Dreaming about SoFoBoMo

Bud, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Three curled, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Drop, originally uploaded by jiihaa.

Last night I had a dream about photography, something perhaps connected to my planning for SoFoBoMo '09 during the last few days. In the dream I discovered an idea for a series of photographs, being very satisfied with it, thinking that this will raise a lot of questions and thoughts. But after waking up I had no idea what the photography idea was.

The subject of raising questions is nicely discussed in an essay by Rodger Kingston at The Online Photographer: "By progressing through [...] photography’s Grand Masters, he presented a self-contained universe that answered most of the questions that it raised. [...] I looked for striking images by unknown photographers as alternatives to prints by the masters... From the very beginning these photographs answered far fewer questions than they raised."

This is very interesting to think about, especially these days when we have millions or even billions of images available for browsing on the net. There must be "a long tail" of exceptional images, raising questions in the minds of the viewers, but it also seems improbable that these images will ever get a wider recognition.

If I can be said to have a style (or attitude) in photography, it centers around the everyday and the common, those things which are around me but which are hard to notice despite being worth noticing. I can't help pointing out here to Mark Hobson. He has written about this much more eloquently than I can, starting with "photography that aims at being true, not at being beautiful".

I don't have is the skill to make images as deep as Hobson can, but at least I can try to capture a small corner of this world in my images. Also, what I don't have is the seemingly unstoppable attitude of his, never doubting, never ceasing to produce.

I'm having doubts all the time, and seeminly more the more I take photographs. In fact, some of my earlier writings here at Light Scrape seem embarassingly righteous. But that was the arrogance of beginners.

Here are three images from today, all showing some aspect of late winter and early spring. It has been a warm and wet day. It seems that the fresh snow - over 10 cm of it - which we got yesterday has already almost disappeared.

Update: Earlier this week I was planning to celebrate the 666th posting some way, for example by blogging about EVIL cameras (electronic viewfinder interchangeable lens), or trying to make an image fitting the number. But somehow I forgot all about it, and so we are here, at posting number 666 without ceremonies. Well, perhaps better this way.

Actually, one little evil detail: Blogger apparently miscounts the number of postings, as the number it reports is higher than 666. This is probably due to some deleted postings. No censorship, I just happened to make a couple of duplicate postings which I removed.

Update 2: Thinking about milestones, I realized that there was another which just passed: I got the Panasonic LX3 in September 2008, half a year ago. So far I have taken 36,977 images with the camera, and it has been a great pleasure to use. Some things are a bit difficult, such as coping with high dynamic range situations, but that is the same for all digital cameras.

I'm still pondering the promise of micro 4/3 cameras, the Panasonic G1 and GH1, but I'm not yet quite convinced of their usefulness. But with the 20 mm f/1.7 pancake and the 45 mm f/2.8 macro lens these cameras might be really good.