Suffering

Season of Tilt

Week 18, Saturday

 

In nature life has no moral. There is no good or bad, and in every moment countless beings give birth, languish and die without reason. Sometimes the possibilities of life are eaten by others even before they get a change to take their first steps. The cycle of life is very much characterized by the suffering. If you are a religious type you probably think suffering is some way sanctified by moral order given from God - and everything goes towards good no matter how contradictory it might seem. If your reasoning follows scientific discourse you probably believe in 'order of nature' or increasing diversity catalyzed by the natural selection as explained by modern evolutionary synthesis. Either way, the tragic thing is that the suffering has no demonstrable meaning. With God, meaning of suffering lies whatever one happens to believe at the time and within evolution theory suffering has no function either - even if dying has a fundamental meaning for natural selection to work. It seems that in intellectual and spiritual way it is very difficult to accept that suffering doesn't have any meaning and it cannot be morally explained by either religion or science. But it can have an aesthetic meanings for us: it's only when we find ourselves suffering we touch the essence of life as it is and has been millions of years for most of beings in nature. Only then can we come to understand what it means to be one of them - suffering is the only shared experience for all living things and therefore it forms the essence of existence from which the respect for life can be build. To be alive is to suffer.

 

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Using Lensbaby optics has definitely been a very interesting adventure. Being manual focus, having an option to tilt the lens and having several optics with different distinctive characteristics has surely been a trail off the beaten path. What I like to say is that Lensbaby consciously offers something different from 'industry standard' of photography today: readymade program modes, autofocus, sharp lenses, intelligent metering, digital sensor and other 'taken for granted things' which makes it possible to take better and better pictures. In short, it's a bit of a different philosophy and breaking conventions is always a somewhat controversial move. It would be tempting to describe these differences between Lensbaby and other conventional approaches in a hierarchical manner, placing Lensbaby above and for experienced users only. But I don't want to do that, because it would intellectually a dishonest move. Instead I would like to say that Lensbaby is a different approach to photography and a tool for different job. Sometimes best tool for the job is the DSLT with fast AF-lenses. Sometimes it's Lensbaby. Sometimes it's a pinhole camera. Sometimes it's camera in your mobile phone. There is no best or worst because of diversity, but I have to give credit to Lensbaby that after using their optics I've come to realize that there is loads of possibilities beyond 'the industry standard'. There are aesthetic possibilities beyond 'the standard look' and there are different philosophies of photography at play. This has got to be one my best realization with Lensbaby optics and I'm glad that I have had actually a chance to realize it.

 

Year of the Alpha – 52 Weeks of Sony Alpha Photography: www.yearofthealpha.com

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