Ocean View - a photo on Flickriver

Ocean View

            I finished my comment on the previous monochrome shot with the idea that we should be forced to see things in ways we often don't expect. Vision plays an important role in our worldview. I mentioned how colour often gets in the way of truly seeing, because we simply see a scene of a lighthouse, acknowledge it and move on (seen that a hundred times).

Now for some "real talk" as my African-American friends would say when I lived in Boston.

That's the problem of photography isn't it. It is far too familiar and democratic as an art to move us. Everyone thinks they can pick up a camera and do it. At one level they can, but anyone serious about following some of the great pioneers of photography as art (Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Steichen, Gertrude Käsebier - look them up, every photographer should know them!), at some point have to look at their work and say, "What is it in my artistic vision that I can offer the world that is truly different?"

That my friends is the hardest question you will ever ask yourself, and believe me, we fail to achieve that high goal 98% of the time. The really great photographers are often remembered for perhaps a few dozen photographs that have found their way into the consciousness of gallery goers and collectors of photography art books (guilty as charged).

In this digital age we take thousands of photographs and need to remind ourselves that they will not be remembered this time next week, let alone long after we die (like the incredible Vivian Maier - please look her up). If you are serious about your photography as an art, then this is truly a noble aim. 

But there are several steps to becoming a great photographic artist (and to my mind the greatest living photographer is the incomparable Brazilian Sebastião Salgado - look him up. He shoots with Canon, but I'll forgive him). The problem about addressing these issues in photography is that people think you are "big noting" yourself. Steiglitz would have simply answered, "And your problem is?" 

You see most of us are not prepared to pay the price it takes to truly pursue a unique artistic vision. The desire to be popular is the antithesis of great art. Think of dear Vincent Van Gogh - rejected in his lifetime, universally loved today. What is a unique vision in photography? For some it means creating works of digital art based on superb processing skills. To others, like Henri Cartier Bresson or Jacques Henri Lartigue, photography is as simple as one person with a camera and a VISION. I certainly identify with the latter camp. I'm wanting to go back to nature, not transform it. 

The starting price for becoming more than a person snap-shooting their way through life, is being prepared to fail. Over and over again! Some people will see this picture of mine as a failure. Some will see it reveals an underlying aesthetic vision (line and shape). But really I don't care. I take pictures for myself, and if some people like them, well and good. If some of them ever get remembered after I die. That's good too, not that I will care one jot about it. 

The writer of the ancient book Ecclesiastes summed it all up with these wise words: "Vanity of vanities, All is vanity." Now that can be taken several ways (especially given our contemporary understanding of vanity). But in a sense he was reminding us of the same thing that the economist John Maynard Keynes once said: "In the long run we will all be dead."

You see an artistic vision is in the end (if it is to mean anything at all) a search for Transcendence. Will our art outlive us or die with us? When you think of it, that is just a variation on Hamlet's great conundrum, "To be or not to be, that is the question."

[P.S. I also know that most people who view this photograph will NOT read this reflection on photography and art. They are too busy pursuing popularity by faving and visiting as many people as they can to get them to do the same ad infinitum ad nauseum. Many won't even visit my page, just fave in the feed or in a group. That's the problem with Flickr it encourages triviality and skates across the surface of life. When you visit a gallery you have to slow down to enjoy the experience and truly learn from it. Oh well, that will lose me more followers - ha ha.]

Taken in: Australia / Tasmania / Low Head (show map)

Taken on: January 31, 2021

Tags:

Luminosity7

Nikon D850

Tasmania

Australia

Low Head

Low Head Lighthouse

Lighthouse

Ocean View

Seascape

Sea

White picket fence

Shapes and line

Light and Shade « less

Sets appears in: • Personal 500 • Lighthouses more » • Northern Tasmania • SEASCAPES « less

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Camera: Nikon D850, f/11.0, 1/500 sec, 52mm, ISO 100 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D850
Aperture:	f/11.0
Exposure Time:	0.002 sec (1/500)
Focal Length:	52mm
ISO:	100
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	No Flash
Exposure Program:	Aperture-priority AE
Exposure Mode:	Auto
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
Software:	Capture One 20 Windows
Show full info

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