November
It has been on the back of my mind pretty much every day. As I kept shooting on my artistic project, documentary coverage of the street artists, and even throwing in some commercial work that found its way to my in front of my lens, I kept thinking, geez, it’s been ages since I updated my blog!
So sorry, if you kept checking back on me to see what’s going on. I have been well. VERY well, in fact. As I said, I have been busy photographing, practically every single day of the short month of November. I made a few new friends who have become important in my life, so I no longer sit at home in front of my 4-year-old Macbook browsing the net and pondering on my reflection journey, here on this blog. But here I am, back again! If you are following my Facebook Page, you know that I have been constantly publishing my work from the day’s shoot.
Social is easy and instantaneous. That is good and bad. Just like everyone else I have the desire to share the beautiful things in my life, want to hear everyone go ‘wow!’. But as a photographer, and as an artist, it may not necessarily be a good thing. Back to school, we must have learned that step of reflection. (not the reflection project that I’ve been doing for the last couple of years :p but) the time to sit, let them be, detach yourself from the subject matter, even your own feelings, and let the images be. Are they good images? Do they communicate? Do they work? What will the OTHERS feel? If there is unanswered on any of those questions, or ‘no, it is not quite’, then it shouldn’t be out there, not with my name on it. It just brings down the standard of my work as known to people. I am not perfect, far from it, and I shoot fair amount of wasted frames. I still make mistake of pressing the shutter when I was not sure I go the image ready in my frame of view. And those are the ones that will never see the light of the day. But even if they are good, again, they need to be good TO YOU, not to me. Social is not allowing me the time. At least, for me, I am caught in that situation similar to the caffeine addiction where I just need to keep going.
So hopefully this writing the blog ‘thing’ is going to help me get back down to the ground. No more walking on the moon, no more quite and instant gratification. Look at the long game.
Blogging and sharing high quality images on the internet has its own down side too. Recently one of the art community blog that I am following covered a photographer who shoot reflection in the water, putting it upside down. I know I cannot chase originality in the world of photography where everything has been attempted before already in this new and old medium. But I still feel like I’ve been cheated. The good side, though, is that this photographer is all technique, or just simple physics, really, and totally lacks the conceptual abstract value in his works. So, stay tuned. I aim at pulling together my reflection series 2010-2013 soon. Hopefully I’ll find some small gallery, even at a student group exhibition, where I can put my images to the proper test.
Well, enough reading for now. I’ll start playing catch up now. Lots of images from November coming soon, to this blog. Thank you, as always, for your support. I love receiving the notification email from WordPress saying that somebody started to follow my blog, or liked a particular post. That makes me realise what is working and what is not, without being subjective about it. Some of them are surprising, others reassuring, or disappointing. But I really like to hear your thoughts. So please DO drop me a comment, email, or just Like when you feel, ‘hey, this is all right. I can look at it over my coffee’.
Thanks.
