View allAll Photos Tagged requiredreading
We are more than our cameras.
So, so much more. But it is ok to excuse yourself for thinking otherwise. It is easy to do. We get caught up in the incredible capabilities of our equipment these days. Or we get caught up in the incredible prices we pay for this equipment. Or we trap ourselves through convenience into having to rely on our equipment to prove what we are doing, never having developed sufficient trust or confidence in ourselves as photographers. This is all understandable, but it shouldn't be true.
Our cameras are complex and near-miraculous, but we are more so. Our hearts race when we stand at the edge of the Grand Canyon with sunset pouring color into the sky. Our minds wander sitting at the edge of the ocean listening to the roar of the surf. We sweat and curse and bleed over the course of miles through a thick forest just to see a waterfall. We laugh or cry or shake our heads at the wonder of it all. Cameras don't do any of this. We do.
But wait you say, we need what cameras do to make pictures. And I say, no we don't. It all helps: auto-focus, exposure meters, lens coatings, histograms, aperture/shutter priority, depth of field preview, HDR, vibration reduction. These things do matter, but we are still more than them. I have made images without auto-focus, I have made them without lenses at all. I have made them without meters and histograms and lens coatings. I have made them on expensive cameras and broken cameras. I have used cameras that cost several thousand dollars and I have used cameras that were less than $10 sum of the materials used to build them. I use a wooden box with a hole in one side and nothing else for crying out loud (made this image here). I have cross-hatched my fingers in front of the lens mount of my DSLR to approximate an aperture and made an image that way. I have made images without cameras at all.
The cameras do matter... and they don't. But there is no question that we - the people holding the cameras - matter. We matter a great deal... we are indispensable in fact. A photographer can be a photographer without his or her camera. But a camera without a photographer is a paperweight and not always a very good one at that.
There are a lot of challenges that modern photographers face, but one of the most subversive is that they outsource so much of themselves to their cameras. They let their cameras think for them, act for them, photograph for them. They mistake themselves into thinking that the camera creates the images as opposed to themselves making the images. They look to their cameras to show them proof that they did it all right instead of trusting themselves. We worry about miss-exposure when we should be worrying about mood. We pixel-peep when we should be sitting there soaking in the scene and contemplating how best to condense this wide, complex world into two dimensions.
This is not a rant about modern technology. Modern technology is great when you keep it in its place. But really I don't want to get distracted by talking about modern technology, that is not where I want to draw emphasis.
Forget your camera, it will be there when you need it.
Concentrate on yourself and what you do. Think, feel, express, dream, imagine, empathize, explore, experiment. This is just a start, but these are all things that we do that are so crucial to the images we make. And not one of them can your camera do.
We are more than our cameras.
This image was made by me, with the assistance of my Zero Image pinhole.
That ^^^ means no flashy logos or daft graphics please!!
One of the more intriguing and interesting principals that got drilled into me when I was studying photography is the idea of viewing and viewers. You guys here are the viewers, and as such, I as the thick plank taking the photo, need to think about how I take it, and how I portray Sarah here in it, such that I give you guys the right impression and right meanings with the photo. (If there is such a thing.) It's basic principles, but to give you an idea of how integral it is to photographic theory and understanding, one of the key texts that any decent photography teacher will ever refer to is a book called 'Camera Lucida' by Roland Barthes. In it, in eloquant and long winded ways, he manages to spin an entire book out of this one idea. The book's not easy reading, and many who've read it use it as a method to act all snobby over those that haven't, and frankly Mr Barthes goes about his points with a distinct air of 'I'm more intelligent than you' and waffles for ages.
But the points he makes aren't just valid, they're the cornerstone of understanding portraits, and to a certain extent, taking pictures overall. It's highly recommended reading for anyone trying to delve into the thinking side of photography.
But I digress...
What I'm trying to get at, is once you've got an appreciation for understanding how what you as a photographer sees, and how that impacts what the viewer of the images sees, you start to be able to mess with it. Now, I don't claim to be very good at this stuff, just to try and dabble, but photos like this make me ask one question.
Who's looking at who, and how?
Am I looking at Sarah?
Am I looking at Sarah consciously or subconsciously knowing how I'm portraying her, or am I shooting her blind and naively?
Are you looking at Sarah, or my photo, or both?
Or neither?
Are you reading these words trying to understand, or wondering what the flying **** I'm on about?
Or more to the point...
Is the one doing the looking, consciously, or subconsciously, actually Sarah?
Let that stew on your head for a bit!
Then have a coffee/have a beer/have a glass of wine/have some cake/go the **** to bed. (delete as applicable).
Enjoy. If this screws with your head, rest assured, taking every one of these bloody photos does the same to me, and more. And I love it! :-)
This is a thorough and helpful self-help book for those wishing to learn how to clean out their house while battling the compulsive thoughts that drove them to hoard. It is still rather dry reading and still relies heavily on a rational, logical approach, but the authors have a humorous and light touch and are much more detailed, systematic, pragmatic and practical than the hoarding specialists they learned from, who wrote their own self-help book, Buried In Treasures a few years after.
This book focuses much more on the actual process of the clean out. Through them I actually learned what is meant by cognitive therapy as applied to hoarders and that is to use rational questioning techniques to challenge the automatic thoughts with Aristotlean logic. They categorize automatic thoughts into those that cherry pick the negative, using feelings to prove yourself right, overgeneralizing and jumping to conclusions and all the rest of the guilt making tools of blame and black and white thinking.
They suggest using flash cards to identify the automatic thought, then categorizing the thought per the above cherry picking and finally reframing the thought in a more even handed rational and positive fashion to foster self-encouragement.
In the same fashion I was more clear about exposure with response prevention E/RP technique. And this is to identify a source for acquisitions such as a garage sale at the high end of the desire scale (using SUDS rating system) or a grocery store at the low end, then expose yourself to these sources of compulsive acquisition starting with the low end and practicing resistance while noticing anxiety level.
SUDS=subjective units of distress scale
This book works for me because it involves exploring one's thoughts and writing them down rather than being led through hypothetical thoughts in a workbook style. And the step by step program to target an area and systematically remove each item one by one, appealed to my do-it-yourself nuts and bolts approach. Their three and a half boxes system includes a save box, throw out box, display box (for items belonging in the space) and a to-do immediately box for things found that need urgent action. I have not used a display box before.
I also liked that they go for clearing a space that will offer a visual reward, then moving on towards hidden storage like drawers and cupboards. This is my method to build momentum on the visual success. And they describe how to break down a project and focus on it in a way that is very plain speaking and descriptive which is where the rubber meets the road in self-help books.
This book is required reading for hoarding specialist certificate.
The classroom copy, a Signet Classic edition of George Orwell's "1984". I have made a gallery of covers and some images related to this timeless work. You can view them here:
The leaders in hoarding research have written a self-help book for hoarders. In it they are kinder towards professional organizers than they were in their more recent book Stuff. In fact they confess to having borrowed quite a lot from us. This includes the actual process of sorting, then categorizing. They even offer a list of categories. And it's true many of my clients are unable to categorize at all. Categories have to do with conceptualizing and generalizing and my clients see each item as something unto itself. Categorizing is one of my talents since I am good at both language and conceptualizing (customized to the client).
Authors also like the Only Handle It Once rule and give it an acronym–OHIO. Handling it once is very difficult for one of my hoarders. I think he has about six levels of handling before he can finally make a decision on it. I suggested he bring it down to two. When he trusts me more I'll try to sit with him and ask him what he is thinking about each item.
Most of the book, however, is about brain clutter and there are many exercises with fill-in the blank questions to help the hoarder understand their thought patterns and assess their feelings about their environment, their acquiring habits and their motivation. They also divide thoughts into "bad guys" and "good guys". The bad guys are 1)Lack of priority, 2)Unhelpful beliefs, 3) Overthinking, 4) Avoidance/Excuse Making, 5) Going for Short Term Payoff (indulging in the pleasure of acquiring things). Each of these comes with workbook style exercises.
Good guys are 1) Eyes on the Prize 2) Downward Arrow (asking what would be bad about throwing X out and what would be so bad about that and so on), 3) Thinking It Through (asking rational questions), 4) Behavorial Experiments (using scientific process to prove or disprove thinking processes), 5) Skill development using organizational techniques, strategizing.
Chapter on motivation comes down to giving yourself a good talking to about the hazards of hoarding. Then to visualize a room in the house to discover anxiety level when imagining it to be less cluttered. Then imagine possible new uses for it once clutter is eliminated. This would only work for me if the program included a quest or high value goal with a great deal of meaning or purpose, but these elements not mentioned here. As far as motivating my clients, I don't try to. I just start and if they are ambivalent eventually they realize I'm just going to make them do it, make them decide about things. I'm not big on the question of motivation if something needs to be done. I don't let that be the issue. For my own tasks, I just find a way to make it small enough to be feasible.
As someone who likes self-help books, I give this one a thumbs down. It is just too wordy. I don't like being led through exercises and the visualizations were boring. It did not capture my imagination or my motivation. The good guys and bad guys part were a clever idea so more helpful.
Very few in the general population seem to master something through self-help books and even less of the chronically disorganized. A lot depends on the emotional stress tied up with the project in question and the resulting self-esteem level. I know that I cannot bare to read investment material anymore. Nor could I learn martial arts or a musical instrument with a book, but for hands-on craft-like projects, a lot is possible.
This book is required reading for hoarding specialist certificate.
Pictured: Required reading over approximately 5 years of post secondary studies. On the left side is my computing science stack, while on the right, there are some elective and not so elective texts.
Not pictured: A dozen or so texts that I was actually able to sell back at a somewhat reasonable price.
Screenprinted poster based on Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. For the Gallery 1988 Required Reading show.
November 11, Berlin.
"Important artifacts and personal property from the collection of Leonore Doolan and Harold Morris, including books, street fashion and jewelry" – phew! – by Leanne Shapton, which is made up like an auction catalogue, tells the story of a four-year relationship through the stuff the couple owned together. Great idea, good book.
Here it is with some of our stuff.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
Liz Linden and Jen Kennedy host a publishing open mic for their feminist publishing project pilot press.
A copy of the third edition received direct from Mr. Marcotte himself, a fine, fine gentleman of the internets.
You too should have this, and any other book he's touched (or even looked at) on your bookshelf. They are like solid gold. Platinum even.
He also says such nice things even if there is no statistical evidence to prove it.
This shows how globalization, digital culture and capitalism all relate and influence each other in equal ways.