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[OM] Re: Vision (Was: Digital, digital, digital. Bah, humbug!)

Subject: [OM] Re: Vision (Was: Digital, digital, digital. Bah, humbug!)
From: "John A. Lind" <jalind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 15 Apr 2005 00:26:03 -0500
At 11:13 PM 4/14/2005, Moose wrote:
>John A. Lind wrote:
>
> > ...................
> >
> >Clarity of vision is what I've been waiting on for nearly a year.
> >
>I hope it is close at hand and soon found.

:-))
I'm at the "Eureka" precipice; the fog is lifting.  I have a premonition 
that once its starts, it will be "free fall" with a very high burn 
rate.  It's Hell being in an utterly uninspired slump, and haven't pushed a 
shutter release since last November.  Even that was pedestrian, extended 
family candids with some run-of-the-mill rural landscape & architecture 
thrown in.

There are some things that have been germinating and I've been ruminating 
on them . . . as an entire project that I plan to eventually contain about 
two dozen photographs.  Some I've already done.  There are more to come, 
and yet another very specific visualization came to mind tonight.  Many of 
them are "edgy."  The viewer will either "get it" or wonder why the Hell I 
made them.  They're not just unusual, they're quite odd; "weird" also comes 
to mind.  Definitely not the mainstream documentary work one finds in 
non-professional, competitive photo shows.  Those seem to favor 
exceptionally well composed and executed "found," serendipitous purely 
representational photography demonstrating technical skill (not that "what 
you see is just what it is" is a Bad Thing; it's not what I want to 
do).  Symbolism and abstraction to portray emotion or an oblique "story" 
unrelated to the objects themselves does not fare well in that type of show 
very often.  So be it; I plan to call it Art anyway.  Part of it came to me 
in a dream that woke me up at 3 AM one night; quite rare for that to happen 
to me.  I plan for using B/W, Scala 200X likely pulled to EI-100 to open up 
the contrast some . . . to celebrate shape, form and texture.  Also likely 
to be printed on Ilfochrome (done that before with very unique results 
unlike standard B/W print materials).  Even so, it's still "straight 
photography" in the Edward Weston Group f/64 sense; edgy in "point of view" 
and composition.

I was going to post something about the "Circular Waste of Time" as 
embodied by an insightful article on the Medium Format site (hosted by Bob 
Monighan) citing the yearning and never-ending Holy Grail quest for the one 
piece of mythical, magical gear that will create perfect photographs.  Then 
I remembered receiving yet another box from B&H today.  OK, its primary 
content is a speed ring for a softbox I've had for a year that will now let 
me mount it on my Hensel monolights.  Something I've wanted for a while as 
some of the studio stuff making do with brollies hasn't provided enough 
control to prevent light spilling onto a very low key backdrop.  Part of 
what I've been visualizing requires better control of where the light is 
going.  In the face of seeming hypocrisy, I'll assert there is no Holy 
Grail piece of photographic equipment that makes "perfect" photographs; in 
spite of what the camera maker marketeers would have us believe.  They sell 
the vision of that to sell us more gear.

Thanks Moose
-- John Lind


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