Peanut World: Photo Hunting Reconsidered

If you are not a full time photographer, chances are that there are times when you just feel that you don't have the time to really go out and hunt for and make photographs. But think again. Photographs are everywhere for you to pick up at will. All you need to do is change your paradigm about a photograph and the way you think about it.

All things can be photographed. Good or bad is the next question. But good or bad are also categorical. There are general criteria for good photographs (although many would not care to think about the bad ones). And even then, these filters don't apply across the board. What's good in one may not be that good in another. Three things, I think, play a very significant role: genre, taste, and cultural setting.

I'll safe the lengthy discussion of those somewhat more complicated arguments for later time. For now, let's get back to the basic premise: anything can be photographed. And that anything is anywhere as long as there is light, for photography is impossible without light. And as I said earlier, all you need to do is change your attitude. Once that happens, you can start exploring - using whatever you have and know about photograph-making.

Snapshooting may be the first step. Let it go. Release your creative energy. Kick out all inhibitions about going happy and shooting at will. Photography is cheap now that the digital technology has made it possible to take and discard photographs without much financial consequences. Once you get heated up and the creative energy is overflowing, start paying attention to details, elements, light, and what's possible under the circumstances. That - in my experience - is when satisfying photographs (I'm not talking about good here) begin to come your way.

All those "procedures" can take place anywhere and anytime. The "Peanut World" above was made at the peak of boredome at the workplace. It was a short round of snapshooting before I began to focus and "saw" and "picked" satisfying photographs.

©Eki Akhwan 2009
PS. I did nothing to edit the photograph, except turning it into black and white and resizing it. The 16:9 ratio format is camera-original.

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.

101 - Path of Interests

Election # 02

Polling station witnesses at the recent presidential election.

Election # 01

Photographic Representation and Interpretation

Contrary to the commonly-held popular belief (or common sense, if you like), a photograph is NOT a representation of objects or scenes, no matter how faithful the images on it may seem. It is an interpretation (or a set of interpretations) of objects and scenes.



The process of interpretation in the production of a photograph is complex and involves different phases that begin even long before a photographer pushes his camera button.

First, let's not forget that a photographer is never born in a cultural vacuum. That is to say that he/she has undergone a long process of cultural programming before he/she even knows how to take a picture. This so called cultural programming includes - but not limited to - the way he/she sees, orders or maps, and values things in his/her mind. Seen in this perspective, a photographic composition is thus never just a mechanical question of formulaic exactness. A lot of subtle and soft-programmed elements are involved and can be traced back in it.



Second, aside from the soft or cultural proramming, a photographer also operates on the knowledge-based level of consciousness when making a photograph. This includes the use of his/her overt and mechanical knowledge of composition, of light, of geometric elements, of subject choice, et cetera that are important in making a photograph.

Like any empirical knowledge, photograph-making know-how may be learned and copied across cultural milieux and as such may - on the surface at least - look neutral, that is regardless of who the person behind the camera is, the "mechanical traces" (that denote knowledge of compositional formulae, etc.) are there and may be universally used to judge and determine the goodness (i.e. qualitative values) of a photograph. But this neutral or neutralizing element never operates alone and out of contexts. The soft and cultural traces will always be imbued and embedded there. It is at this point, I think, that the aesthetic quality of a photograph are often disputed. What looks good to one may not be pleasing to another because different beholders have different sets of expectations.

Of course, we must also be cautious about making straight and rigid claims when it comes to the effect of soft or cultural programming on the production of a photograph. Although more difficult than that of overt knowlege, soft or cultural programming can also be acquired or instilled. Experiences with different and diverse cultural milieux are an important factor that can make one fluently conversant in different cultures and feel equally comfortable with expressing and appreciating different styles of aesthetic expressions.

Written by
Eki Qushay Akhwan
5 August, 2009

Note:
Representation here is defined as "something that stands in for something else"; whereas interpretation is "an attempt or set of attempts to communicate or make sense of things (ideas, objects, scenes, etc.).