Sunday, December 28, 2008

Losing weight and engaging in philosophy at Christmas


Ice and water, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

The photo here is a result from my continuing struggle with post-processing techniques. The original photo had warm tones, thanks to the winter sun low at the horizon, but I wanted to get something different. Also, the ice structure wasn't really visible - just whitish colors.

What I did was to use LightZone polarizer and bright scene filters for basic work, then Pixelmator curves to decrease red and green a bit and increase blue. And finally, a bit of more saturation to the colors.

I probably did everything the wrong way, but at least the photo is closer to my vision that the original one was.

But coming back to the title of this posting, it seems that this is the first Christmas for a long time that I have been losing weight despite eating really well. The long walks with the camera desperately seeking subjects is the reason for this, and perhaps also sleeping very late. (You can't eat when you sleep...)

Paul Butzi has been continuing the conversation about creativity, branching into a discussion on creation/destruction. (And there is also some heavy armament in use.)

I'm not sure whether I like to engage in such philosophy, but I like the original topic. Andreas already commented my thoughts here, and I responded, but I decided to pick the thread again in this posting.

So, coming back to the excellent topic “Productivity, creativity, proxies and goals”, and the reason for why we are doing things…

However sophisticatedly we argue about the reasons and motivations, in the end the reason for doing something demanding comes from inside, a part of us. The reasons may be good reasons or bad, known reasons or unknown, but not much to do with measurement.

As an example, I suspect my interest in photography has less to do with photography than with finding a balance as a human being. It is a kind of meditation, of shutting down the too-much-thinking type of creature in my the head. Photography does the trick for me especially combined with walking outside in the nature. (And losing weight is not a bad thing either.)

4 comments:

Rich Gift Of Lins said...

Your last paragraph is spot on! That's exactly what I think when I read all the deep analysis. A couple of hours spent in the fresh air and with a camera in my hand is a tonic for my soul. And if I return with a good image so much the better.

Juha Haataja said...

Yes - is going for a walk a pretex for doing photography, or photography a pretex for going for a walk.

I think us human beings have a need to use our legs for moving.

Andreas said...

Amazing what you get out of this camera. Twisting and bending like you did here is a good test for the reserves in an image. JPEGs normally break when you do that.

Regarding the discussion on Paul's blog, well, I thought to chime in, but Paul is in a not exactly festive temper lately, I found it prudent to rather duck the bullets :)

Juha Haataja said...

@Andreas: Yes, I was afraid of breaking it, and probably got quite close to doing just that, but luckily it survived. But I certainly need some learning time to this properly. It is slow going...

I noticed that my textbook in the learning, "The Creative Digital Darkroom", was listed as one of the top photography books of 2008, so it probably is not a bad choice to get started:

http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/12/the-nominees-fo.html