Guest Blog by Mxyl: Favorites from Crimora (Accompanied by a philosophical rant about photography)

By "favorites" I mean the Prime Minister and I rounded the 153 photos I took during the trip into these 12. 

To the pessimistic eye, photographing nature may seem like little more than creating a pale reflection of a former reality.  For my eye, however, is serves a different purpose. 

When I look to document many subjects, the concepts of Plato come to mind, describing how art is a step downward from actual nature, as it merely imitates, rather than reproduces, reality.  I would agree with his statement of art as imitation; however, I feel a part of the beauty of this imitation is how it can grow our appreciation for the real thing.

Video game technology has made massive advances since its beginning in 1969, having leapt from bitmap graphics to polygons and image maps.  Yet in the end, even the most advanced of games are still just made of these; upon looking closer, any model will still become blocky and its textures blurred, even if it takes a closer look than it used to to see the difference.  However, reality has no such limits; a closer look at nature only yields more detail and intricacy.  To me, this points to video games not as poor imitation but as highlighting the detail and beauty of the reality it imitates.

Photography, to me, brings with it much of the same thing: it gives attention to that which is already real, especially things we normally wouldn't stop to pay attention to.  The point in documenting isn't creating something less, but drawing attention to something more, letting others see beauty in things they hadn't seen in that way.





I feel part of photography comes down not only to philosophy but even to the Divine.  The Earth, despite the political turmoil we largely remember it for, is ultimately God's gift to us; every scene of beauty is something He made for us to wonder at (or sometimes just laugh about), even though we rarely recognize such a gift.

I feel this is where photography steps in: we can't hope to perfectly replicate such an immense world, but we can capture and imitate little bits of it, not creating so much as displaying the beauty of something we typically take for granted.  God gave us this world, so I view our attempts to showcase its beauty as a way to say "thank you" in our own way, expressing our gratitude for those experiences. 

In fact, "experiences" can apply not only to nature but also to our everyday lives.  I spoke in my previous guest blog about how art can allow one to share his or her view with others and to widen his or her own.

While this is true, I also feel photography can highlight smaller moments much like how they highlight nature, making them stand out in a Kant-like faculty of resistance that adds a theological justification for the moment's existence (okay too much) by revealing the beauty in our lives.

Especially in times of international turmoil and hardships suffered by all too many lives, we all need a reminder that life is inherently good, and our imitations of such moments highlights this point, just as it does the beauty of our surroundings.  

Not Actually All That Wordless Wednesday (which is also a guest blog by Mxyl): More Aquarium!

Decided to see if I could get back into photography and ended up taking like half a gigabyte in photos.  Here you go!

 Left: a waterfall shot at a 200th of a second.
Below: the same scene at a 5th of a second (with me holding the camera veeeeery still).  Although it runs the risk of being blurrier, sometimes that can be a good thing, especially if part of the scene blurs and other parts don't (e.g. blurry water looks really cool). 

Tamarins!

 From here on, the place got a lot darker.  However, if you hold the camera steady enough, sometimes the whole place looks a lot brighter than it actually is.

As well, I decided to use this to an advantage: as I said earlier, blurring some things while holding the camera still looks really cool. 

You'd be surprised how dark this actually was.

 One thing I'd learned in particularly, though, was escalators.  If you have a dark area with escalators, then putting a camera on the moving arm rest (and keeping it steady) can produce some seriously awesome pictures. 

Kinda reminds me of 2001, actually. 

Bye for now! 

Why You Shouldn't Smile

I did NOT think the pun was funny.

Surprised!

 When you take pictures of your kids, do you want just one picture of everyone-smiling-nicely-with-their-eyes-open-and-is-that-too-much-to- ask?

It is.

But, really, most of the time, that's what I'm looking for.

Dramatic

You ate what?

But sometimes, I ask the kids not to smile.

 I ask them to look surprised, scared, worried, angry, silly, or anything else I (or they) can think of.
 

 And I always get fantastic pictures!

Really?

I print out 8 or 9 "emotion" pictures for each kid and slip it into the binder with their six month sheets.

So fun!

My head is going to explode!