RIP photographer Michael Wolf, who’s photography of mega cities like Hong Kong and Tokyo continue to amaze.
Thanks Eileen Chengyin Chow for the beautiful Twitter thread honoring his work.
Tag: Photography
-
John Baldessari, Tips For Artists Who Want To Sell (1966 – 1968)
Glad to see that the mind’s eye remains changed.
-
Today, the mobile phone makes everyone a photographer. But how many people can create what they actually visualize in their head?
For Ansel Adams, what he saw in front of him was different than what he pictured in his mind’s eye. So he created the ‘zone system,’ allowing him to play with the aperture to achieve different hues of black and white.
Of course, he had to do all this before he even took the picture. Ansel Adams was applying filters before the Polaroid. Today, we can take any image and photoshop afterward to make it look like we want. We also have the luxury of sharing it immediately. But the abundance of photos drowns out great talent. Scarcity worked out in Adam’s favor.
Yet, Ansel Adams was excited about the future of what would become electronic photography. New mediums require new ways of thinking. But the photographic intention remains the same:
“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
Ansel Adams -
We’ve gone from the invention and proliferation of 15th century mirrors to human iPhone selfies, to the Google street view robot taking pictures of itself off mirrors.
Progress.
-
There’s a little bit of a thrill in publishing online. Thinking and writing out loud makes you vulnerable to criticism. But if you ship something new every day, you’ll get better at connecting with people and clarifying your ideas.
Sometimes it’s better to be done and then be perfect. So many people make excuses for not starting a blog or writing a book because they don’t think they’re good enough. What they’re really saying is that they don’t feel passionate enough to do the work. Get started and test your voice with a few tweets
! Why go unnoticed? Why hold back creative expression? The World Wide Web is an incredible opportunity to entertain opinions and thoughts. The same goes for publishing pictures and video; we all have cameras in our pockets that allow us to tell great stories. Remember: the best camera is the one you have with you.
Capture the world and tell us about it. Publish half-done and get feedback. Make that shitty rough draft. Keep creating until you strike a chord.
-
“Why write? To write. To make something.”
Claude SimonMost people think of writing as a creative outlet. But it’s also an instrument for coping.
According to recent studies, writing your own memoir has various psychological benefits. Whether for private eyes or for public viewing, writing extensively about traumatic events helps you break free from the cage of anxiety.
“Psychologists believe that by converting emotions and images into words, the author starts to organize and structure memories, particularly memories that may be difficult to comprehend and accept.”
Words can save your life
Making sense of the past not only gives you perspective, it also strengthens your personal operating system by refocusing attention on what matters.
Want to better control your inner-narrative? Consider funneling your thoughts from mind to paper by starting your own memoir.
-
“Life is a movie; death is a photograph.”
Susan Sontag, from her first published novel The Benefactor (1969) -
The proliferation of images undermines our ability to pay attention to any single one. So we keep skimming, scrolling, consuming more and understanding less; all the while contributing to the chaos to avoid missing out.
On top of this, all Instagram images tend to look the same. It’s easier to conform to selfies, food porn, and minimalism than it is to stand out in the shadows of weird.
Even the anti-conformist photos all look the same while the well-choreographed, awe-inspiring National Geographic pictures lose out to all the artistic sameness.
“We have come to a point in society where we are all taking too many photos and spending very little time looking at them.”
Om MalikOur eyeballs fall into inanition–too tired to give particular attention to the images that deserve a closer look. Instagram dulls the senses in exchange for the nearest click outside in the ether.
Perhaps Huxley was right: we’re so inundated with screens and media pollution that even books with all the facts in the world
start to lose their discreteness.We can forget the algorithmic filter that promises to save time by showing us the best stuff. We’re already lost at the risk of
closeupness , in desperate need to relearn how to see. -
Amid convention and rebellion, the artist vacillates from Jeckyl to Hyde.
The artist
uses cash to pay for the sex — the stuff they wish they were doing for a living. Vivian Maier was a babysitter who in her off-hours roamed the streets of Chicago with her 35mm color camera capturing beautiful everyday moments.Maier didn’t have Instagram so she kept all the film to herself, under her bed where they were discovered fifty years later.
We all have a special genius or talent hidden in the fabric of our virulent selves. Neither fame nor fortune, expression is as essential as your day job.
-
“There is a positive correlation between the fear of death and the sense of unlived life.”
“There is a positive correlation between the fear of death and the sense of unlived life,” writes Oliver Burkeman in The Antidote (Amazon).
Futuring is a tough business. We toggle between our present number of choices along with desires and goals that reinforce the prioritization of time.
Knowing that we can’t do it all, most people reach for what’s most immediately accessible and end up regretting about what could be. They stifle themselves in exchange for feeling ‘safe.’
For others, death compels action. Their gut instinct refuses to accept standing still and succumb to mediocrity. Yet, their expedition may incorrectly rest in jealousy, a fear of missing out, rather than chasing a purpose.
Faith in the unseen
Our vocation chooses us. We grade our impact by how much we cling to that sense of priority rather than chasing other people’s dreams.
In reality, there is nothing out there that will make us fulfilled forever. But the attempt to cultivate happiness by pursuing what’s meaningful remains a noble attempt to maximize our time on Earth.
-
A strange yet beautiful time-lapse tilt-shift look at Pyongyang, the capital city of North Korea. Such peculiarity can also be seen in the country’s late
20th century advertising. -
Video editor Jaume R. Lloret compiled some of the vehicles from Wes Anderson movies including The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou and Grand Budapest Hotel.
What aesthetic eye candy!
