Sometimes I feel very lucky. After a great but long workout at the gym, I came home and fixed myself dinner. Luxury comes in many forms. For some it might be dinner at André Soltner's old Lutéce or L'Atelier at the Four Seasons; for me, luxury is a freshly cooked dinner, so simple every ingredient is a distinctive taste, relished with half a glass of Chardonnay.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Feeling Very Lucky
Sometimes I feel very lucky. After a great but long workout at the gym, I came home and fixed myself dinner. Luxury comes in many forms. For some it might be dinner at André Soltner's old Lutéce or L'Atelier at the Four Seasons; for me, luxury is a freshly cooked dinner, so simple every ingredient is a distinctive taste, relished with half a glass of Chardonnay.
Fabrics for Sitting
Over the years I have put together a few necessities for sitting in the morning—to cover my bare knees, warm my shoulders, support my hands, sit on, etc. The fabrics come from Indonesia, Bhutan, Saudi Arabia, India, and, of course, Mount Shasta in California. Without planning, our lives take the colors and faiths in spite of ourselves. Wherefore focus?
Gee Jeans!
I often forget how colors are all around. Digital photography makes capture so easy that I forget sincerity is just another name for truth. Images are what we take the time to see, not the elaborate constructions of a jaded mind.
Buddha at the Edge
Half an hour cleaning my camera sensor. Maybe I should respect focus a little more.
After the Storm
Outside, inside, storms come and go. Beauty if we can find it is even more elusive, like storms, impossible to control. I listened to Charlie Rose last night in an "appreciation" of John Updike who recently died at age 76. The writer described himself as a plodder. He simply did what he did. What does it matter to us what those who are left behind think of us? What we think of ourselves day in, day out, only matters to the extent we act or not act. In the long run, the music of our lives has a beauty of its own composing.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The Objective
Food has been my photography subject lately but I am not learning as much as I want to doing this. Tomorrow's a new day. Today was again devoted to learning about social networking on the Internet. That's a whole world in itself.
Lunch Ideally
Lunch ideally should be freshly made, warm and comforting to the soul and healthy for the body. Not always possible. No time, no inclination, whatever. Once in a while, the forces within and without our control converge and the ideal comes about. We eat not only food but nourish ourselves with gratitude, too. The ham-and-bean soup is perfect strewn with chopped green onions. The baby field greens in the salad mix well with the gorgonzola topping, simply dressed with just balsamic vinegar, olive oil and a few grindings of mixed peppercorns.
Beautiful weather brings up beautiful memories - of growing up at my grandmother's at La Granja where breakfast began with a cup of frothy Spanish-style chocolate. There was a cacao tree outside the window in one of the bedrooms. The buds when ripe had seeds that were ground in water and dried on banana leaves into pastilles we called tablea. Unlike the Mexican tablets I used this morning for this cup of chocolate, tablea was pure cacao with no added sugar. The sugar and milk were added on cooking, the brew then whipped in a special aluminum canister with a wooden beater until frothy. Childhood memories are unbeatable but we have to be satisfied with what we can dish up today.
31 Years After the Blizzard
On this day in 1978, Indianapolis got twice as much snow as we did today - 12.5 inches as of eight this morning. The sun is breaking the clouds down. I'm going out for more pictures. I love winter scenes, just love the bewitching if treacherous soft quality of snow visuals, even today exotic to an Asian boy!
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
In the Bath
Terry Barrett's book, Criticizing Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images, continues to enlighten and inspire. He provides words for what I have been suspecting all along as I've dived into the art of images and suggests many other ways to look and "make" images. Documentary and "straight" photography intrigue me because they really are about the fundamental function of seeing, but seeing informed by what in Buddhism is called sati - mindfulness, seeing the details and the whole all at once. Seeing, I'm discovering (as an increasingly more visually biased man), is experiencing. If it is not living itself, the difference is more conceptual than real.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Copper Bracelet
At this second shoot with Brandon, I wanted to capture the lines and geometry of the male body. I have yet much to learn but learned enough from the shoot to know I want to do more of this kind of photography, closer to abstract than representational imagery. Long a fan of chiaroscuro I was especially happy with the shadows in this image.
Spinach Omelet
After a surprisingly good workout at the gym, I came home gung-ho for dinner. Two of the best kitchen purchases I've ever made played key roles: an anodized-steel Cuisinart saucepan with non-stick lining which I sprayed with the thinnest film of virgin olive oil using Misto®. I rewashed spinach before cooking them with sliced scallions and a few slivers of pared ginger while I lightly beat three eggs with some milk. I gently poured the eggs into a non-stick omelet pan, topped them with sliced Swiss cheese and when starting to set folded in the spinach mixture. The eggs still runny inside, the omelet was heavenly. Louisiana hot pepper sauce added heat to a meal that took less than 20 minutes to prepare.
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Reason Enough
This first two weeks in 2009 have been a time to rethink what I am doing with photography.Words were my first love. This has never wavered. I grafted images to this first love to make a circle next to the square, never to supplant it. Yet there is only so much time, and navigating what remains of time I have to use is getting treacherous—dangerous and tricky.
My professional photos have all so far been of handsome and beautiful people. I can't think that I want to stop shooting fashion-type photographs. I do want to expand my repertoire and explore the subtleties of light, composition and digital post-production. In a sense, the work of aesthetic development is still ahead!
One day last week, while trying to reduce the stuff clogging up my study, I read my journal entries from 1984. I could hardly put the thick binder down. The account was fascinating. The themes, true, are the same as always but I was amazed at how much I had forgotten of what I have done.
Yesterday, on my off day (off from the regimen I've prescribed for myself), I read British writer, Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy's biography of Alfred Kinsey. The book gave me added reasons for working on my own life story. I didn't think I had a subject to write about or a strong enough reason for writing. Wrong. I already have both.
Monday, January 5, 2009
My Second Year
This year I need to lay down a clear foundation for what I intend to do with my photography activities. 2008 turned out a surprise. I started with the idea of brushing up my video skills but with the first photo shoot with a model, Kaleb, in May, my focus shifted and I discovered something that I enjoyed and suited my previous predilections. This year would likely have it own surprises. I can't plan for those; I can only plan with what I know.My model images are what so far have attracted the most attention in my portfolio. They are largely generic images, pretty with pretty faces and bodies. That's fine but they don't really identify my unique vision. They are run-of-the-mill creative.
Shooting Brandon last month with a Christmas motif makes me think I can specialize on holiday images. Most people would want their own images for the holidays but there are other situations when models would work better e.g. in magazines, webpages, even greeting cards and marketing brochures. This can also lead into doing more commercial work. So I am thinking of doing Valentine images at my next shoot with the model.
Meanwhile I still want to enlarge my repertoire and skills. A need to learn to use Adobe Creative Suite software is obvious but I am dragging my feet here. I am more interested in exploring genera.
I ended last year with a business loss even when I surprised myself at earning some pittance from my photography work. This year I should plan to earn a little more. I can already see where the income could come from even without making a systematic study of the market. I will however have to take business more seriously. At least that's what I want to do when I think of the coming year these first few days in 2009.
Friday, January 2, 2009
Hiking Above the Bay of Salerno
Words, images and perception are the trinity that dominates what I aspire to use to harness creatively and feel I am squeezing the best out of life.Words and, their usual presentation, thoughts, were for the better part of my life how I perceived the world of experience. Words were the raw materials both for academic performance and imaginative activity. Words were the vehicles by which I enjoyed fiction, poetry and, later, nonfiction. (Who would have thought back in my late teens and early twenties that I would someday prefer "essays" to "fiction"?) Words carved my worlds of imagination. Even today words can conjure a more tangible feel (perception is not quite right in this case) for a story I am reading. Words are hardwired to by now a near infinite array of possible associations.
In the 1980s, after a pivotal introduction to the consciousness-changing technology of Buddhist meditation I discovered a way of "thinking" that was "neither perception nor perception." Thoughts exploded into wordlessness and the effect was powerful.
Just as the dominance of words and thoughts was being toppled, some friends introduced me to Jungian theories and myths. I became aware of images. Years earlier I had subscribed to a MOMA series of books on modern art. I couldn't make sense of them. Myths provided me with a framework for understanding, or short of understanding, appreciating images. Becoming aware of images opened me to the world of visual art. Colors, lines, shapes were astoundingly different elements of consciousness for me but I was fascinated as one is fascinated by what he barely understands. It's like the foretaste of a feast that one sensed would last the whole night and here it was, just its aroma barely enticing the nose before even the far-seeing eye can perceive it.
Since then I've felt myself challenged to enter the world of images. My earliest successes in life, few as they are, were in the domains of words and ideas. After some initial success I failed miserably in making any more substantial headway. The idea was born that somehow I was in the wrong place, somehow I was seeking fulfillment pursuing the wrong star.
To date, the exercises I've taken in exploring images has produced no less mediocre results as those of the first two-thirds of my life. I always feel somehow that I'm missing the boat - maybe by inches, but missing it anyway. I am too cautious, too timid, not used to taking risks and letting my limits go as some people naturally can do from early in life. The artists I admire seem to have found what energized them and there was no turning back. Their passion surged and limits just fell away.
2009 has just begun. In the nonhuman world January 1 does not exist but those of us who are tethered to human conceptions can find in the date the stimulus to try again with greater effort and achieve the goal we know we don't really know. One day at a time we push ourselves although frankly the push seems to come despite ourselves. On this note I might find optimism, what others might call hope, to keep nicking at my own rock-hard limits.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
