Beginners tactile mind

At times, I feel creatively confined in several ways, both externally (think material properties, cost, lack of skills) and internally (self-doubt, anxieties and other foes of creativity). One of the external confines has to do with materials at my disposal. with my photographer's hat on, I have explored the printing pictures on materials other than photographic paper: rice paper, aluminum foil, egg shell for transferring the picture on other surfaces. All those adventures satisfied for a while. But for the most part, the pictures remain 2D, materials remain flat.
And I find myself digressing into dark avenues of other art forms, exploring other materials, expanding the tactile experience or those. No shortage of the dark avenues there is. when itched for new tactile experience, I work with metal, wood, pearls -  end-result being jewelry, for example. It is an immense pleasure to take a piece of metal, touch it with a hammer, or bend it with awareness of the resistance, bouncing back, and yielding to the external force. How does the finish of the silver change the feeling we experience by looking or touching. And how scratch-resistant a perl really is? how do materials combine together? the tactile meditation.

Idle

I find myself depleted at times - have nothing to say, nothing to share - blank. And what is one to do then? Being the lucky duck myself, I do not need to create to have bread on the table. I can simply do nothing, get myself into a different type of creativity or medium (think light fixture design vs. photography), fool around without expectation of a product. But what are so called "professionals", or the Mass Art college students, to do? Variate on the same theme? Get high to push the creativity? Convince the customer that the NOTHING you just made up is the most amazing thing since the sliced bread?
I am the lucky duck.
But the question for the next post remains: why do we get depleted at times (or always). Does it have to be this way? the only person I know to be daily-prolific is Samuel Bak

Nostalgia ?

From the "beauty of dying" series

My modern wedding looking old. But why?

Was selling a picture of sunflower the other day. When asked to select between a canvas print with somewhat faded colors and the sharper,  more vivid archival digital print, he opted for the older look and feel...predictable response.
It keeps bugging me - why people insist that canvas prints are "better" than more define, sharper, more expressive prints on good paper? The answer is usually: "because it looks and feels like painting". And what is so amazing about that, I never understood. Photograph is not the painting, and looking back with the sigh at old painting is not my idea of progress or creativity. Why look back, when so many amazing options for expression and creating new types of art are opening up for photographers.

Post Partum

Flew to Chicago and back  for the opening of my exhibit "For the love of dance". Total success. met many artsy interesting wonderful new people; new collaboration ideas came about; and yet the moment feels utterly empty and devoid of meaning.  I am told this is normal in the moments where the significant effort has materialized and escaped your inside. It has a life of its own now. Perhaps not unlike  when children leave the nest. I trust this to be true, as it is my experience.

Weddings, and the self esteem

Stepped into the role of wedding videographer few times this summer. Amazing learning experience. Getting out of my comfort zone (I am only learning the differences between photography and videography) - that is obvious. What was not obvious was the change in my status. During my regular 8-10 hour job I enjoy an environment of mutual respect. But wedding videographer and other support staff have a different status, or so people would treat you at times. In one of the weddings nobody bothered to give food for myself and a photographer, although we followed the couple and their entourage for 12 hours non stop. Did not bother to seat us at the table - any table. What an awakening experience in humility.
 I also designed a way for myself to judge people - I will judge them by the way they treat the ones below them, on whom they have authority (I am not the first one to make this call - but speaking now from the personal experience).
"Nothing Ever becomes real till it is experienced - even a proverb is no proverb to you until your life has illustrated it." - John Keats

Libelous, defamatory, sexually explicit

The person in the picture above uploads the image be used on her credit card. Below is the response she gets from the credit card company... 
 - any thoughts?

Does Randomness Mean Art ?

I  have a friend who's film photography is very different from mine. He prefers old funky film cameras that randomly warp and scratch the film - randomness and accidents make some times for a very peculiar pictures. Just as dolphins given a brush can produce blobs of paint on the canvas (example from my home country) called abstract art, or a child splashing the bucket of paint on a paper. or random pictures we snap in thousands and then select few that look interesting. Is this art (my friend doesn't claim that, this is just me thinking)? Is randomness equal art?
Here is what I think. Art is a creation by the artist. An abstract or random-looking "art" can be a real art if it a result of conscious or even subconscious creation process, thought, dream, nightmare, act of self expression. But the random scratches produced by the dying film camera to me is still a random event, or at best art produced by the camera, not by the photographer. And that is my justification for using cameras where I can create by having a control over the outcome of the exposing the film.
But randomness does at times produce sensory products that have meaning to us - beautiful shapes of clouds, complimentary colors of flowers etc. As long as you do not believe in the conscious creation of art by the universe, I think it is you creating the meaning, therefore creating the art out of randomness.
As fas as dolphins go - it all depends whether you believe in their conscious or subconscious mind being involved in the creation of the "painting". I tend to believe it

work in progress

   Small and big within us. Fear of the future, nostalgia of the past and attempts to live in the moment. Spontaneous and planning ahead. Passionate and stable, reliable. How to make peace with all those things within us? They are all there, denied or brought to the surface as our subconscious leads our lives, while we strive to become free. Just starting to realize how high the burden of being free is. 

    I talked to my teacher recently, and attempted to have our usual "deep" conversation, just to find out the teacher is not willing to do it anymore, as it is too devastating and antidepressants are needed then. The teacher chose anesthetized acceptable existence, not daring to call it living (I asked). 

   I have a gravely difficult time with my own increasing inner freedom, and would stop searching, if I could. I would stop creating, if I could.

Artistic Flow

Went to India, and came back to Boston, sort of. Heard and desperately hoped that meditation centers (they are known as Ashrams in India) can be a powerful catalysts of personal transformation. I am ready, I am open to it. And indeed have the most comfortable, loving, peaceful time with myself ever. Total piece and total love - impossible to put into words, one can only experience that.

While there, have no interest in pulling out my Nikon. It is all about being in the moment, experiencing, living in totality. But even when still in India I start wondering how this bliss and love will change the way I photograph, how I see.
   Back to Boston now. At first, nothing much is happening, except that I do no longer accept average anything, cliches make me nauseous. The question is then - can I take non-nauseous pictures?
   I invite a woman that has no interest in results (in pictures that is, or at least never asks me for them), but only in the experience, and so do I this time. Peaceful time, fully in the moment, trust, comfort. And after a while we together make pictures that I Love, See, Feel, before they even come out on the LCD. The flow is beautiful, I smile, I take more pictures, we sit down and talk, enjoy each others company totally.
   Are those better pictures by somebody else's judgment? I do not know, and it is not important - I have so much joy, love looking back at the pictures. I love it all, and commit to making my photography experience a joyful one, or not do it at all

Selling my artwork

I am fortunate enough not to need the money that selling my Fine Art pictures brings. But yet, selling my photographs creates immense inner excitement. I have lately started pondering on the sources of the satisfaction, peeling the layers of the feeling that is created by giving the artwork to somebody else.
a) it is a connection, admittance that the same piece of art appeals to both of us, maybe not for the same reasons, bu tit is a connection to another person that is being built, with the possibility for expansion.
b) Bang for the buck. I already created it, enjoyed it, stared at it. Now somebody else values it enough to pay for it, and by extension is enjoying it too, at no extra cost to the universe - the art work is already there, but more people now enjoy it.
c) validation and encouragement to continue doing what I do, and hope that there are people out there that care to share the joy with me.
d) Money. I think money received for the photographs does couple of things for me: clears my guilt for spending money on photography, and also ensures that person getting the artwork actually wants it, values it.

- It all goes back to connection to things and people outside of me, that is why I started taking pictures in the first place