I wandered in the street.

I squat in the garage.

I lay down, I lay prone.

I climbed onto the top of a roof.

I waited for a cat turning to me.

I moved a chair, made it closer to the window, then beyond.

I opened the window, I closed it.

I asked someone to smile, but she didn't.

I was not sure what do I wanna shoot yet.

Through all this life I struggle with my own mediocrity, try to touch the boundary of it, and keep approaching someday I can realize that I've reached the boundary to prove how pedestrian I am.

I'm looking for the moment in which I could tell myself, that's all, I'm tired, I can't keep going forward anymore, let me give up, I'm such a crap.

That's my sense of existence.

That's my existentialism.

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(2008/08/22)

......i could feel the white thing wandering and spreading on me glutinously as a congealing river. it's cold and thick. it smelled good.

--

i know i've said i would cease taking photos arranged intentionally. i know i've said i want more snap-shots of my daily life and less images of deliberately made scenes. but it's too seducing to think "what if i do this and take a photo". this kind of "what if" urged me to do take a arranged photo again. the idea occur to me while i was taking shower last night, and after the shower it made me go out the bathroom with a shorts and bring my camera back. water drops mushroomed on the surface of the camera when it was took into the moisturized bathroom. worrying the moisture might penetrate into the lens, i handled the camera with my trembling hand and saw the LCD of camera in the mirror (thank God for the 3'' LCD of G9).

i told myself i have to take this shot as fast as i can, tried to calm down and do everything in precise rapidity , but the excitement of creating a new thing and the worry about moisture made me nervous. i looked at myself in the mirror, the white thing was moving gradually. i could feel the white thing wandering and spreading on me glutinously as a congealing river. it's cold and thick. it smelled good. i took this.

i did all these things awkwardly and for me the awkwardness became a part of worth of this photo.

at least this time i really don't care about the view, fav.s or comments. the meaning of this photos to me is my awkwardness and tremble.

-View On Black

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2008/08/20 2:00 AM.

I'm considering to pause taking photos (at least doing it intentionally) for a short time. I don't know what the exact reason is, but there is something urging me to do so. Just a short rest; by it i mean keeping a distance from framing, composition, exposure or post production (though i do it rarely). Or at least sharing photos in award groups.

Just like what i said in my profile, I'm always confused by the question: what i can do on taking photos? Or same question suggested in another way: what kind of photos am i pursuing? I have tried some things, but still felt a bottle-neck -- a friend of mine told me that i'm not yet good enough to say this word, but there is really something like that to me. I have learned a lot of things in these several months, like composition, tones and post-production. By them i started to look for my favorite style and get used to have some model in my brain while pressing the shutter button. In this process, flickr and the images in it's many group pools really inspired me.

Yet at the same time, i used to eventually enjoyed taking photos and sharing them on flickr, adding them to quite a lot of groups and refresh my recent comment page every several mins. I used to enjoying gathering some awards to get a permision to another group pool. I used to ask myself before pressing the shutter, what will this one look on flickr? How could i adjust it's tone to make it more adorable? And will it be a well-down work of mine? Sometime the question will be, guess how many views, comment or fav.s can this shot earn for me?

It's really interesting. Somehow i can say it rocks. Flickr is really a great platform to share photos and know people -- it is really the most wonderful photo site i've used. But when the counting of views, comments and fav.s became the most important thing in my mind, it does not rock as much as it did in the very beginning. And it disturbs me when i'm thinking about my way on taking photos.

There is a proverb in Chinese, i'm not sure wether it is from Chinese or Japenese -- don't forget your original pursuit (毋忘初衷). I think i need some time to track it back.

I'll try to not consider the end of photos on flickr when taking them. Maybe even stop sharing them in *add 1 / award N* groups. It's not any judgement on those groups -- they are marvelous fields gathering so many stunning images. It's just because of my personal reason to take a rest. And maybe, just maybe, i can take less photos but think more.

And beside of all reasons above -- i am taking the GRE test in only one month! OMG, i have to spend more time on it! taking photos and enjoying photos from you guys before the test is not ridiculous at all, but somehow copying and pasting html languages is.

Go back to this photo. This is more like what i wanna take originally in the beginning of learning photography. An episode of daily life, not pursuing some artistic model and (a little for me) storytelling.

It could be a nice beginning of next marching.

-View On Black

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