It's been said, "necessity is the mother of invention". No one knows exactly who said that but some site Mark Twain. That quote evolved from, of all people, Plato who said, "Our need will be the real creator".
I would like to further modify that and say limitation is the mother of invention or the real creator.
Often we think of limitations imposed on us by others (i.e. parents, authorities, governing bodies, social norms etc.) but there is another self imposed limitation and that is the direction I'm moving in with my image making. Before my camera work has always been shot in the 3:2/4:6 frame format and if I wanted something different I would crop that raw file before moving further in the editing phase.
I've decided to upend that by only shooting in 1:1 frame format. Yesterday and today were my first days limiting myself in this way. It's interesting how looking at the view screen and seeing only a square image changes how you think about seeing. In some ways it's changed my subject matter. In other ways it's changed how I photograph the same old subjects that I would photograph before in the more familiar landscape/portrait format. I'm still interested in the same things it's just that I am seeing them differently. And it's not like I see them one way and they deliberately change how I want to see them via cropping. I'm actually forcing myself to see them squared.
I don't know how long I'll do this but it will be for some length of time to see how this will change the way I see and perceive things over time as I get more used to this square format.
Todays images are of palms of my left and right hand. An abstract, inverted presentation that I find interesting. Again these images were shot square format /raw. Editing in Photoshop.
That is not an easy question to answer. There was a time when democratic world leaders had a sense of duty, obligation and service and exhibited shame when they failed in any of those areas.
Those failures were often brought to light by protests from the population and of course media coverage of those protests.
But in the current global environment democratic world leaders by-and-large are either resistant or outright deny any culpability in the face of obvious truths and offer only a series of talking points with their true values being exhibited in their actions - often contrary to the lip service they provide.
In the internet age - there is literally an overabundance of media coverage and the more media companies there are the more options people have to choose how/where they consume their information. This overabundance of options has led to greater divisions as there are more and more options for people offering extreme views as every media company seeks to grab a larger "piece of the viewership pie". This growing divergence in the internet age has exasperated the divisions of population as everyone is now "selling"/forcing ideas instead of building consensus and using the art of persuasion.
This loss of consensus and the art of persuasion has caused irreparable damage.
The sad thing is no one cares. People only care about staking out their subjective opinions and anything to back them up. No one is listening.
When no one is listening you cannot build consensus and there is no art of persuasion.
In that environment can protests bring about change?
The protests I've seen here in America in the past 30 years have largely been ineffective. Oh sure they get a lot of media coverage. But they have not actually "moved the needle". There is no moral imperative in these protests it's merely people shouting "I'm right and you are wrong."
"If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." I Corinthians 13:1
So nothing changes.
People show up for protests for a day or two, or over the weekend and then feebly return to their useless daily existence, their jobs, their daily realities.
In order for protests to have actual effective change they must start from a basis of love for others and the protests MUST be sustained. But I don't see that happening any time soon. It would mean to protest would entail actual personal sacrifice maybe even losing one's job to keep protesting. That will not happen unless the economy tanks when unemployment skyrockets due to corporate cutbacks and there will be no federal assistance to help people.
I certainly do NOT want to see that happen but I think things will have to get a lot worse before effective change actually happens.
We're just shouting at the ground. Just more background noise.
March, here in Ohio (USA) is still quite cold, wet and snowy. It is a good time to stay indoors and under the covers. That said, I thought it might be a good time to resurrect and series I had on my old blog (long since deleted) that was titled Under The Covers.
The series features reinterpretations of classic rock songs to the extent that they’ve been completely re-imagined as a new work. I’ve never been a fan of just “straight” or faithful covers. If I want to hear a faithful version of the song I’ll listen to the original. I want to see imagination and a flicker of inspiration in the how the music is re-interpreted.
Todays installment is a wonderful interpretation of Nirvana’s HEART SHAPED BOX, written by Kurt Cobain from their album IN UTERO. It was performed and recorded by the Wojtek Mazolewski Quintet; a jazz outfit from Poland that has some incredible original music. This recording was on their European release of the album oddly titled POLKA. I say “oddly” because my only reference to polka was the popular music/dance style. In the region where I grew up there was even a popular sunday television broadcast called “Polka Varieties”. But turns out the word “polka” is actually a Czech word simply meaning polish girl. Which is more in line with this recording. So imagine this album was titled “Polish Girl”. In fact I humorously imagine the young woman on the cover of the album may be grimacing at the use of polka as an outdated musical style. The original US release of the Polka album did not include this cover (presumably for copyright reasons)
I hope you enjoy this version. For those, like myself that like to compare I have included the Nirvana version below as well.
... on being and becoming ... 