tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post8492961282665980185..comments2024-03-27T00:32:29.877-07:00Comments on Photos and Stuff: The Dilemma, or Something?amolitorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-79458023731280433412018-09-02T20:37:27.077-07:002018-09-02T20:37:27.077-07:00If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Oldwinohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06546428931999701295noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-66266205901733036682018-09-02T07:09:39.041-07:002018-09-02T07:09:39.041-07:00Well, sure, a photo of a model standing next to a ...Well, sure, a photo of a model standing next to a BMW is pretty shabby. Still, there's a reason they use a photo and not a drawing.<br /><br />Advertising works better than we think it does!amolitorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15743439184763617516noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-5385733448113032332018-09-02T01:36:31.048-07:002018-09-02T01:36:31.048-07:00I completely agree with Paul. I also agree with An...I completely agree with Paul. I also agree with Andrew's comment. Let me explain.<br /><br />I'm a "graduate" of the Miksang school from many years ago, and mentioned Miksang to him a couple of years ago. I fully agree with Andrew's comment that the Miksang credo tends to produce " ... pictures not connected to anything, and are largely vacuous exercises in form." <br /><br />BUT, and this is a big BUT, that's only true if you adhere to the Miksang way of doing things. <br /><br />To again quote Andrew ... "you need to see what is truly there in order to make a good picture of it, and in order for that to happen you have to be exquisitely present. So, something that stills your interior monologues, that centers you in the here and now, is more or less a necessary technique." This is what Miksang does probably better than any photographic "discipline"; It teaches you how to SEE. But seeing is not photographing. The problem with Miksang emerges when you stick to their rules of HOW to photograph what you see. I view Miksang as just another tool in my photographic tool kit and photograph the way I want, a lot of it in BW which is completely against the Miksang rules. Approached that way it is a very useful and powerful tool.Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13996663117270871003noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-42276776642767901372018-09-02T01:26:44.338-07:002018-09-02T01:26:44.338-07:00"Even if your story is a marketing campaign, ..."Even if your story is a marketing campaign, that is still a real car, a real model, with a real half-smile playing across her lips. While she may not truly love the car, her reality makes it easier for you to visualize yourself at her side, one hand on the car door, and keys in the other.”<br /><br />I'm having a hard time connecting the above with "the wonder of photography is that it is real" - are you able to elucidate (tell me to go back to the post if you think it is as clear as you can make it!)? We skim past such adverts on Instagram or in a magazine because they aren't real, they're manufactured, with ersatz emotion, too perfect - humans are hard wired to at least try and tell truth from fiction and we (think we) know if an artist, a photographer, is telling us their truth because they speak directly to us even though they are talking to themselves. <br /><br />Truth arrests us. And for this to work the photograph needs to leave us some space to bring our own agenda - to paraphrase Crewdson, when confronted with a good (interesting?) photograph, we don't look at it, we look through it at something else. Confronted with a big-haired, dazzling-smiled model with a car, we're left with nowhere to go but "oh, an advert" and we know what the agenda is. Even if an advert surprises and delights us it is still fatally undermined by the fact that it is trying to tell us what to think - buy this, go there, do that, spend X amount. Whilst an artist is perhaps trying to sell you something - the piece itself maybe - a good artist is really talking to herself, not to a marketing group or a campaign manager. In what could otherwise by a solely solipsistic act, the artist may or may not snare us with an intriguing or new vision, a new way of seeing something, or highlighting something you’d always known but never before seen articulated. But whatever else is the case, in doing so, in snaring us, one ingredient they cannot leave out is (a perceived) truth. <br /><br />Hollowness will out. Patrick Doddshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02542212200114555054noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-25162102948954922072018-09-02T01:07:14.282-07:002018-09-02T01:07:14.282-07:00I believe that it could be interesting to compare ...I believe that it could be interesting to compare Miksang photography to Haiku poetry. The latter is also founded in the Zen tradition. A good Haiku is supposed to originate from mindful observation of your surroundings; in the so-called "Haiku moment", the poet observes something which points at something profoundly deep in the Buddhist tradition - for example, that could be the impermanence of all things being, and the resulting compassion (mono-no-aware). The Haiku should express this solely through the description of the observed, without resorting to metaphor. Probably the originators of Miksang photography employed the same mechanism. It should be noted that these people had a comprehensive training in Buddhist philosophy, like the early practitioners of Haiku poetry. If, however, this approach is employed only as a process, the result will be a bunch of tropes - in Miksang photography as well as with contemporary Haiku.<br /><br />I do believe, however, that mindfulness can be put to good use - in that your "Haiku moment" points you to your story instead of Buddhist philosophy (which, admittedly, is hard for us westerners to "get").<br /><br />Best, ThomasThomas Rinkhttp://www.picturesfromthezone.com/noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-654754338632526091.post-22933895446426971702018-09-01T11:01:56.368-07:002018-09-01T11:01:56.368-07:00This post really resonates with me and my thoughts...This post really resonates with me and my thoughts and experiences and things I've learned about myself and my photography over the last couple of years.<br /><br />"You cannot just wander the streets, amnesiac, drifting contemplatively from moment to moment, and construct a story."<br /><br />I think you can. At least for how I tend to recently approach my work and the type of work I am now doing, I know that my subconscious mind is always on the lookout for the things I am interested in in my work, both thematic and visual. If I'm attracted to certain ideas and themes, I'm certainly noticing them in the world, but often only on lower levels of conciousness.<br /><br />When I am out with my camera and able to get in the zone, into that state of 'flow', more often than not I manage to fill in some pieces of the larger puzzle of the various threads of work I'm preoccupied with at any given point in time. I simply work to 'still my mind', just as you mentioned, and simply try to be in the world, and recognize when I am connecting in some way with whatever I come across, and make photographs. As Henry Wessel once said 'if something attracts my attention for any reason that's good enough reason as any to take a photo'.<br /><br />So, ultimately, the key for me has been in trying to empty my mind from the usual thoughts that cloud my mind so that I can actually be aware when something IS attracting my attention, which, as a matter of habit, my concious mind usually does its best to ignore unless the thing vying for my attention might be life threatening.<br /><br />Ruminating on the meaning, for me, comes later, as I reflect on what i've photographed, and how if fits with other stuff I've done and am doing, and thoughts and ideas that have been preoccupying me. Connections start to assert themselves. My various 'projects' grow over time, and new ones start to form, new ideas start to make themselves known, and the process continues onward.<br /><br /><br />Paulhttp://www.paulpolitis.comnoreply@blogger.com