The Art Is A Lie
Let me tell you a secret. I like to think what I create is 'art', and that implies that it takes lots of thought in composition, exposure, and editing. Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Take this photo for example. Pretty edgy, huh? The truth is that in the midst of the Covid lockdown, I was tasked with taking my wife to a hospital an hour away from home for some tests.... which gave me a few precious moments to drive around the city, camera in hand -- and I mean exactly that. I was so excited to be out of my little 5 km circle that I was literally steering the car with one hand and shooting photos with the other. This shot is one of that batch. No thought to framing; no thought on exposure -- I was just triggering the shutter at anything that caught the one eye I allowed off of the car ahead of me. Bang, Bang, Bang. Pretty stupid, huh? But I needed a relief from my wife's health concerns and an escape from the pandemic, if only for 15 minutes. There was no art in creating this, only panic. The edit took five minutes. And writing this essay took longer than creating the image in total. So if, indeed, there is something redeemable out of all this, I learned that creativity, even artless art, is still a basic need in the toughest of times.
The Art Is A Lie
Let me tell you a secret. I like to think what I create is 'art', and that implies that it takes lots of thought in composition, exposure, and editing. Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no. Take this photo for example. Pretty edgy, huh? The truth is that in the midst of the Covid lockdown, I was tasked with taking my wife to a hospital an hour away from home for some tests.... which gave me a few precious moments to drive around the city, camera in hand -- and I mean exactly that. I was so excited to be out of my little 5 km circle that I was literally steering the car with one hand and shooting photos with the other. This shot is one of that batch. No thought to framing; no thought on exposure -- I was just triggering the shutter at anything that caught the one eye I allowed off of the car ahead of me. Bang, Bang, Bang. Pretty stupid, huh? But I needed a relief from my wife's health concerns and an escape from the pandemic, if only for 15 minutes. There was no art in creating this, only panic. The edit took five minutes. And writing this essay took longer than creating the image in total. So if, indeed, there is something redeemable out of all this, I learned that creativity, even artless art, is still a basic need in the toughest of times.