If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. Albert Einstein It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all. Edward de Bono I have been thinking… I know a number of you [...]
Kia ora tatou: I have been thinking. Last weekend I was out with a couple of good friends, making photographs. We were bouncing our way along an icy track when an image, an arrangement of relationships, of time and space, caught my attention and asked me to make it (that is the way it happens, [...]
So many people dislike themselves so thoroughly that they never see any reproduction of themselves that suits. None of us is born with the right face. It’s a tough job being a portrait photographer. – Imogen Cunningham A portrait! What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound. – Charles Baudelaire [...]
Kia ora tatou: Those of you who have done my workshops know that I often ask you to do some..ummm..gentle visualisation exercises, such as the Phone booth one. I still meet students who remind me that I put them in a phone booth for an hour and asked them to make 60 different photographs. usually [...]
It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed. A man who takes away [...]
Crone: Two things, my lord, must thee know of the Wisewoman. First, she is … a woman! …and second, she is … Edmund: Wise? Crone: You do know her then? Edmund: No, just a wild stab in the dark which is incidentally what you’ll be getting if you don’t start being a bit more helpful. [...]
It really began with a chance comment, with an unexpected conversation. What are we doing this afternoon? Would you like to go out to Riverton? I hadn’t been there in nearly 15 years, so the opportunity to wander around a town which often attracts derision because of its out-of-the-way location, because of a perception that [...]
The future was rushing towards me, drawing ever closer, arriving on the horned wings of an approaching storm. I looked up in horror, in ghastly realisation, and knew that there was nothing, nothing at all I could do to escape, to turn it away…. I am more convinced than ever that whatever we photograph, we [...]
Relax, said the night man, We are programmed to receive. You can check out any time you like, But you can never leave. The Eagles: Hotel California I am not sure what it is about circuses and sideshows, but they fascinate me. I think they always have. I would like to think it has something [...]
I often wonder why so many of us are drawn to photography. I never cease to be fascinated by the reasons, by the motivations, and by all the myriad-and-one reasons why we take up photography. Over the years when I ask people why they have do it, some have answered confidently, while others have dithered [...]
Releasing the dryad A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen. ~Edward de Bono It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life. ~P.D. James It has been nearly two years, but I am still haunted. The moment has yet [...]
Kia ora tatou: The following post is the first in a series I will write from time to time, depending on interest and feedback. In the past I have tended to tallk about the how of photography and the why of photography, but rarely if ever together. In these posts I want to talk about [...]
