Explore!

Here is what a dictionary says about 'explore':
(1) to investigate, study, or analyze;
(2) to travel over (new territory) for adventure or discovery;
(3) to examine especially for diagnostic purposes.

And when I said that this blog was going to explore and understand photography, those definitions were what I had in mind. I wanted to investigate it, study it, analyze it, and examine it. But more than that, I wanted to travel and discover the new photographic territories and have an adventure in and with it.

Photo Exploration # 35: Space Within Space # 2

I believe that the more elevated goal of photography is and should be to discover, reveal, and see what the ordinary eyes and mind-eye miss.

In photography, recording and reproducing images are not enough simply because such things can easily fall within the realm of what I call "the mechanical optic" or the mechanical vision".

Discovering, revealing, and seeing what the ordinary eyes and mind-eye miss require more than just glancing or moving your vision superficially across fields and subjects; more than that, you need to penetrate into the very soul that moves your awareness and sense of geometric interplay that provides meanings and dynamic representations of experiential realities.

Such a penetration cannot be achieved mechanically - either by the gears you control or by rigid and schematic attitudes and approaches towards the fields and subjects. Rather, it should and can only be achieved by opening yourself widely to any possibilities and embracing them like you would when you hear a moving set of musical tunes that move you to spontaneously dance without questioning what, why, and how such things could transpire.

Ultimate enjoyment of revealing, discovering, and seeing the unseen comes from within with the externalities functioning only as a trigger that invites you to move in and be involved and emerged in the promising visual experiences that are presenting themselves at the right time and space.

Eki Qushay Akhwan
09 June, 2009

Photo Exploration # 34: Space Within Space

Space, they say, does not have the boundaries; it's three-dimensional, and the very thing that makes it possible for objects and events to exist. Can that thing we see in the mirror be considered space?

If space is boundless, then it must be. But is the space within the mirror three-dimensional? Is it possible for objects and events to exist - to take place - within it?

Then, there is of course the question of the photograph itself. Is it space? If we stick to the physicist's definition of linear space, it can't be. It has boundaries, the frames. And it's only two-dimensional. However, the photographic "space" does make objects and events exist or can be created to exist.

Let's also consider space's fourth dimension that forms a continuum with time and hence is called spacetime. Now you have the very thing - contentious as it might be - that defines our perception of the universe.

Welcome to space within space.

Shadow #004

This is just a snapshot from around my office on a sunny late afternoon and a Shadow Shot Sunday for everybody to enjoy.

Shadow #003

I have posted two photographs on this blog exploring the shadows before: here and here. This third post of shadow exploration is my first participation in the Shadow Shot Sunday (SSS) meme. To see other participants' photos exploring the beauty of shadows, please follow the link.

Photographing at Festivals: Faces in The Crowd

If you enjoy street and action photography, festivals are the place to go. Festivals offer actions and colors in a single place that only a few other scenes can match.

However, a festival is not only a place where you can capture staged actions; it's also an excellent venue for candid people photography. This is what I usually do when I can't get a perfect spot to capture the actions: I turn my camera to the spectators. They can provide pictures as lively and fascinating as those of the event itself.

What do you need to do to get good candid photographs of people at festivals?

Scan the crowd often and look out for interesting faces and expressions. People cheering and laughing on a performance, for example, can make marvelous subjects for candid photography. Sometimes, when you get lucky, you can also find a rare candid moment of people doing things that is otherwise hard to get anywhere else. Just a couple of weeks ago while I was photo-hunting at a festival, I spotted a child playfully running and playing among the crowd while his mom was chasing after him. The scene was very expressive and was a perfect candid photo op of people.

There are basically two approaches you can take about capturing faces in the crowd. First, you can use a telephoto lens. This kind of lens is very useful especially when your position is at a distance away from the scene you want to photograph. The shallow depth of field and the narrow view of a telephoto lens enable you to isolate the subject and throw the background details out of focus. The characteristics of telephoto lens, which as you know tend to compress perspective, may also come in handy especially when you want to capture the different facial expressions in the crowd.

If you only have a standard or wide angle lens, or if you happen to be in the middle of the crowd, take advantage of your position by looking for interesting subjects near you. Unlike the first approach with the telephoto lens where you can observe your subjects from a "safe" distance and somewhat take your time in choosing and aiming at your subject, the use of standard or wide angle lens requires that you aim and focus swiftly, so that you don't lose the candid moment in front of you. (Remember, the subject's awareness of the presence of your camera can change the scene from candid to posed, which of course will make your photograph less interesting.)

Text and photos by Eki Qushay Akhwan.

Photo Exploration # 31: Steely Cold

As cold as steel?

Photo Exploration # 29: Homo Urbanicus (The Urbanites) 02

Photo Exploration # 28: Homo Urbanicus 01

What is homo urbanicus?

Homo urbanicus is a type of human species (homo sapiens) who live in a special kind of environment of dense human-made structures commonly called the city.

In many ways homo urbanicus are not very much different from homo sapiens, but they do have their own unique traits. They, for example, are so used to being encased (enclosed?) in structural limitations that they see these structures as being a normal part of their existence. In fact, they love these structures so much that they think they can't live without them: They homes are typically small, cramped structures where they put a tube window called television to help them see the "real" wild world. When they are not working, they can sit for hours in front of this tube marvelling at the outside world. Most of their jobs, by the way, are conducted in walled structures called "office" - a place where they spend more than half of their lifetimes to earn their lives/living/livelihood. When they get bored with home and office work, they "go out". But their outings are not really outings. They usually go into another kind of walled structures called "malls," "movie theaters" or any other similar structures where they can get entertained.

Well, this short prose may not be about photography per se, but at least it's an attempt to verbalize the experience of the picture.

^_^

Text and picture by Eki Qushay Akhwan

Photo Exploration # 27: Self Portrait

In the world of art, self portrait is often defined as an attempt by an artist to depict oneself in his/her own work of art. This depiction can be an exploration of the artist's own pysche or just a self modeling.

Many artists of different media have done one kind of self portrait or another. Although the making of self portrait is not new (ancient Egyptian of the 14th century BC are known to have practiced this), the real self portrait in the sense of identifiable self-portrait "that is a separate painting,[and] not an incidental part of a larger work" is often considered by many not to begin until the fifteenth century with the work of Jean Fouquet(Self Portrait, c. 1450).

Photo Exploration # 26: Hong Kong Airport Roof Structure

I took this photo when we had a stop over in Hongkong on our recent trip to the United States. There are two things that fascinated me about this airport: The roof structure and its optimal use of natural lighting.

As I said before, I somehow have a special affinity to geometry. Subjects with geometrical shapes always fascinate me.

Photo Exploration # 24: I still have yet to understand

What's the limit of an exploration?

I'd say, it's understanding. For as long as we have not reached a desirable and satisfactory understanding of what we set out to explore in the first place and of the answers found that have since generated more questions, that exploration shall not come to an end. Exploration in this sense, therefore, is the essence of our life's journey on its own. It is a never-ending quest to understand, to quench the thirst we were born with.

Our exploration - our life's journey - may consist of smaller, more manageable sub-explorations. Together, they form a stream - a huge stream - of life energy that keeps us moving, living. When that stream stops flowing, that is to say when our quests for answers have stopped, then that's when life ends.

This photo is part of that smaller sub-exploration of mine of the wonder of the visual world; how I come to like what I see, what moves me to cast the spell of camera magic and freeze it in a frame, and how that interplay of the inner and outer worlds in that simple act of pressing the button of the camera gives me so much satisfaction (or dissatisfaction) to me.

Please do forgive me for these visual and verbal ramblings ...

Eki Qushay Akhwan

Photo Exploration # 23: Feet and Stillettos

Feet and stillettos ... two things that go together.

As you can obviously see, this photo is heavily cropped at the top and a little bit at the bottom. I did it to get rid of the extraneous visual elements that will distract attention from the main point (the point of interest) of this photograph. The compositional simplification I did to this photo, I think, helps accentuate the feet (both of the girl's and the chair's), and hence articulates the impact I want to achieve in presenting the subject.

Now the question is, how much cropping are we allowed to perform in photography?

There are no exact guideline to this. Some photographers, like Henri Cartier-Bresson, simply oppose after-the-fact cropping as, according to him, it would destroy the "geometrically correct interplay of proportions" of the original scene. Many other photographers, of course, have more linient attitude about cropping.

Generally speaking, however, cropping is a very useful way of enhancing a photograph's composition. It does so by removing unwanted or distracting elements, correcting compositional balance, or hiding/covering a framing mistake. It also helps create the visual impacts you want with your photograph.

Text and photo by Eki Qushay Akhwan.

Photo Exploration # 22: Small Things and Affinities to Visual Elements

To me it's still a mystery why some people (read: photographers) are more attracted to a particular type of visual stimuli. Some of them obviously have more affinity to landscape, some to human expressions or lines and geometry, and others to other visual elements such as light, colors, textures, and other more subtle hues of image-making that not everybody can even "see".

I understand that people with greater visual intelligence pay attention to all those elements. But evidence also shows that their attention is not directed equally to every one of them.

As a photographer, I have learned to feel comfortable with different subject matters with my camera. I can do landscape as comfortably as portraiture, architecture and abstract as dexterously as street photography, but when it comes to visual stimuli, I think lines and geometry are what I am attracted to the most. My reactions to them are almost always spontaneous - it's like I can see them even when they are not tangibly manifested.

By the way .........

I "discovered" the above photo at the reception desk of a car and motorbike wash. The encounter was brief and my reaction to the visual stimulus was spontaneous. As I would normally do in such an encounter, I explored the scene, taking several pictures of it without thinking much. I did not know why I was attracted to this object, but when I saw the results, I think it's mostly the lines, the curves, and the geometry of it that had triggered my instinctive photographic reaction in the first place.

Photo Exploration # 21: Street Photography?

Is a moment snapped from the street (or public space for that matter) necessarily a street photography?

Convention has it that street photography is (should be):
- a photo taken at a public place (of which the street is part);
- a photo that focuses on a candid action of a human being or human beings; and ...
- ???

I wrote about it once here. But is this one really a street photography? What makes it so? Or not so?

Photo Exploration # 20: Platonic Reality

I said, whatevery moves me.

Like a hammer striking hard at the senses, the scene moved me. I tried to capture it from different angles but, to my frustration, none seemed to work out. Such is the elusive power of photographic reality. Light was fast fading - and so was this fleeting drama of the shadow.

Platonic Reality, the title of this post, is inspired by the Cave Allegory or Cave Metaphor that Plato used in The Republic (Book 7, 514a - 520a), in which he narrated a fictional conversation between Socrates (his teacher) and his brother Glaucon. In the dialogue, Socrates introduced the idea that what many people take to be reality could in fact be just an illusion.

Confined from birth in a cave and forced to face the wall where shadows of the "real" things are projected, the prisoners who inhabit the cave (that's us?) have only seen shadows all their lives and hence they have come to belive that the shadows are real and that they are reality.

Meeting The "Photo Scavenger Hunt" Thematic Challenge: Things That Go Fast

Every now and then photographers need to create a challenge (in the form of a project of some sort) or meet a challenge posed by others to hone their photographic skills and keep their creative powers alive.

My post today is about meeting that kind of challenge.

Photo Scavenger Hunt is a photographic weekly thematic challenge initiated by a photo blogger friend of mine, Carrie Hayes of View of You Photography. For this week, the theme is "things that go fast" - and here is my interpretation of it.

How fast is fast? Well, I think that depends very much on what yard stick .you're using. A car can be fast, but it would seem slow compared to a rocket, for example. A bicycle may be slow when compared to a car, but it definitely is faster when compared with walking.

Fotografer kadang-kadang perlu menciptakan tantangan atau menjawab tantangan yang diberikan oleh orang lain untuk mengasah kemahiran fotografi dan kreatifitasnya.

Photo Exploration # 19: Bottles

Photo Exploration # 18: Urbanites 01

JAGAT FOTOGRAFI received KREATIV BLOGGER AWARD from a fellow photo blogger Laetitia of Malta Magic. Thanks a lot, Laetitia.

Photo Exploration # 17: Construction

My participation for this week's theme of Photo Scavenger Hunter: Construction.

This concrete skeleton is going to be an indoor tennis stadium of the Faculty of Sports Education of the Indonesia University of Education, Bandung.