in your life experiences. In a fraction of a second your experience was lost, you were separated from your real experience by eye candy as you automatically brought the camera to your eye and pushed the shutter button, but in that split second you lost the physical presence of that moment and how it would have connected you to the next moment (that would have led you to the real moment of exposure, a connection to your subject that was intense and deeply felt).  The true experience wasn't loud or obnoxious, it was just present waiting for you to discover it with intense concentration and an openness to your inner voice. It was calling your name but you limited your reaction by an uncreative snap shot that diminished any hope of you seeing beyond the social media conditioning of greedy eyes for the distractive representation of our human condition.

By not connecting to this moment passing you are now on different footing. A different path begins as you huddle around the camera to see your past moment but miss the explosion of color from a passing car waving goodbye to his love.

Another words you missed the true moment by taking the easy way around your perspective and settled for a quick fix to the continuing moments of distractions interfering with your momentum of creating meaningful images.  More and more experiences do not lead to better image creation. Especially if you are not on your true path.    

Just like a cloned mind one is following the leader down the rabbit hole of objectifying your life through snap shots that delute the possibility of living your own perspective and unique vision.

This conditioning by media to promote the mindless details of our lives and expose them to millions of people diminish the human spirit and destroy openness and acceptance.  It allows ourselves to huddle with like minded, anonymous people and laugh at others as if they were not laughing at you.  

Good photography brings people together and unites us, it does not separate us from our common spirit.

Just as we accumulate things in this buy and posses climate of material greed on steroids we are also losing our ability to recognize a phony life.  A facade put on to stimulate our shallow perceptions. A trickster waiting to take advantage of our hopes and dreams.  

We are losing our humanity.  A human species that doesn't look at the whole scene but settles for the easy slice of the pie as a doubt creeps in, that annoying feeling that just maybe there is something more present worth searching for than the bland homogenized copycat snap shots of an expensive meal on white linen. 

Opening your eyes to the world can feel like an overwhelming explosion of details rushing in on your senses. This creates a need for a filter.  A filter that can eliminate all the chatter and allow us to make quick decisions and judgments so our lives are normalized and conditioned toward safety and less thinking.

I am old enough to remember childhood, looking out at the world with fresh clean eyes of newness of the experiences you were having. We wanted to be in nature and explore and see new things not in a big sense of knowing but experiencing the present moments through the eyes of innocence.

Now it seems youth wants to live like their parents through a mechanical device and ignore the external world and only listen to the echo of words they know to describe the moments that are only there for the next snap shot or text.

These kids become adults and as adults they have learned to define their lives through words that label and diminish their experience not words that open up the experience to enhance their living experience. Adults look first through a reflection before they take action.

This pause is represented by the camera click the shutter release as you lose the intense moment of life for a snap shot of its memory and not the experience itself.

Adults project their inner fears onto nature, this allows the separation of thoughts of deep needs to a  physical reality we think we can control. 

Words establish ones place in the surrounding environment.  We define our world through words.  But words can never undo the fact that we are surrounded by nature.  A nature that doesn't know words meanings and doesn't care.

As adults we lose our ability to stay the influx of defining words of our experiences.  We don't just live the experience we must tweet it, face book it, look at me social media I am living the dream. 

It would be easier just to experience your life first hand and not distract yourself with a device that blocks your ability to become present in your moments.

But from childhood we have been taught to separate ourselves from the world.  Exploit it for it's rich information and then destroy it as an impediment to man living in cyber space.

We are now writing with light the details of a life like a writer who doesn't live his own life but settles for words detailing his experiences and forgets that these details taken individually are parts of his life.  What he has done is parceled out his life in fragments and not lived them as a cohesive whole for himself. 

You will not get your perspective beyond your unique visual presence. Photographs exploit this need in us to use our imagination to create other worlds beyond our short existence.  Your gift at birth is a space to be in and a timeline to live in.  This gives you an opportunity to create an image worth discovering.  Not out of fear or hidden motifs but through genuine feelings toward your subject and others.

July 2, 2016

Forgetting to live your personal life.  Always on display.  Never a moment to become yourself. Away from the social morass of muddy information, meaningless to your real goal of self awareness and the creation of willful imagery.

Fearing life and not embarking on it. A lessening of your ability to act as an individual. Our evolutionary tendencies to follow not lead.

Think of your social media site and the overwhelming amount of information and minutiae of details you can find that really have no purpose for you or how you want to live your life.

Social media can paralyze you into non-action. Controlling how you perceive the world and how you interact with it on a shallow surface labeling.

To experience the world on a deeper level we must throw out these stifling stereotypes and open up our minds to seeing the world differently, with new eyes.  Wide open eyes willing to take a new step toward their interests and find new ways to express old ideas. 

Peter Galassi, "Alone, the Surrealist wanders the streets without destination but with a premeditated alertness for the unexpected detail that will release a marvelous and compelling reality just beneath the banal surface of ordinary experience."

We live under extreme pressure to conform to the status quo.  This wanting to be part of something is used against us and constrains our artistic awareness.

Just let go and move beyond your first inclination to take a snap shot.  Stay still and just look, let your mind meander through the scene looking for a movement of awareness, a feeling that something is present that needs to be explored not exploited.

Let all your senses reach out to find that stillness of sight,  that can create an image reflected from your inner core. An image that communicates to you that what you have found is unique only to you and your conscious choices you made connecting with your subject.