An artists view of what you want out of life

We all need to know what we want before we can get it. Its that simple. Once we know what we want, we usually get it. Why? Because we find a way. That's the easy part. The hard part is figuring out what you want.

Here's what I want.

1) Life as an adventure. I don't want a 9-5, I don't want the grind, I don't want to live exactly the same life as everyone else. Go read the wiki's of pretty much anyone you admire. Odd's are, you admire them because they lived a pretty incredible life. Ernest Hemingway saw and experienced more before 25 than most people will in their life. People read his work and a little bit of him comes through in it. And it's the charisma and power built up through living the kind of life that most of us fantasize about. Turbulent, dramatic, fantastic. It's his life that makes his works stand the test of time. That's that kind of life I want. I want my future biographer to have so much to write about that he can't put it all on the page.

2) Making my living with something that's mine. My art, my buisness, what I create: that's mine. Thats what I want to use to build my life on, so that even when it's hard I can say "at least I did it my own way." This isn't to say that I can't work with others, and when need be I can't adapt my vision to co-exist with the vison of others. But at least it's my vision in the first place. It's just because someone said "jump" and I said, "how high?"

3) A life thats free. I want to live everywhere, I want to see everything, I want to meet everyone. I want to choose what part of the world works for me, what religion suits me, what language sounds the most like me when I speak it. I don't want to end up stuck somewhere that I hate because it's "secure", or locked into an idea that my culture finds acceptable when it doesn't work for me.

4) I want to do it while I'm young. It's a fact that your brain hardens as you get older. It loses it's plasticity and ability to adapt new ways of thinking and assimilate new experiences. Why do you think children can learn Mandarin as a second language easily, and 30 year olds are going to have a much harder time? I don't want to wait until I'm retired to go and visit Asia, study buddhism, learn a language or create my art. I want to do that when I'm young, keep my mind open and expose myself to as much as possible. That way, when I'm old I have something to teach that's my authentic way of seeing the world instead of just what was pushed on me.

5) I want to live a life free of useless hate. I want to give something back. I don't want to judge anything or anyone. Don't bother me with your rants about how you hate your government, organized religion, the school system, commercialism, whatever. If you don't like it, opt out. I'm from Canada, everyone I know has incredible freedom compared to 99% for the world. If you don't like something, don't participate. I'm never going to be the guy that carries an axe against some nameless "other" that is grinding down my freedom. Every thought you have is precious. Think about how much time you spend thinking about how how terrible things are. Then wonder how it's affecting your life. Try this, stop thinking about the bad and instead find the good and then tell me how much happier you are. Honestly, try it. That's the way I want to live my life.

Sure, I have smaller goals, but these are probably the biggest things I want out of life. Everything else is just a building block. I think my work shows these things, I think my art shows these things. I hope it does.

Taking pictures of where we live

Taking pictures of where we live, where we are going to live, where we want to live, or where we have once lived is always a challenge. Of all kinds of photography, I find taking pictures of buildings some of the most interesting, some of the post stimulating and some of the most frustrating.

Before I start talking about the artsy side of things, I want to talk about the real challenges that present themselves from a technical side of things. Photography is an art yes, but first and foremost the capturing of light within a box is a science. It's a hard science and it presents its own rules that govern how and what you can do. These rules can be bent but, like all the laws of our world, can not be broken. Storytelling follows no rules. It is creation pure and simple, with all the possibility of an empty page. Everything is possible Then you try to tell a story with your camera and you find that everything is not possible. Some laws of nature stand in your way, between you and what you want to say. It's enough to drive you up the wall sometimes.

So you want to capture a building with your camera, and you want it to look true an accurate to the way you see it. The ultimate goal of all photography (note here that the emphasis should be on the way YOU see it). You line up your camera, decide how you want to frame the building and then press the shutter. Then you look at the image later and...it doesn't look the same. Why?

Lets look at an example:


A fort in Thailand. Not a great shot, but an experiment for me. But more than anything its an inaccurate shot. Why? Take a look again. Notice it's leaning backward. All the lines are converging toward the top. Most buildings don't look like that unless they are falling over. It's also leaning off to the side. Its completely warped.

God damn you laws of physics.

This building was a lot taller than I am. I had to tilt my camera up to capture it all. And because of this, all the lines lean backward. The only way to stop this is by keeping the camera perfectly level with the building. And seeing as this building towered over me, that's not possible. I'd have to back up basically across the street and completely screw up the composition I had in mind. It's an effect called keystoning,

You see what I mean? I want to tell a story, and the world isn't letting me. Frustrating.

There are solutions. One is buying an extremely expensive and rare lens that allows you to correct your perspective. One is to buy a vintage 4x5 or "view" camera, that allows you to swing the lens to the position you want it in. These cameras present their own can of worms. Suffice it to say, I don't have one and I probably won't be getting one soon. Right now, I can't afford a $2,500 tilt/shift lens.

So what is a young photographer to do? I just want to tell the story of a building?

Well, there are a few more options. One is to correct it in photoshop. I spent at least an hour correcting the image at the top of this post. I hated doing it and it felt the whole time like I was bastardizing something natural. But I just can't have those leaning lines. Sometimes, you just have to do things that you don't like. Entering in numbers and pulling sliders until it looks just right. That's not creation. That's math. I got into photography because I don't like math and I wanted to avoid it. Go figure, right?

The other option is to adjust your vision. By this I don't mean go and buy some new glasses or get lasers shot into your eyeballs. By this I mean you have to change how you see the building and what story we want to tell. It's now time to put on your rose colored glasses and look at the artsy side of things. Are you ready? All wearing your turtlenecks and berets? Okay, lets move on.

A building is at heart the story of the people that live there or lived there. Who were they, what did they do, what sort of home did they create? I don't believe in ghosts, but I can see how people believe in them. Places have memories and places are windows into the past. I dare you to look at Stonehenge or Angkor Wat and not think of all the things that have gone on there and all the power that vibrates through them. There are thousands of years of history contained in their walls, and as you walk through them you feel it all around you. There are ghosts there, oh yes. You can almost hear their voices. What are they trying to tell you?

So line up your camera across the street and press the button. The lines lean back and the building looks ugly, inaccurate. You want to tell the story of all that history and all that power but all you get is something far from what you intended. You aren't telling the story that the place has told to you.

So find another way. That way might be a tilt/shift lens, it might be a view camera and it might be photoshop. It might also being letting the voices of the place guide you and show you a way of photographing the building that you didn't think of originally. It might be a rune on a wall or a staircase descending into the darkness. It might not even look like the building at all. Maybe it's something that was left there, like a moldy teddy bear that I once found in the basement of a long abandoned house back when I was into sneaking into old basements of abandoned places. If that doesn't tell the story of the building more than a keystoning shot of the outside, I'm crazy.

Here's what I'm trying to say. Taking pictures of where we live, like all art and like life in general, is all about finding the details that describe the whole. It's about finding the proper tool for the job and the ability to see the same thing in a different way. More than anything, it's about being willing to be humble and guided by the place you are at. That's why I love taking photos of buildings. It teaches me about the building, about the people that lived there, and about myself.

Be well.