G. Steve Journal

Pointing Away To The Moon

Photography, videography ––likely all creative pursuits that involve the use of tools –– have practitioners who's passion and reverence for those tools begins to subjugate the creative impulse, leading them to believe that what stands between them and perfection is the lack of the proper equipment.

Beginners, especially, are vulnerable to this way of thinking, often sidelining creative ideas until they are in possession of whatever item they're convinced is vital to the project.

By concentrating on the tools, the artist may miss the moment –- the very reason the tools exist.

We were reminded of this dilemma after a coming across a clip of the late actor Bruce Lee in the movie "Enter The Dragon", who counsels his young protoge:

Don’t think…. Feel!

Lee points upward:

It is like a finger pointing away to the moon. Don't concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.

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Always There

 

 The beauty was always there, but moments of true awareness were rare.

                                                                                                                      –Jane Goodall

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Not Seeing

This looking and not seeing things was a great sin, I thought, and one that was easy to fall into. It was always the beginning of something bad and I thought that we did not deserve to live in the world if we did not see it.

                                                                                                                 –– Ernest Hemingway 

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So What...

I have lived on a razor's edge.

So what if you fall off - I'd rather be doing something I really wanted to do.

I'd walk it again.

            – Georgia O'Keefe

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Pay Attention

Collectors of our landscape photographs often inquire about the switch we made to filmmaking.  It was in large part due to reaching a state of satisfaction with the portfolio of images we had amassed after two decades – the itch had been scratched.

Additionally, the chance to explore a wider palette of captured experience in filmmaking was tempting. In fact, the films of Terence Malick – especially "Days of Heaven" – had always seemed to reflect the essence of what we were trying to do with photographs.  Not surprisingly, Malick himself arrived at filmmaking when he found that studying and writing about philosophy was unfulfilling.

In a video essay about Malick's films, the narrator quotes Harvard philosopher Stanley Cavell regarding the distinction:

Film can perceive the world for us without our meddling selves getting in the way. It can train us to pay attention to it in all its sensory details… its sounds… its textures, whereas a written account can only describe, film can reproduce.

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Not Comparing

In his journal, artist Keith Haring described his compunction to compare himself and his work to other artists along with fear of the unknown that comes with following ones own path:

I guess it’s because I’m afraid. Afraid I’m wrong. And I guess I’m afraid I’m wrong, because I constantly relate myself to other people, other experiences, other ideas. I should be looking at both in perspective, not comparing. I relate my life to an idea or an example that is some entirely different life. I should be relating it to my life only in the sense that each has good and bad facets. Each is separate. The only way the other attained enough merit, making it worthy of my admiration, or long to copy it is by taking chances, taking it in its own way. It has grown with different situations and has discovered different heights of happiness and equal sorrows. If I always seek to pattern my life after another, mine is being wasted re-doing things for my own empty acceptance. But, if I live my life my way and only let the other [artists] influence me as a reference, a starting point, I can build an even higher awareness instead of staying dormant… I only wish that I could have more confidence and try to forget all my silly preconceptions, misconceptions, and just live. Just live. Just. Live. Just live till I die.

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Something Else

Narratives can make us understand.
Photographs do something else:
they haunt us.

                         - Susan Sontag

 

Nature Manifest

 

Human creativity is nature manifest in us.

                                                                                        –– Ethan Hawke

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Invocation

 

An essential portion of any artist’s labor is not creation so much as invocation.

                                                                                                                - Lewis Hyde

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Find The Picture

 

Don’t try and find a picture. Find a place you like and find the picture in that.

                                                                                                                         ––  Ivon Hitchens

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