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Post by millring on Nov 23, 2023 9:55:40 GMT -5
As I was driving the countryside on my route yesterday and getting totally caught up in the beauty, I had the thought (not for the first time) that I wish I had the freedom to just drive this countryside with a camera (and a better one than my phone) and capture all that was passing me by, all because I had a job to do and little time in which to do it. Almost immediately, though, I grasped the futility of the thought. What? Would I sit myself down somewhere and hope that the sunlight played over the landscape in the way I just caught a fleeting glimpse of from my speeding Jeep? If I had this wish of being un-tethered from the job, would I drive around (as I was) but have the freedom to stop and shoot when I did see something? What if the scene I wanted was then happening ever just behind me? ...or before I got to it? Ships passing in the night? My phone camera give me the illusion that I can capture these moments forever. And, anyway, it just makes me want to paint the landscapes I do capture -- a pursuit I've run out of time to master. Coincidentally, though, I just came across this quote -- connected to the thought of the fleeting quality of inspiration:
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Post by howard lee on Nov 23, 2023 12:20:16 GMT -5
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Post by Russell Letson on Nov 23, 2023 12:59:27 GMT -5
And, anyway, it just makes me want to paint the landscapes I do capture -- a pursuit I've run out of time to master. But at my back I always hear Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near; And yonder all before us lie Deserts of vast eternity. Andrew Marvell's speaker was trying to get laid, but that sense of a close final horizon applies more generally. Mortality sucks, aging sucks, unfulfilled ambition sucks. But whatcha gonna do? An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress. . . . That photo (which I assume was taken with your phone camera) is not exactly chopped liver. (Actually, I think lots of people quite like chopped liver. But I digress.) I suppose Ansel Adams could have done a lot with his view camera and darkroom chops, but the basics of photography--recognizing the scene's appeal, framing it, capturing it--are right there. I get the yearning to capture it in a different mode, with more craft and perhaps emotional involvement, but that moment, captured quickly with a pretty remarkable piece of technology, remains captured and sharable. That's not nothing. Back to Marvell: Let us roll all our strength and all Our sweetness up into one ball, And tear our pleasures with rough strife Through the iron gates of life: Thus, though we cannot make our sun Stand still, yet we will make him run.
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Post by epaul on Nov 23, 2023 13:15:05 GMT -5
It is when I am on the road for some purpose far from beauty that it finds me and strikes a stillness.
I have made the drive between Grand Forks and the farm ten thousand times or more. Often with eyes closed. But, sometimes, I see something that strikes me awake, some sight, some view, a house or farmstead on the horizon I feel I have never seen before...
"Honey, how long that place been there?"
(and, of course, it is always some farmstead with a house built in the early 1900's and a barn old as the hills... and I got no cover)
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Post by coachdoc on Nov 23, 2023 14:34:49 GMT -5
One of my all time favorites. Fun to play, too.
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Post by coachdoc on Nov 23, 2023 21:01:27 GMT -5
But I can’t play harmonica. And never will. My mustache gets caught in it.
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Post by Cornflake on Nov 24, 2023 8:56:19 GMT -5
I like the photo. Today's phone cameras are better than what Edward Weston had to work with. I think it was Bernard Gotfryd who said that the most important piece of photographic gear is the mind.
In my experience, the best way to spot a terrific potential photo is to drive down the interstate with no place to stop and no exits available. That's when the light and the other ingredients will coalesce into something memorable.
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Post by david on Nov 25, 2023 20:22:33 GMT -5
John, that is a wonderful picture. Consider yourself fortunate to have mastered one art form (ceramics) form and to be very good at a couple others (writing and guitar).
Russell, I am happy that you share your thoughts and eloquence with us. Simply reading your posts makes me feel intelligent.
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Post by RickW on Nov 26, 2023 0:12:50 GMT -5
So much of creativity is simply being receptive to what’s going on around you, and what’s in your mind. And we’re all different in what we see, what strikes us, and what we do with it.
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