Blue-Dotted Tap

Sometimes we pass an object too many times before it attracts our attention.

Ordinary objects do not in themselves have the "mouth" to shout and tout themselves to us. But they do speak in their own ways and frequencies. So, it's us who have to adjust our "ears" to their language and frequencies.

This kind of fine-tuning is not a one shot thing. It's a process. It's continuous. It never does take place automatically. There has to be a deliberate attempt to make our "ears" capable of catching their whispers, their voices, however muted they are.

I know it's strange to talk about photography in auditory terms. But change the word "mouth" with light or sight, and "ears" with eyes or vision, then you have all you need to do with image-making.

Hodge-podge

You might want to smirk (smugly smile) at this photo: a color snapshot of a mixture of things that seems unrelated except for the fact that they are up in the sky, billboards of some sort, and a jumble of cables and poles.

Yes, it's obviously not that kind of photos that you'd see in an art gallery (at least not one that I've ever seen) or one that has won a photo contest; it's not even a photo of human interests or of a beautiful scene that's so pleasant to look at in an instant. But I like it, if only for the sheer joy it gave me in making it.

It was a spontaneous flow that moves from they eye to my heart and senses and fingers and that split-second time that it took to freeze it in this frame. It probably feels like Cartier-Bresson's decisive moment, only that it is not about an unfolding event whose minutiae elements of motion are so crucial to follow, of which only one is the maker of the decision of whether it is a successful or fail picture (hence the decisive moment). It's just IT, and I like it.

The unrully lines, the rigid geometry of the rectangles and squares, the colors ... Without realizing it in the first place, I might have sensed a harmony in this seemingly hodgy-podgy scene. I was walking, pointing my camera at some other things on the street when I looked up and spontaneously moved my arms and finger to freeze what I saw, forgetting the other things I was so intent on finding and capturing just seconds before.