Great Photos: 4

Lots of looking

My driving instructor years ago used to chant at every junction and manoeuvre "lots of looking, lots of looking". It seems to me that "lots of looking" is a good strategy for traversing any piece of terrain, whether it be just a road or a whole pathway in life.

Looking at, reflecting on and collecting work by other people is, I suppose, one way of absorbing good practice. We may not know why we like something but our gut response tells us there's something we should emulate. Of course the temptation is to imitate, which is what we do when we haven't quite absorbed the deeper essence of what we are looking at.

My parents hauled me and my brothers round art galleries at an age when we thought galleries were the most boring places on earth. Their hope was that we would subliminally develop a taste for good things. It has taken me years to recover but now, in middle age, I quite like art galleries. I also like churches full of visual richness  - though the church thing is more a response to having been brought up in Methodism where there really isn't anything to look at at all.

Now my suggestion is that you take a look at these links to photographers. I think their work is quite good.  Then perhaps you could comment and offer other links with RSS feeds.

Mute

Joe's nyc

Daily Dose

Phase Drift

Blue Jake

Andrew Kime

Comments

[jonny]

http://www.worldpressphoto.com - always amazing

http://beta.zooomr.com/photos/thomashawk - he inspires me no end... and is a great blogger btw on photography stuff - http://thomashawk.com/index.html

http://www.nyclondon.com/blog/ - amazing pin hole camera stuff...

[Andrew]

I've found that amidst all the clutter of Flickr - there are some photographers there who are incredibly inspirational to me. Not necessarily because they take THE shots that I want to go back to. Rather, I get to see the evolution of their work, and the different techniques they experiment with. Challenges me to keep pushing myself and try new styles as well. As your instructor said, "always looking, always looking"

So at the risk of dobbing in some of the aformentioned people;

- lee cullivan at http://www.flickr.com/photos/leecullivan/

- tess j at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bytess/

[Mark Waddington]

Andrew, many thanks. Just looked at the photographers' work you linked to and immediately rewarding - bringing out the beauty in places, objects and people we might otherwise take for granted. A gift.

[nic paton]

Mark
What in your opinion is the balance between words and images as our primary medium of communication?

Especially but not exclusively in a church context, it strikes me as increasingly onerous how wordy people are, how lacking is their sense of the poetic for the words they do use, and how seemingly blind they are to images as bearing the things we need to communicate?

How might we describe G-d in addition to being the Logos?

[Mark Waddington]

At the risk of being wordy!

I think it is very difficult to separate out the visual and non visual aspects. In most good examples words conjure mental images; they say radio is superior to TV because the scenery is so much better. Music, of course, can also be highly visual - Lark Ascending and Sea Symphonies (if classical music is your thing).

Language has blurred the boundaries between visual and non visual. A piece of poetry is little different from a great painting in so far as it is just another means of conveying imagery. In all these cases, the communication then resolves into emotion.

It may be a case of there only being good communication and bad communication rather than a choice between visual and non-visual. However, we have moved from a position where we only employed one or two modes of communication to a position now where this generation absorbs messages in a crazy multi-media mix.

The interesting aspect is this interplay between images, sounds, spoken word, text, movement and space. This is where I think the really exciting creative possibilities are - especially in alternative worship.

Ultimately the goal (however it is achieved) is to forge a connection between humans and/or the divine. My favourite quote is from Howard’s End.

"Only connect! That was the whole of her sermon. Only connect the prose and the passion, and both will be exalted, and human love will be seen at its height. Live in fragments no longer"