Photographer Stephen Wilkes made photos of contemporary Chinese factories and the workers in them. An article explaining the background and his motivation is here. Well worth a visit!
My good friend Wolfgang has been very persistent in insisting that we take up hiking the mountains again, so that is what we recently did.
The plan was to go to the Rappensee and then hike some of the peaks there. I had spent the previous week (re-)paving around the house and my knees cried foul the second day. So I stayed at the Rappensee as he stormed the peaks. Fortunately, I do not need my knees to operate a camera.
Mountain Sheep
The dramatic clouds you see in the pictures are slightly misleading: while there were a number of clouds about, it was actually quite sunny and warm.
Dusk falls
Finally, here’s a panorama seen from the Seebichl:
Mountain Panorama seen from Seebichl
I am really happy with the images and I am even happier that I spent some quality time with a good friend.
On October 6 and 7 the associated choirs of St. Lantpert in Freising are performing Elijah by Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy. Some pictures from the latest rehearsal:
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| The Israelites watch Elijah compete with the priests of Baal |
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| The prophets of Baal call to their god |
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| Singing is fun! |
More information about the performance is available here and more pictures are here.
Kirk Tuck of wrote two very interesting blog posts. The first is about art and digital photography. One sentence really stuck with me:
I hear a lot of people talk about how much better their work is with digital cameras and workflows but I personally don’t see this trend reflected in art. The images that art culture still talks about are mostly done on film.
The second post is about the changing/changed paradigm of camera use and the fact that most of us churn through our equipment instead of using it for many years.
We’re moving from a craft mentality which demanded a long and detailed mastery of all areas of a discipline into a post-craft world where the latest apps and styles take cultural precedence over perfectionism.
Alain Briot in “Marketing Fine Art Photography” writes at length about the fact that being an artist means constantly pushing toward the 100% perfection mark. In other words, being an artist (or a certain type of artist) is about the “craft mentality”.
It takes a lot of time and effort to get from “good enough” to “perfect”. If you switch equipment before you get there, you start over again. Because digital encourages switching equipment, far fewer practitioners reach perfection with their equipment than with film.
So maybe the fact that the “images that art culture still talks about are mostly done on film” is not a coincidence?
Afterthought: I am not claiming that it is necessary (or even desirable) to reach perfection to take good photographs. Striving for perfection may, however, be necessary to make Art.
I was recently passing through Munich central station when I noticed the play of sunlight coming in low contrasted against the clear blue sky. With the deep shadows in the roof, this gives an almost surreal image.
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| Abstract Roof |
