Posts Tagged ‘birds’
April 3 – Back to Babylon – 92/365
“Babylon has become a cage of every vile and unclean bird; True Rastafari is the answer, Rastafari movement is lord; repent and come to H.I.M. Right Now!!!”
“Fallen! Babylon the Great has fallen! She has become a home for demons. She is a prison for every unclean spirit, a prison for every unclean bird, and a prison for every unclean and hated beast” (Revelation 18:2).
I just love Shanghai with all its superficial life, multy-tongued crowds and distinct babel feel. Truly, I am the “vile and unclean bird” happily imprisoned in its cage again. Beijing has got some of it too, but as a city it’s just a bit too heavy and squarish for my taste. Well, I know where I will settle if I move to China.
February 26 – Camera Obscura – 56/365
The more I take casual outdoors pictures the clearer I realize that photography is only very little about fancy Jap cameras. It is not even too much about good German optics or high quality BW film or groovy prints on aquarell paper. The whole set of hardware along with its costly (mostly pirated) software is just a heavy weight convention assisting me in locating and framing an accidential picture. Which in fact is a very simple manipulation that may be easily performed by two hairy hands forming a rectangular (two tumbs against the opposite index fingers). With training it can be reduced to a simple momentary glance followed by shutting of your both eyes for a quick development of the obtained image in the dark room of your memory.
I mean that photography in its essence is a basic mental process. It is also older than the whole oil painting tradition or the ancient Greek tragedy. What made photography, as a separate sort of Art, come out from behind of its well documented predecessors in the beginning of the last century was just a pure technical trick, a kind of a curiosa or hocus pocus. However, it allowed the initiated ones to freeze and copy their mental experiences on paper in exchange for a relatively modest fee (at least in the beginning).
All that gradually developed into several different sorts of commercial photography. The whole concept of “Professional photography” is often assotiated with (if not based on) the assumption of serving some specific kind of trade (journalism, medicine, advertising, weddings etc) or otherwise generating hefty incomes (at least enough for making a decent living). The resting majority is an ocean of happy amateurs dominated by countless crowds of curious Japanese tourists and enthusiastic middle class fathers tormenting their families with “cheeses” and painful flashes to produce their red-eye vampire horror shots (been there done that).
What is finally left is a numerous homeless bunch not daring to call themselves “professionals”, but kniting their brows if called “amateurs”. Of the three groups the latter one seems to be the closest to the existential essnce of photography. Having entered this group I came to realize the pressing need for a proper self-definition that would spare me the urge of becoming another “professional” plus provide a legitimate space for what I do. And I think have found it. It came kind of out of blue, when I was sipping at my tea this morning: a free soul photographer. I’ve tried to put it on. It feels good.
Rootless Cosmopolitan 