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by CameraTheoretica

Absence

I have been gone for a while. Nothing significant. Just away. In a way, it was an attempt to take a break from myself, from all those “need to do’s” so I could concentrate on those undervalued “want to do’s.” In my mind I would like to believe that my momentary act of disappearance had something to do with a higher calling, with some need to recharge from the stress of everyday life, or perhaps some other similarly noble explanation. Sadly, this is not the case. I’m afraid that my reasons are a bit less romantic, but not necessarily less compelling. Simply put, I went away in search of the emotion of experiencing something new, a zen-like detour, if you will, from all that was familiar and known to me. Sort of a self-imposed mandate to try to revive those feelings of wonder that had been unconsciously put on a shelf by the ordinary mechanics living a happy, yet familiar life. I just had to go away without really going anywhere.

Mind you, this journey in place had nothing to do with any sense of gloominess or sorrow. Not at all. I am actrually quite happy with my life and have not experienced any hardship that I can think of. But like a vessel in cruise control, steady and happy as you go doesn’t always equate to exciting and new. And while the virtues of a steady, change-averse existence are nouirishment to some, for restless mortals like me, they never lead to the same happy place. You could say that I became terribly uncomfortable with comfort, and without any particular trigger to jolt me out of my glorious stupor, I suddendly realized that it was time to get off the steady ship in order to seek the discomfort, fear, and emotional desperation that rattles my nerves, and which like gasoline, add fuel to the remaining embers of a fire that once lighted the universe. It was simply time to pause what I had become in order to take inventory. Absence, or perhaps more accurately speaking, lack of public presence was my chosen antidote.

But if some nobel revelation is what you are expecting at the end of this self-imposed disappearance, then I’m afraid that I’m about to disappoint you. I didn’t discover any new universes, or invented anything new during this time. What I experienced was the simple joy of confering some life to the many neglects of my life: learning another language, Japanese cooking, Zen philosophy, literary classics, travel narratives, meditation, long walks, destination-fee photogarphic wanderings, and reconecting with friends. I simply did my best to exorcize the internal, never-ending forces starving for some sort of accomplishment-based recognition. You probably know the kind: the relentless forces constantly pulling us towards social media, people, and endless dreams of achieving more than the limits that our own individual talents would allow. These forces, as powerful as they can be if left unsupervised, can easily canivalize the subtle, undervalued elements of the carefree existence where life finds its bliss. Achieving, for me, had simply become a poor substitute for the absence of need. It was time to let go.

Enter the simple life. Nothing too exciting to captivate the public, though. Rather, I’m referring to the kind of life that seeks solace in simple, everyday existence, and sometimes, in the underrated joy of simply doing nothing. And like the doctor in Captain Correlli’s Mandolin lovingly pointing out to his beloved daughter about the meaning of being in love, “It doesn’t sound too exciting, but it is.” Waking up every morning not by the screaching sound of a heartless alarm, but rather by the soft light of a morning sun. Completely improvising the events of another day, where nothing was scripted and therefore everything becoming a revelation. Measuring the arrival of spring not by the cruel reality of a calendar, but rather by the mesmerizing white petals of the cherry blossoms along the river. And who knew that there could be so many shades of green sorrounding our every day, adorning the complex personalities of our majestic trees. I befriended a local construction worker controlling traffic near my house who had injured his arm while lifting bags of cement, and discovered a few days later that he was feeling better and that the pain had subsided. And who knew that my local Costco store was full of endless stories from immigrants whose lives were full of hardships, joys, adventure, and love. A human keleidoscope as humbling as it was inspiring. The stories where always there, but they only became visible when I took the time to stop, and notice.

At the end of this absence, you could say that I have traveled very far, but without ever going anywhere. This self-imposed detour took me to a very familiar place that I had been neglecting for too long in the pursuit of some undefined, ephemeral existence. I went away to a world hidden in plain sight. A world where I could feel that elusive inner peace that is only possible when we embrace the unconventional as the new normal. In the process, I came to realize that some amazing things happen when we give up the race. Yes, that race that was so exciting and rewarding for so many years, but which now seems to be the stuff of a different place and a different time. So here I am, now taking the low, slow road, and loving every minute of it.

by CameraTheoretica

The Moment

One of the major topic of conversation amongst photographers is the concept of the “decisive moment.” This phrase, which is pretty much synonymous with Henri Cartier-Bresson, attempts to tell us that when it comes to photography, there is one particular moment like no other, and that this moment exists at the exclusion of others. The moment represents the perfect congruence of gesture, intention, and timing essential to a great photograph. It all adds up: light, composition, gesture, ambiance, and to some extent, meaning. The photographic community swears by it, and the Internet will never suffer from a lack of examples proving its existence. It has made many photographers happy and legions of them miserable. But like so many other things we hear, see, or read, once it is there in your mind, it is there for good. And no matter whether you believe in its existence or not, you just cannot pick up a camera without thinking about it. It lives in your photographic mind like an oversized neon sign on a dark night.

The problem with that decisive-moment notion is that it is generally for the observer to determine its existence. The photographer may think that it is missing from a photograph, but his audience may swear that they can see it. So, who is to determine its existence? It would not be too difficult to convince ourselves that such moments do not truly exists, that we just make them up as we go along. When you dwell on it a bit, it would appear that there is some truth to the skepticism, for if beauty is indeed in the eye of the beholder, then the beholder must be given some credence when they can see with their own two eyes what the photographer thought was missing from a photograph. After all, those moment, those decisive moments, are at their core an emotion, a complex, visual amalgamation of someone’s experiences and dreams.

But that is not to say that those moments are, by their very nature, the result of random processes. In fact, it could be argued that on the contrary, that those endless, little moments we sometimes capture do have a sort of structure to them. They all appear in context, or relation, to something else. Remove the context and the moment disappears. And if your photography is the kind that takes you around the world, there is no telling what that particular context that will be. It could be a wall, a chair, a view, a person, a tree, the life of the viewer at the moment, or whatever. What matters is that this so-called context will influence the interpretation of the photograph and will transport the viewer into that visual dimension that is as personal as it is situational. It is a visual and emotional symbiosis without which the viewer would be hard-pressed to find meaning in a photograph. It is the point where moment, structure, and emotions intersect in someone’s mind.

But does a photographer bear any responsibility for creating that moment? For recording what otherwise would have gone unseen and forgotten? Perhaps so, but the photographer’s capture of the moment, combined with the feelings evoked on a viewer, certainly represent visual evidence of its existence. That is why we all seem to live for those moments, for they move us by giving meaning to our lives. They make us feel. And even when we ourselves are not in a photograph, we cannot help but to personalize these scene, to place ourselves there, be it between the misery or the happiness, so that for a brief moment we can feel the rush of emotions that remind us that we are human, and that we are alive. No longer is that moment a stranger to us. It is now ours, even if we achieved it vicariously through a photograph. It has become part of our own story.