It’s all light

Apparently, I may be giving out the wrong idea with my posts, specially the ones about happiness. I feel that I should redress this. The best way to do that would probably be to stop posting but here I am and here I go again.

I write about happiness mostly because I see it as a concept that I have for the most part, misunderstood. I have chased it, yearned for it, coveted it for most of my life but only ever managing to grasp at a mere flicker of light in the shadows, something seen in the corner of my eye only to disappear as soon as I turn towards it. Happiness is missed as soon as I look for it.

Talking with some people recently made me aware that I may have unintentionally suggested that happiness is a goal, something to have and hold on to till the day we die and that I have somehow achieved this through photography. If that is the case than I apologise for this is not at all what I wish to convey. The joy which photography brings to me has in reality, nothing to do with photography itself but rather with a lesson brought on by the act of making photographs. The joy comes simply from seeing whatever I’m looking at for what it is. Without labels, without biases, without judgement. The point to life, if there is one, may simply be to live every moment fully even if those moments involve pain or sorrow or mourning. Photography may have brought me this understanding but I do not need photography to live its lesson. For that I just need to do what I do, what ever that may be in the moment, be it fun or boring, joyful or painful, safe or scary. The full gamut of human emotions is up for grabs. I don’t want to run away from any of them or run towards any of them but I do find it worthwhile to be aware of them, to live them fully because it is within them that the richness of life exists. After all, it is my emotions that colour my life.

Having said this I also want to add that I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with seeking happiness. If that is what you do then just do what you do. I am only saying that it is no longer what I do. It is not my goal to be happy, it is not my goal to be aware, it is not my goal to have or not have goals. For me it is all simply life living itself. Seeing things as I do will not suit everyone or perhaps even anyone. It is certainly not as exciting as it can get for some but I am suggesting that there is something to be said in finding balance which is effectively all I’m saying. Find the right balance between aperture and shutter speed and you’ll get a sweet shot of life. Regardless of the subject matter.

If what I write makes no sense please understand that I have no real idea who I am, or what I’m doing here, or what anything means but neither does my camera and it doesn’t seem upset by that. So I take a lesson from my camera which just does what it does and in turn, as I’ve already mentioned, I just do what I do.

I cannot tell you that everything in life will be all right, but photography has taught me that where life is concerned, it is always… all light.

Hearing the light

The name of this blog, Plop, is taken from a haiku by a Japanese  poet named Bashō. The full haiku, which has been translated in various ways, goes like this:

furu ike ya / kawazu tobikomu / mizu no oto

The ancient pond / A frog jumps in / Plop!

This haiku is often mentioned when people talk of Zen. It is said, somewhat romantically perhaps, that Bashō attained satori (enlightenment) upon hearing the “plop” of the frog jumping into the pond. At the very least Bashō had a precise grasp of reality. If nothing else his haikus show that he could see clearly and simply into the life or ‘isness’ of things.

The haiku is an art form which can easily be dismissed as cute or quaint and of little value but there is more to the seventeen syllables than endearing sentiment. Dr. R. Blyth defines the haiku as “the expression of a temporary enlightenment, in which we see into the life of things”. D. T. Suzuki sees the haiku as “a significant intuition into Reality”. This is to say that the haiku in its use of simple words, in its description of common things, points to something less apparent but, paradoxically, just as obvious.

The reason for my choosing Bashō’s haiku as an inspiration to name this blog was in part because of a connection which I perceive, between haiku and photography. This connection may not seem apparent at first but I cannot help but see a link or a similarity of goals between the two art forms. Quite simply put I use the medium of photography as an exploration into the nature of self, of things, of life. I do so by looking at the common things around me, the things which I, all too often, take for granted and thereby ignore, and then try to “see” their essence, their “isness” just as the poet who writes haiku tries to do. But just as any random seventeen syllable poem will not necessarily make a haiku neither will any random photograph give us “a significant intuition into Reality”. For a photograph to impart some sort of meaning it needs to possess something of a subtle nature, or as the French put it a certain je ne sais quoi.

As it turns out a French writer and philosopher by the name of Roland Barthes explains this subtle essence of photography beautifully in his book “Camera Lucida“. Barthes explains that for a photograph to have that deeper appeal which goes beyond the “um, nice” or “yeah, pretty” superficiality, it needs to consist of two co-existing elements: Studium and Punctum. Barthes defines Studium as “an extent, it has the extension of a field, which I perceive quite familiarly as a consequence of my knowledge, my culture”. In other words it is by Studium that we are at first attracted to a scene or a photograph. Something we see connects with memories which have been formed by our upbringing and our culture. We are seeing something obvious and instantly recognisable. In itself it may even be enough to reveal the photographer’s intentions. On its own however, Barthes tells us that Studium may keep us interested only for a short while before we move on. To make us linger longer over an image or to have us return to it many times over, a photograph needs a second element which Barthes called Punctum. As Barthes explains, Punctum “will break (or punctuate) the Studium”. In other words, the Studium, the common everyday element of the photograph is disturbed or rocked by the Punctum which will in its own way seek out the viewer and hold her captive. The Punctum will often be nothing more than a detail but a powerful detail at that.

“A detail overwhelms the entirety of my reading; it is an intense mutation of my interest, a fulguration. By the mark of something, the photograph is no longer ‘anything whatever’. This something has triggered me, has provoked a tiny shock, a satori, the passage of a void… This brings the Photograph (certain photographs) close to the Haiku.” Roland Barthes – “Camera Lucida”

Now I am not sure if Barthes would extend his concept of Studium and Punctum to other art forms but for me in the Studium of the ancient pond and its frog, the “plop” is the Punctum. It is that which points to the inherent nature of the aesthetic objects. The pond and the frog paint a lovely picture we can easily relate to and appreciate but it is the “plop” that awakens us. A photograph can have a similar effect. The question I’ve asked myself is: how do I create such an image? Of course I cannot really “create” a photograph as such. At least not from scratch. To paraphrase Dr. Carl Sagan, “If I want to make a photograph from scratch I would first need to create the universe”. Perhaps then, the question is more along the lines of how do I capture the essence, the eternal quality of what I see which is already there even before I set my eyes on it?

I will point out before I continue that at this point I am not writing about mastering the technical aspects of photography. That is an entirely different topic which I will leave to much more capable and gifted artists/photographers. What I wish to explore is the simplest way possible to capture the inherent nature of the aesthetic objects around me.

Photography, and art in general, is often thought to be a means of communicating some idea or sentiment from the artist to the viewer. It may even be fair to say that the artist usually communicates her ideas by using form and content. But it is not just form and content that are at play. Techniques such as balance, composition, tones, colour can also be used effectively to convey a mood, a feeling and in doing so a link is created between the artist and the viewer through the aesthetic object depicted in the artwork or photograph. I see this as an illusion, a sleigh of hands in the way a gifted illusionist can make you see something that is not really there. That I see it as an illusion does not take anything away from the artistic value of the artwork. Rather, what I am saying is that what we feel or sense from the photograph is more about the artist’s perspective which we then associate with the objects in the image. For example if I was to shoot a tree on a bright sunny day with the sun behind me to capture the rich colours so that I may reflect my cheerful mood my image would be quite different to one I would make if I was in a dark mood and shot the same scene facing the sun thus creating long shadows and deep contrast. Both images may well reflect whichever mood I wish to communicate but will either image tell me anything about the nature or the essence of the main object in the picture, namely the tree?

To create a work of art there is no doubt that a certain amount of technical knowledge is needed. It is necessary to become competent in one’s craft before we can expect to produce anything that might be considered aesthetically pleasing. Usually such expertise comes with much study and practice. In photography there is a need to fully understand the equipment, not only the functions of the buttons and dials but also the camera’s limitations. Then there is the technicalities of the craft. With photography it’s focal length, depth of field, film speed, white balance, shutter speed, f-stops, noise, lenses and so on. And I won’t even start on post-processing. The thing is that at some point, after much sweat and tears, all of the technical stuff becomes second nature. Much of the decision making about settings etc is done subconsciously and the mind starts to concern itself more with the aesthetics, the composition, the colours, the tones, the shadows, the highlights, the feel. But even that can potentially become second nature and operate purely on a subconscious level. It is perhaps at this point in the development of a photographer that the creative mind is born. In my view, the creative mind is akin to what my martial-arts teacher referred to as empty mind. By empty I do not mean dull or inactive. Minor White explains it best.

The state of mind of the photographer while creating is a blank. I might add that this condition exists only at special times, namely when looking for pictures… For those who would equate ‘blank’ with a kind of static emptiness, I must explain that this is a special kind of blank. It is a very active state of mind really, a very receptive state of mind, ready at an instant to grasp an image, yet with no image pre-formed in it at any time. We should note that the lack of a pre-formed pattern or preconceived idea of how anything ought to look is essential to this blank condition. Such a state of mind is not unlike a sheet of film itself-seemingly inert, yet so sensitive that a fraction of a second’s exposure conceives a life in it. (Not just life, but a life.)

It is while operating in this state of mind that intuition, whatever that may be, seems to take over. The shutter is released not because of any conscious decision but rather as an automatic action to a feeling. The “feeling” in this instance is not of a personal nature. It is not about how I feel or even about how the subject feels to me and it is not something that can be conceptually grasped. It could be said that the creative process is driven by insight and not by discursive thinking. Or as D. T. Suzuki puts it:

The artist’s world is one of free creation and this can come only from intuitions directly and immediately rising from the isness of things, unhampered by senses and intellect.

For me, empty mind, or what Zen calls no-mind, cannot be achieved by effort and does not constitute a mind free of thoughts. The concept is one I find difficult to explain though I can say that the conscious act of emptying the mind is self-defeating. It happens of its own accord. Also it is only after the fact that I note consciously that such a state of mind occurred. To consciously think “Aha, I am in a state of no-mind” would be contradictory to the definition of no-mind because in such a state attention is withdrawn from everything, including any thoughts that may enter the mind, but opens itself instead to aesthetic contemplation.

It may be worth pointing out that empty mind is not restricted to the photographer. With empty mind, as a viewer, I may also grasp the very essence that a photographer captured without any juxtaposition of my own biases and with no need for interpretation. Of course for many of us it is the intellectual discourses on art that we enjoy so much and so what I am suggesting here may not sound like there is any point to it. But if we can suspend our intellect and our biases towards form and structure it may be possible, either as a photographer or as a viewer, to let the forms simply be and in so doing reveal their true essence. And so, regardless of education or status, anyone can hear for themselves, the haiku which the light recites ever so softly.

Like the sound of a frog jumping in a pond, we can hear the light celebrating the commonplace.

Branching out to the right, growing out to the left, just walking the dog

Illumination

Some time ago I read a post by Mark Hobson about light and its relationship to good photography. It’s a good read, like all his posts. And like all his posts he doesn’t mince words.

There are picture makers who think that photography is “all about the light” which, to my way of thinking, is about the same as thinking that writing is all about the ink. IMO, that’s about as dumb as it gets.

That’s a good insight. Light is nothing more than the means of imprinting the subject onto a sensor just as ink is a means of placing a word onto a page. I can’t deny that I have looked at photographs and thought along the lines of “nice light” or “warm glow” and each time I find myself moving on with nothing more than a vague memory of a pretty picture. A pretty picture does not make a good photograph though pretty doesn’t exclude a photograph from being good. Pretty and petty pictures give a cheap thrill on par with a sugar rush from a gummi bear. Good photographs feed a deeper yearning, they make a lasting impression, they might even say something about myself.

Mark goes on to quote Brooks Jensen who said:

A good photograph is never “about light”. Good photographs are about feelings.

Feelings. Yes. A good photograph makes me feel, something, anything. It will resonate inside me and suck me in and awaken memories and stir my imagination. A good photographs succeeds in doing this because without effort a good photograph reveals a story. A story that may be long, that may be short, that may be different to the story intended by the photographer. Does it matter? It might tell me something about the photographer, it might tell me something about the subject matter, at the very least it will tell me something about myself.

Now I don’t profess to be a photographer, much less an artist and I doubt I run the risk of having my images appraised as fine art and while I don’t always know what I am doing during the process of making an image I am conscious that it is not light that I am shooting, no matter how pretty the photons may look. More likely than not I am attracted to the mundane, to the simplicity, to the ordinary. It is as much the unseen as the seen that I try to capture, the subtleties rather than the obvious. Awareness allows me to see these things and light ’writes’ what I see onto the camera’s sensor.

Light is simply the photographer’s ink.

Here’s a list (in no particular order) of some of my favourite story-tellers, writers of stories written in photonic ink. Check them out.

Mark Hobson
Brooks Jensen
Andy Ilachinski
Alexey Titarenko
Rui Palha
Andreas Manessinger