On photography

I discovered this cool thing called Blurb that allows you to turn your pictures into an actual physical book. Initially I just figured to give it a try and imported a couple of sets from my flickr account but that thing started to look positively nice so I went through some trouble by adding some poetry I found matching (thanks, google) and doing some editing on the pictures. The whole thing turned out to be something I really liked and so I showed it to my wife. Well, she found the whole thing artistically nice but fairly depressing. Which lead to a discussion on what messages do my images convey.

Well, screw that. Why do my messages have to convey any message? One could argue that even standing in a room facing the wall is a form a communication and thus a set of nicely printed images even more so. The truth is, I do not care. You can take a look my pictures any way you like. Whatever emotion you get is yours, not mine.

I like taking pictures, and I like the process of editing them. I also like to toy around with gadgets and I take huge joy in top-grade engineering that Canon pro lenses are a prime example of. I like wandering around in the nature and I like the silence and the knowledge that there is a hidden world I at least know to exist as opposed to most of other people. The camera is a protective device that distances me from situations I am not comfortable with (like parties and social events). The camera makes me different, allows me special treatment. This is why I take pictures. The picture itself is not primary and the emotion it conveys is even less important.

The question then remains, why do I post them on flickr or try to put them to a book? It comes down to my vanity. I like when people look at what I have done and find it beautiful. Pure vanity, a yearning for somebody to come and pat my back saying "good job" or "good eye you have there".

Of course there is no way to avoid one's feelings and emotions pouring into art they create. It is true that some of my best images are black and white, contain few people and tend to be on the dark on the mood scale. Well, I guess this is what I am. Slightly depressed (and depressing), a bit superficial and pretty ignorant of everything one supposedly has to know about Art like the names of famous photographers, the colour theory and the one of light and so on.