Constantly seeking newness

Shadows for a while – Ilford HP5+ Rodinal – 1:50 – Leica M6

The other day I posted a question on Paul Maxim’s blog: Why must someone surprise you? Today, he posted a response to that question with this post. It was a very well thought out post, worth the read. I have already posted a response to his post and I will do my best to NOT repeat it here, but instead to go into a different direction.

Monte, here’s another one of those random, pool ball shots that my brain takes. This post has been on my mind for some time. If you’ve read for any time, you know of my affinity for Tao, Zen, and now meditation. These things, together, naturally form a different way of looking at things that is, in my own words, very un-Western. I like quiet. I like sitting. I like solitude. I like exploring things again and again, digging deeper and deeper, trying to get a feeling for “it”. At this time, I don’t feel the smallest need to try new things, photographically. I’m not against it, but I just don’t feel compelled the way that I used to.

I’ve been reading John Daido Loori’s book, The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating your Artistic Life. There is much in the book but it needs to be read slowly, deliberately. But, I shall not delve into “art”, but just the concept of authenticity and what it means to me. However, the one thing that I notice is that his work is not ground breaking, new, or shocking. It is, in a word, simple and, more important to me, authentic.

I don’t mind hopping from subject to subject, trees, sky, water, sand, people, back to sand, whatever. All that I’m doing is exploring. From time to time, when I have a group of photos up, without really looking, I’ll see some themes and wonder about them for a time. I, for example, wondered why, oh why, do I have so many images of small people under big skies? I finally figured it out last week, I think. It’s rather personal, so I’ll keep that one to myself, but the one thing that I can see is that my photographs are authentic. They are truthful. They are mine. When I go out, I usually don’t have anything in mind, other than to shoot.

Lately, the fascination has been shadows and I think that I might know what that’s about, but perhaps not.

Authenticity, I think, is what I’m shooting for, if there is any goal whatsoever. To be truthful, not impressive, nor original. In my travels through the software world over the past 25 years, there’s always some new technology, or at first blush, it appears to be new, but in reality, it is the same old thing with a different coat of paint. It appears to be a different way to solve the same problems. Ultimately, all of software, it seems comes down to CRUD (Create, Retrieve, Update, Delete), there are just different ways of doing it. Nothing original, but many different, authentic ways to provide a solution.

This is certainly NOT a post damning new things. It is a post that is in favor of being willing to go against the grain of ‘newness’ in favor of exploration of what may already be known … partially. To not play to the crowd. Though, in truth, I am affected by the crowd at times by the pictures that I select to go with the post, but I’m working on that.

So, what about challenging yourself, as the mantra goes? Challenging yourself doesn’t necessarily mean moving on to something different, new, unfamiliar. It could mean getting to know, even better, that which is already known. It could mean having the courage to explore deeper.

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