At the end of this month I shall have been on sabbatical from a science-based career for a full year. Reviewing what I have done with the time I have been disappointed with the level of my productivity but last night as I watched 1000 photos on Apple TV, now upgraded to display in HD on my large-screen 1080p monitor, I don't think I've done too shabbily!
My photos, or images as I like to call them since they are all digitally processed, have a cumulative effect that one does not get viewing just one image. Most of the images are model images going back to my first shoot in May before leaving for Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast later that month. I used Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs as background music for the impromptu slideshow and the effect was magical. I have wanted to gather together a portfolio for a local gallery show late this year (more likely now in at least another year) with blown-up prints but I like the idea of projected giant images. HD monitors are about light, incredible intensities of light that move the heart as only vivid colors do.
When I began doing model shoots last year I didn't have a clue about art, much less artistic vision. I needed to develop, even find my own "eye." After a year I think I have my own style of seeing. Artists throughout the centuries are constantly forging new rules to keep their art edgy and attract consumers. Digital processing is making the art of breaking old rules more exciting even as established, more conservative photographers still tied to film technology try to impose their canon on emerging, struggling newcomers. I like being a newbie!
Shunryu Suzuki's advice to his early American students was to practice, practice, practice but never to lose the "Beginner's Mind." Alas human nature quickly turns newbies to experts. For a while it works but before we know it, certainly before critics and consumers realize it, we have become old fogies, desperately defending what we know and no longer able to see with Beginner's Mind.
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