Friday, November 2, 2012

Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem

I commuted by car today, because a lot of rain was promised. And so it happened. But as it was Friday, and busy day on the roads, it took me over an hour to get home. And you know I don't like sitting in a car in a traffic jam. Well, at least I had the camera with me.

When trying to give an answer to the comments by Cedric and Rosanna to the posting from yesterday, I was inspired to discuss photography as a profession vs. a hobby. Here is a quote from my answer to Rosanna's comment:

[H]ere in Finland there as been heated debate about amateur photographers "destroying" the livelihood of pro photographers, especially those amateurs who (like me) put their photographs on the web using cc-type licenses.

After thinking about this for a while, I feel that I'm not really a photographer in that sense at all. I take photographs because I'm curious about the world, and want to learn about it (and myself), and the camera is a tool for this. And when I put the photographs on the web I'm hoping that someone somewhere benefits from my discoveries, however small they may be.

Thus, taking photographs and posting them on the net is for me an act of using the freedom of speech. This has nothing to do with the profession of photographers, or the monetary value of photographs.

And to say this more clearly, here is a quote from A Man Without a Country by Kurt Vonnegut:

The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.

(Posting title is from the quote above.)

2 comments:

konkkola said...

Hyvä setti sadekuvia. Minunkin on pitänyt sadetta kuvata, mutta on vain jäänyt. Ei voi ainakaan selitellä, ettei olisi ollut sopivaa keliä.

Juha Haataja said...

Jep, sadetta, sadetta, sadetta. No, valokuvaukselle keli on mitä mainioin, valokuvaajalle taas ehkä ei, ainakaan pitemmän päälle. Ja kamerani (LX5) kun ei ole mitenkään erityisen vesitiivis niin joskus mietityttää miten se kestää tuolla ulkona sateessa tarpomisen. No, tähän asti se on kestänyt, vaikka epäilenkin että melkoisen tukevan annoksen kosteutta se on sisäänsä ehtinyt niellä. Tosin autossa keskellä ruuhkaa istuessa ei kastuminen nyt sinänsä ongelma ole, toinen juttu sitten on metsissä ja soilla kävellessä.