Review: Atta Kim ON AIR

Atta Kim - ON AIR

The Buddhist understanding of the world is that it is not a place full of things, a place of people and animals, cars and buildings, continents and oceans.  It is rather a world of processes, of coming into and out of being, arising and passing, waves and vibration.  It is a world of cause and effect, each effect becoming a cause, each cause an effect, the whole of the world interconnected and interpenetrated.

We have a similar understanding of the world from modern science, but the Buddha first taught these ideas 2500 years ago.  His insights came from meditation.  What he understood is that we are fooled into believing things are real because we process sensory data at a far slower rate than it occurs.  So it appears to us that something remains stable and fixed when it is actually in rapid flux.  A classic example within the tradition is the candle flame.  In the morning it appears the same as the one that was first lit the previous evening.  In reality, that flame is not the same as it was an hour ago, a minute ago, even one second ago.  The flame arises and passes away far faster than the eye can see.

And so it is the same for what we call human beings.  We image ourselves as somehow solid and fixed, but we are changing not just day to day, but not just hour to hour or minute to minute, but micro-moment to micro-moment.    

Attention to detail

Inspired by Lucy and Jonesy's comments, I purchased a copy of Lightroom and have begun working through Adobe's training guide.  Within the first hour I have been amazed and delighted to discover the many wonderful ways this software enables photographers.  What has prompted me to make this post is a small part of one exercise that impressed me with it's attention to detail, a thing so small I wouldn't have noticed it if the guide writer hadn't drawn my attention to it.

Here are before and after photos.  Can you see what has been changed?  Click on the photos to see enlarged views.  

Review: Clarke, The Photograph, Chapter 3: Photography and the Nineteenth Century, 1997

Writing over Romania

I first read this chapter about a month ago but never got around to writing it up after being sidetracked by Peter Henry Emerson.   I'll write more on him later, but for now I will review Clarke's presentation of the nineteenth century, a period when some of the issues photographers and critics contend with today were first set out.

Theoretically, photography was conceived as an extension of painting and therefore subject to the same conventions in subject and presentation.  This was exemplified by composite photographers such as Robinson and Rejlander, whose classical subject matter sought to convey ethical or moral intent, to "instruct, purify and enoble."1   At the same time, photographers were enthralled with science and engineering.  The world seemed a place where discovering the laws of nature made possible rapid social and economic development, where the real could be uncovered.  And what better example of capturing reality than the new invention of the camera, a machine capable of reproducing the seen, and reproducing it in detail never before possible with the brush.  

Exercise 10: Positioning the Horizon

As Freeman remarks in the course notes, every photo has an implied division.  One of the most basic divisions is along the horizontal plane – where to place the horizon.  This exercise asks the student to take a series of photos of a landscape with an uncluttered horizon in order to consider how horizon affects framing.

Exercise 9: Balance

This is an analytical exercise based on previously taken photographs.  We are to investigate how the elements of the photo achieve balance.  

The bane of copyright

Over at the OCA Photography forum students and tutors are discussing the legality of posting copyright photos to student blogs such as this.  At least one participant has staked out a rather extreme position, that any such work may not be posted without permission.  Intuitively this seems ridiculous.  The intent of the bloggers is not to infringe, but to illustrate and document the process of learning.  The audience for the blogs seem to be limited to a handful of classmates, perhaps a family member or two, and the tutor.