G. Steve Journal

Strange Mood

One of the deepest and strangest of all human moods is the mood which will suddenly strike us perhaps in a garden at night, or deep in sloping meadows, the feeling that every flower and leaf has just uttered something stupendously direct and important, and that we have by a prodigy of imbecility not heard or understood it. There is a certain poetic value, and that a genuine one, in this sense of having missed the full meaning of things. There is beauty, not only in wisdom, but in this dazed and dramatic ignorance.               

                                                                                        – G.K. Chesterton, Robert Browning, 1903

Seeing

I came across an interesting article about how technological advancements in photography are changing how reality is captured.  The author suggests that the "decisive moment" made famous by photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson will be replaced by the notion of a "constant-moment" of visual recording.  Not sure what I think of this prediction, but I did like the quote that finished the piece:

Technique is important only insofar as you must master it in order to communicate what you see... The camera for us is a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy. In the precise functioning of the mechanical object perhaps there is an unconscious compensation for the anxieties and uncertainties of daily endeavor. In any case, people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing." -Henri Cartier-Bresson

Getting Out of the Way

A recent piece in the NY TIMES featured the behind-the-scenes photography of actor Jeff Bridges on sets he's been on over the years.  The B&W panoramic images of his fellow actors are exceptional, as is his approach to the process:

The Widelux [camera] is a fickle mistress; its viewfinder isn’t accurate, and there’s no manual focus, so it has an arbitrariness to it, a capricious quality. I like that. It’s something I aspire to in all my work — a lack of preciousness that makes things more human and honest, a willingness to receive what’s there in the moment and to let go of the result. Getting out of the way seems to be one of the main tasks for me as an artist.