The other night I realized I really love taking photos. This is an
unusual realization given that compared to the rest of you I am blind
since birth. I was born with a rare eye condition and so I see so
poorly that with rather thick and powerful lenses I still can only
barely read large street signs around Toronto, even the blue ones, with
ease. And yet photography truly turns me on. I can get lost in taking a
single subject into my camera for a thousand clicks and still not get
bored. The different angles, varieties of light, it all interests me.
And yet I do not care to even know what an F stop is, and I still do
not. My camera has these fancy things for ISO, F, white balance, focus,
what have you, but to me they are just like knobs on a synthesizer. I
don't really know what cut off, resonance and so forth are, but I know
what settings work in a song after decades of composing, too.
But
something magical was revealed to me just recently. I often play
soccer all around when I'm bored and I often lose practice time whenever
the urge to snap a shot fancies me. I stood by U of T's Soldiers' Tower
the other night and must have taken a hundred shots from the exact same
spot at night. I varied angles slightly and so forth and had the time
of my life all by my lonely self. Literally I felt in another world,
free from terrorism, crime, and all your human hatred. It was just me,
camera, the tower, the moon and the sky, as well as the wind. There was
no Hitler, no Osama, no America, and no oil. I was free! And perhaps
that is why I love it so much and maybe it's why I write music. It's
escapism in it's rawest form. No drugs nor alcohol needed, just love
and imagination.
In perusing my Instagram I noticed a
trend though, and it might work this way with other people and other art
forms, however I am not sure. But it does seem similar to how I do
music as well. Currently there are about thirty photos on my account.
From them I want to print five and hang on my wall how much I love
them. But to get to this selection of thirty I must have taken
thousands of shots that didn't make the cut. The Soldiers' Tower photo
that's online, I spent half an hour taking shots every few seconds, and
then almost half an hour browsing them to pick the one that suited me,
and then almost just as long playing with photo filters. All of that
work for one meager photo! And now I will spend half an hour going to
the print shop to make it real wall art. That's quite the endeavor just
for a little square piece of paper, eh?
So the entire
process I can sum up as follows. I blacklist certain angles, themes,
and subjects that I wish never to take photos of. For example, I never
shoot people who are suffering in some way. No accidents, no people
begging, no crimes, and so on. My blacklist is not written down, but
rather it's one of those social things that I chose for myself. Some
believe in open minded approach in taking in every subject, however I
have my rules. Then there are WIPs, or works in progress. These are
ideas I am developing and have taken photos for but have not yet
culminated in a shot that I am thrilled with. Consider them like
themes. Maybe one day I shoot buses. Maybe another cars. The theme
might be "human sardine cans" or "cost of urban life". Depending on the
theme the third subject might be streetcars or condos in that set. But
all those shots are part of the WIP collection and therefore have not
yet yielded a shot for my wall. Now that the blacklist excluded key
shots, and WIPs as well, I have a whole collection of shots to browse
and make selections from. These ones are called the shortlist. Better
ones I stick up on them 'grams, play with filters until I like the
result and post. I do not use Instagram as a social media but as a kind
of a Photoshop. I love its filters, I love its options and its
algorithms and it's not a complicated beast like Photoshop. Perhaps the
best analogy of the tool is basic chemical play in the dark room before
computers existed. Certain effects were possible, and Instagram has
such limitations as well. One can not easily add space ships, lens
flares, and 3D models of the Borg ship in it. Thus it is kind of a real
shot that remains with a bit of adjustments here and there. And that
is an envelope I am content with. From the photos I post on there, the
thirty currently are the shortlist. And the five that I want to print
are what I call my finals. Those are the ones I'm truly the happiest
with as a result and will hang to pat myself visually on my creative
back. Certainly at 10 cents a print the five shots will cost 50 cents
and may seem like a tiny thing to most. But to me they represent
thousands of man hours of work, thought, and imagination and will be a
constant reminder of not only how one peaceful avenue of life is worth
exploring, but of who I am compared to others. I didn't spend that time
fighting, hurting, cheating, nor anything else like so many others. In
essence, art can be seen as evidence of peace. Certainly this art
would have been easier had I not been born blind, but all in all it is
fun.
The key part of all this is that I discovered in
composing music I go through a nearly identical process with one
exception. I can not peruse all my songs at the same time as I can
photography. Music I can only listen to one song at a time and even
that only one part at any given moment. But the process still involves
blacklists, whitelists, WIPs and so forth. And while both are shareable
and monetizable, it isn't the driving factor for me. It's why I
haven't linked to my Instagram. The point is not for others to see what
I created. My photos are my inspirations and if you get anything from
what I explained it should not be to look at my photos and marvel at
their beauty or lack thereof. But rather to grasp the process and if it
suits you to use it and even adapt it. Make your own 'grams better!
Enjoy peace peacefully.
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