View allAll Photos Tagged existential
1,142-second star trail with the Milky Way.
I got to the observatory at around 12:15 am, and was expecting to see a few people. No one! I was all alone!
After an hour time-lapse, I set this up for a little over 19 minutes. I ended up sitting in the car and napping for a bit while this sat about 100 feet away from me near where the observatory building is located.
Amazing how much we move in just under 20 minutes. MD3-S2 TriggerTrap.
COMMENT: Of Bots and Bad Pandas
After trying to log in to Flickr numerous times without success earlier today, I gave up. Too many Bad Pandas. No point posting photos if half the people can't get on to see them. I don't know why this platform is the only one we know that goes down so regularly. Looking at the Help Forum this is a worldwide problem. But that happens to be the least of our problems on Flickr.
There is something more important existentially that goes on every single day on everyone's page that far too many people are turning a blind eye to. I'm talking about bot use. For those who still live in a prelapsarian social media world, bots are either (1) pieces of internet code written specifically to trawl the pages of Flickr faving and in some cases commenting (generically) in order to garner reciprocal visits - you can buy them, or (2) humans behaving in a bot-like manner, simply faving and following as many people as possible in the hope of achieving the same goals - inflated views, faves and followers. Frankly I'm sick of it.
So much so that I will block any person I see that exhibits this bot-like tendency. My list of blocks is hundreds long. Of course this has seen a falloff in my own view numbers. We don't seriously think that all those views of our old photos are real do we? If say you post 3 photos a day and each of them gets 500 views in 24 hours and your total view count for the day is 5,000. I would argue a good percentage of all those extra 3,500 views are in fact unblocked bots.
Opponents of bots on social media platforms (and Flickr is by no means the worst here) estimate that up to 50 percent of all traffic on these sites is bot-driven. Now bots are easy to understand when the corruption of monetarization comes into play. That is not the case on Flickr. But ego is. And it seems to me that ego will drive some people to do very bad things to attract attention to themselves.
Have you ever wondered why that awful out of focus picture of the Grand Canyon has attracted 65,000 views and 1,500 faves? Well very likely this person is using a massive bot. And many people fave unthinkingly. Go to the Activities Feed and press the fave star and you don't even need to visit a person's page. You can fave thousands in an hour or two doing that. But what a hollow feeling. And what does it do for the photography community?
Explore is another area rife with gaming strategies. How many times do you see the usual suspects turn up on a person's page with "Congrats on Explore"? That's the only time they'll visit your page by the way (that's if you're lucky enough to ever get Explored because it seems only magic accounts do every 16-19 days). These are a group of people who fave (or by proxy their bot does) every one of the 500 Explored photos each day, in the belief it will garner them more "followers" (how I hate that word - CONTACTS is so much better). So if you have been in the habit of doing that there is an excellent chance I will have blocked you.
Of course the most dangerous bots of all are the ones pretending to comment. People think they are real, but AI is very clever now. And one in particular has been at the centre of attention during this week. Banned by Flickr after being clearly outed by a "bot catcher". He gets banned, and then the whistleblower gets banned too for exposing the biggest bot commenter on Flickr. All this ended up with the whistleblower rightly being restored, but also the return of the bot user. Some of you will have followed proceedings very closely.
Frankly I've advocated for a long time for view counts to be discontinued. Thousands of views do not make a good photograph. Social media has been bad for photography in that regard. It's made photographers complacent, and even worse, made them conform to particular styles or genres that "succeed" - as if that matters. Photography is an individual art and everyone is unique.
Always remember that not another soul saw Vivian Maier's photographs before she died. And I dare say you rarely see photographs on Flickr even half as good as the ones she spent a lifetime taking.
So if you feel like I do about the integrity of Flickr and bot use, please join us at this group:
....don't like bot-comments/faves? Join us, post your photos there.
Please post it to the Anti-Bots and Anti-Fake group.
* A final point. Mr Ed was a talking horse and not a bot user.
The presence of extreme busyness in our lives may point to deeper problems – a pervasive people pleasing, a restless ambition, a malaise of meaninglessness. “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness,” writes Tim Kreider in his widely read article for The New York Times. “Obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.” The greatest danger with busyness is that there may be greater dangers you never have time to consider. - Kevin DeYoubng
“What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.”
― Roland Barthes
Nothing escapes a black hole. Light cannot escape and neither can existence. At the event horizon, existence does not precede essence; existence precedes extinction. A being on the precipice will inevitably become extinct. But what happens to a being after its extinction is not so well-known. The supercollider photos in the sequence to the immediate left of this image show what happens after extinction. And thanks to Monty Cook for the title.
let us open our hymnals.
excuse me, I'm not really here for the service.
no? what then?
I just stopped in to get out of the cold.
I see. you know that the homeless shelter is down the street.
oh, I'm not homeless.
no?
in fact, I just moved in next door.
you mean. . .
we're neighbors.
well then, I hope to see you at mass.
I doubt it. but if you want to come watch the game on tv, you're welcome.
very kind of you, I'm sure.
you can bring the food.
oh?
it's my sense of spiritual priorities you see. eating right, and often, is definitely one of them.
good to know.
so bring lots.
right.
Was it really important for me to take an afternoon to get to this location and take this picture? I know I had fun doing it, and maybe that’s all amateur photography is supposed to be, but I’ve taken the same looking shot a dozen times before. Does a person who takes nice (e.g.) cloud shots, like me, have to take and post 100 of them to Flickr? Ten years from now will I still be taking this shot? Why do I need to look at new photos from my contacts and others, wouldn’t looking at the pictures that I’ve faved already give me equal or even more pleasure? Why is amateur photography like food—no matter how good the previous meal, we’re always wanting to consume more the next day?
First, visual stimulation is enhanced by novelty of stimulus—in other words, people respond more strongly to seeing something new than old. Few of us spend five minutes looking at a photograph, even a famous one. Unlike a video, or a piece of music, or a conversation, the stimulus doesn't continue over time--it's there and that's it. We get our endorphin hit from the photo and move on to the next one. As artists we amateur photographers have to create a lot of photos because that’s how they’re consumed and because the medium and technology allows us to create a lot of photos quickly and cheaply.
Second, amateur photography is about recording history. I take a new photo today because I exist. Photography is the way we share our lives with others and remind ourselves of where we’ve been and what we’ve done. With Flickr I have seen the whole world and experienced many things vicariously, because people are recording and sharing their histories with me.
So here you go, another pretty cloud shot, because I was there.
The insomnia derives from angst. Anxiety. Life. Direction. Well-being. The existential experience. Connectivity. Tangibility. Transience. Authenticity. Don't think about it. It doesn't exist. You're not there. I'm not here. I don't miss you. I choose not to miss you. Together. We are all alone. In the darkness and silence of the night, our minds are each our own. The electricity that fires each pulse and fueling each breath arises autonomously. You decide how to live and when to die. You decided.
The mighty iron horse roars past the signalman every day and I wonder if he has existential dilemmas that cloud his being with thoughts of insignifcance and being stuck to his station in life on a forlorn railway crossing in Maharashtra.
Much like what life is for most people. Watching the world move, go by fast and frenetic taking some select people to their momentous destinies,
This is from a series of shots done at a railway crossing in February 2011. Meherabad is a hamlet quite close to Ahmadnagar. Meher Baba lies in eternal peace and the place wears an atmosphere of serenity and solace.
Dates
Taken on February 16, 2011 at 3.54PM IST (edit)
Posted to Flickr December 20, 2013 at 11.39AM IST (edit)
Exif data
Camera Nikon D300
Exposure 0.025 sec (1/40)
Aperture f/22.0
Focal Length 24 mm
ISO Speed 320
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash No Flash
_DSC9719 nef
"Alberto Giacometti A Line Through Time" Exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery summer 2019. This is must see. Giacometti lived 1901-1966 with his primary studio in Paris.
The post-war era in Europe lead to an overwhelmingly existential crisis embodied in the feeling of fragility, isolation and alienation in the works of artists like Giacometti.
I had to use my cell phone there...no regular cameras permitted.
"All the things she had to do, it's driving her mad. It's not who she is. But who is she?"
I guess I'm going through a sort of existential crisis or something.
Photography means more to me than anything...
Tried to find myself, but got lost on the way back.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
Albert Camus : The Plague, 1947. (Penguin Fiction)
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a virulent plague.
Cut off from the rest of the world, living in fear, they each respond in their own way to the grim challenge of the deadly bacillus. Among them is Dr Rieux, a humanitarian and healer, and it is through his eyes that that we witness the devastating course of the epidemic.
Written in 1947, just after the Nazi occupation of France, Camus's magnificent novel is also a story of courage and determination against the arbitrariness and seeming absurdity of human existence.
'Camus represents a particularly modern type of temperament, a mystic soul in a Godless universe, thirsty for the absolute, forever rebellious against the essential injustice of the human condition'
Shusha Guppy, Sunday Times
....dealing with an existential crisis, wondering if he's more potato than man, after his latest date called him a "spud muffin."
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
He used to be the stuff of nightmares. Now he’s just the stuff of meh. Bolts still intact, but the spark? Gone. He’s not stomping through villages anymore - he’s shuffling through his own existential dread.
He tried to reinvent himself. “Frankie the Influencer” didn’t take off. His makeup tutorials were too patchy, and his skincare routine involved lightning. He auditioned for a reboot, but the producers said he was “too stitched” and “not marketable to Gen Z.”
Now he just sighs. Loud, echoey sighs that rattle windows and make squirrels reconsider their life choices. He’s not scary - he’s just tired. Tired of being misunderstood. Tired of being called “it.” Tired of people asking if he’s Shrek’s cousin.
He doesn’t want fame. He doesn’t want fear. He just wants someone to say, “Hey, you’re doing great for a guy who was literally sewn together during a thunderstorm.”
This Halloween, don’t run from the monster. Offer him a snack. Maybe a nap. Or just a moment where he doesn’t have to explain why his arms don’t match.
THOMAS MERTON ON EASTER
(Seasons of Celebration)
"Lent has summoned us to change our hearts, to effect in ourselves the Christian metanoia. But at the same time Lent has reminded us perhaps all too clearly of our own powerlessness to change our lives in any way. Lent in the liturgical year plays the role of the Law, the pedagogue, who convinces us of sin and inflicts upon us the crushing evidence of our own nothingness. Hence it disquiets and sobers us, awakening in us perhaps some sense of that existential “dread” of the creature whose freedom suspends him over an abyss which may be an infinite meaninglessness, an unbounded despair. This is the fruit of that Law which judges our freedom together with its powerlessness to impose full meaning on our lives merely by conforming to a moral code. Is there nothing more than this?
But now the power of Easter has burst upon us with the resurrection of Christ. Now we find in ourselves a strength which is not our own, and which is freely given to us whenever we need it, raising us above the Law, giving us a new law which is hidden in Christ: the law of His merciful love for us. Now we no longer strive to be good because we have to, because it is a duty, but because our joy is to please Him who has given all His love to us! Now our life is full of meaning!
Easter is the hour of our own deliverance— from what? Precisely from Lent and from its hard Law which accuses and judges our infirmity. We are no longer under the Law. We are delivered from the harsh judgment! Here is all the greatness and all the unimaginable splendor of the Easter mystery— here is the “grace” of Easter which we fail to lay hands on because we are afraid to understand its full meaning. To understand Easter and live it, we must renounce our dread of newness and of freedom!
Death exercises a twofold power in our lives: it holds us by sin, and it holds us by the Law. To die to death and live a new life in Christ we must die not only to sin but also to the Law.
Every Christian knows that he must die to sin. But the great truth that St Paul exhausted himself to preach in season and out is a truth that we Christians have barely grasped, a truth that has got away from us, that constantly eludes us and has continued to do so for twenty centuries. We cannot get it into our heads what it means to be no longer slaves of the Law. And the reason is that we do not have the courage to face this truth which contains in itself the crucial challenge of our Christian faith, the great reality that makes Christianity different from every other religion.
In all other religions men seek justification, salvation, escape from “the wheel of birth and death” by ritual acts, or by religious observances, or by ascetic and contemplative techniques. These are means devised by men to enable them to liberate and justify themselves. All the other religions impose upon man rigid and complicated laws, subject him more or less completely to prescribed exterior forms, or to what St Paul calls “elementary notions.”
But Christianity is precisely a liberation from every rigid legal and religious system. This is asserted with such categorical force by St Paul, that we cease to be Christians the moment our religion becomes slavery to “the Law” rather than a free personal adherence by loving faith, to the risen and living Christ; “Do you seek justification by the Law . . . you are fallen from grace . . . In fact, in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor its absence is of any avail. What counts is faith that expresses itself in love” (Gal. 5: 4,6).
. . . This gift, this mercy, this unbounded love of God for us has been lavished upon us as a result of Christ’s victory. To taste this love is to share in His victory. To realize our freedom, to exult in our liberation from death, from sin and from the Law, is to sing the Alleluia which truly glorifies God in this world and in the world to come.
This joy in God, this freedom which raises us in faith and in hope above the bitter struggle that is the lot of man caught between the flesh and the Law, this is the new canticle in which we join with the blessed angels and the saints in praising God.
God who is rich in mercy, was moved by the intense love with which he loved us, and when we were dead by reason of our transgressions, he made us live with the life of Christ . . . Together with Christ Jesus and in him he raised us up and enthroned us in the heavenly realm . . . It is by grace that you have been saved through faith; it is the gift of God, it is not the result of anything you did, so that no one has any grounds for boasting. (Eph. 2: 4– 9)
Let us not then darken the joy of Christ’s victory by remaining in captivity and in darkness, but let us declare His power, by living as free men who have been called by Him out of darkness into his admirable light.” – Thomas Merton
2 more from the "On the road '72"series which I have now (2010) been able to scan for the first time (the slides were too dark for my old scanner). This is a second and more subjective version of my "existential" On the road 1 image. I am not sure which I prefer - what do you think?
In 2017, looking at the full-frame photo again I realised what was wrong with it – that it was two completely different ideas combined, because I liked both of them and didn't want to lose either. The (fairly obvious in retrospect) solution is to make it into two separate images: this is the first, expressing the idea described already* and focussing on the subjective viewpoint. I shall post the other one next... ( → done).
* In summary "the idea is: humanity struggling towards an unknowable future, trying to follow a rather vague idea / belief (the white line) under difficult conditions." Please see the comments (below) for a more detailed discussion.
PS: This photo is now archived, having been posted for 10 years.
PPS 17/2/23: I have posted new higher quality versions of both the images based on this photo, to go with the other image I posted earlier.
... like being in a reality show where the camera is your anxiety and it never turns off.
Image imagined in MidJourney AI and finished with Topaz Studio and Lightroom Classic.
Week No: 18
Theme: Cliché
Category: Creative (well, sort of)
Faded image and trite existential statement, does it get any more cliché? I figure the processing, while not psychedelic, far out, works for Sliders Sunday too. HSS.
"Call of the Desert"
It should come as no surprise to you that the desert is one of my favorite environments to spend time in. It has also occurred to me that many people seem to view the desert as a barren, undesirable wasteland to be avoided or merely used as a metaphor for hard times in life or for existential struggle. They do not seem to see the intense beauty that is there all around, waiting to be noticed.
If you are among these people, I would encourage you to spend some time in a desert with someone who does see its beauty. Then, return again on your own after you have been introduced, to listen and look. You may be surprised what you find.
To me the call of the desert is a still-small voice in the wilderness. It can't be heard until you shut out the noise, silence your inner commentary, and turn off or leave behind the modern "conveniences" of smartphones and technology. If you sit in silence and see, the desert will call to you in a way no other place can. And once you've heard its call you won't ever be able to ignore it again.
The West is rich with stories of people who left behind civilization to spend their days in the desert at a homestead, ranch, or mine. While many of them abused the land out of ignorance, greed, or mere necessity, many of them also had a fierce appreciation for the stark beauty and solace afforded by the desert. It created in them a desire to leave behind urban buzz & clatter and separate themselves to the desert so they could spend their lives listening to what the desert had to say.
I know that while many of you may not be among those who have heard the call of the desert, for those of you who have, may these images be a postcard from home while you are sojourning in a faraway land.
“I have always loved the desert. One sits down on a desert sand dune, sees nothing, hears nothing. Yet through the silence something throbs, and gleams...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Photograph published in News Junkie Post on 5/30/2020
newsjunkiepost.com/2020/05/30/climate-crisispandemics-and...
Photograph also published in The Duran on 5/31/2020
theduran.com/climate-crisis-pandemics-and-bad-governance-...
Also published in TeleSUR English on 6/06/2020
www.telesurenglish.net/opinion/Climate-Crisis-Pandemics-a...
Questions about Life, Death, and Everything
Looking deep into the night sky, raises existential questions.
Sharpless 171 is a red emission region in the constellation Cepheus. With its smaller companion, Sharpless 170, it resembles an exclamation mark up in the sky. But looking more carefully, Sharpless 171 gives the vague impression of a scull floating in the stars of the milky way. It is surprising that the star illuminating the nebula is one of the hottest stars discovered near our Sun, exhibiting a surface temperature of nearly 45000 degrees Celsius and a luminosity about 100000 times that of the Sun en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NGC_7822.
Technical Details:
89 x 60 sec frames taken under suburban skies on September 29, 2019. Canon 550D at ISO 800, Samyang 135mm f/2. Tracked with a Star Adventurer Mini bundle. More details at AstroBin.