We’ve all engaged in discussion of what makes art, and moreover, what makes good art. It’s my opinion that the latter is subjective. But the former? Art and it’s pure definition? Honestly, I haven’t a clue. I know what it is when I’m looking at it, however. When I’m moved or perhaps more succinctly, when everything else stops moving and the moment gives way to the art.
As a photographer I never set out to make art. I seek to see inside a moment or express a feeling. I really never know if the feeling I had hoped to convey is the one the viewer is experiencing when they see the image. I’m fairly certain that it doesn’t matter though. If you’re looking at an image and are moved to any emotion I think something wonderful has happened, and wouldn’t be so presumptuous as to assume what your emotion should be. What one finds exciting another could easily pass over as mundane. It’s the mystery of taste and style, and finding what ignites mine is the force that drives me creatively.
Nothing has ever spoken to me quite the way photography does. The entire concept of capturing light and color overwhelms me. For years I was frozen in my admiration of the photographs of others and have only recently unlocked enough to make images that please me at all. And still so much of it is in the making. The seeing. The taking and the creating. Sometimes the final image isn’t final at all and the pleasure was all in the process.
What moves you in art? Please share your link or thougts in the comments below.
laugh at yourself
learn what makes you happy and do it whenever as possible
apologize when you’re wrong
bring baked goods to new neighbors
watch the sun rise occasionally
ask as many questions as you have
obey traffic signs
don’t label yourself (or anyone else)
traditions matter
everyone is weird
one cigarette is too many
older is (almost always) wiser
karma goes both ways
dark chocolate is better
people can change
different = interesting
forgiveness is redeeming for both the forgiver and the forgivee
you are amazing
more here
My camera broke three days before we left for vacation and I felt as if someone told me I couldn’t bring my arm with me.
I tried having the following argument with myself: maybe this means you’re (I speak to myself in the third person) supposed to step out from behind the lens and experience life instead of recording it.
It didn’t work. (Mainly because that argument is a crock.)
My camera does not cause me to separate from the events around me at all. The reality is just the opposite. My camera causes me to engage deeply in what I see. Tiny moments that may have otherwise gone unnoticed become forever etched in the colors of my memory and large overwhelming events are suddenly broken down into manageable pieces.
I walk through days of usual and ordinary and I see things that are anything but. Light becomes a commodity when you’re a photographer and it takes on shapes and forms that brighten even the darkest days.
So I tried another approach.
I dug out my old Canon and one prime lens and I shot entirely in manual the whole week. I wanted to see what would happen if I was limited by my equipment and returned to the basics.
And wouldn’t you know? I learned something.
I learned that it’s me who makes the pictures, not my camera. I am the artist and my camera is my tool. It’s my paintbrush or mound of clay.
So do I miss my Nikon? Hell yes. But does it matter?
Not at all.
Riddle me this.
What do you get when a bunch of old friends from the theater (and their kids) get together and go on vacation together?
Answer: a very dramatic vacation.
Tradition among my husband’s friends includes July 4th week on a lake in the Great Northeast Kingdom of Vermont.
It started out sixteen summers ago with just two of them. The following summer there were four or five and it grew from there.
This summer there are upwards of twenty-six adults and twelve children ranging in age from just under two to almost thirteen.
We cook in groups and eat communally. We watch each others’ children and share bathrooms.
There are kayaks and canoes and lots of bikes. The porch-sitting is world class
and the tally of books read is somewhere over two dozen. There are chores and board games and no television.
Tonight there will be fireworks and grilling and probably some hyped up kids.
After they’re asleep there will be a fire and we’ll talk until one by one everyone heads up the stairs to bed.
And next summer, we’ll do it all again.
