046 - These eyes barely hear a thing
On making photos
Hi!
Welcome to the second issue of the third season of Bombay Daak, a newsletter on … hey, today’s issue is on making photos as a lifestyle choice like — I dunno — quinoa?
Scenes Behind a Camera
These incandescent days, with these infinite photos, every ephemeral moment a click away from posterity. This noise is blinding. How does one listen to anything?
And this omnipresent eye in my pocket, roving and roving, bursting inside for something to happen, the itching fingers, this seeking heart, all waiting to pop at a moment's notice and then — to tell someone that here this thing, this piece of time sliced out in perfect proportions was made by me. It is I that seen it!
There are reels and reels spinning out every second like a haemorrhage. The machine whirring, click, scroll, tap, click, tap tap tap, scroll, more, swipe, swooooosh. This noise is blinding. Everyone knows that everything I click is a picture of me, the world is a gazzillion self portraits masquerading.
That is the story. But who is listening? These eyes barely hear a thing.1
To See The World Anew
Last week I spoke of Every Frame a Painting and Nerdwriter. What reminded me of them was the time I have spent on the video essays of Grainy Days on film photography. Jason’s videos are in parallel entertaining and calming, it is suffused with great writing and imagery. I can’t get over his intros. It all comes from a foundation of fine art and literature and is simply soothing to watch. I haven't binged on a channel like this in a long time.2
Then there’s the slow burn essays of Alec Soth going through photo books. The last one I saw — Chance Encounters3 was beautiful and therapeutic.
My dalliance with the analog photography of Grainy Days meant that I got exposed to the channels of William Verbeeck and Tatiana Hopper, whose piece on Robert Frank4 altered my view of photographs forever. It was incidental that the week I finished reading Big Sur, I also read Kerouac’s introduction to Frank’s legendary The Americans. The energy of it all is still reverberating.
And I found common ground in this Robin Rendle essay called In Praise of Shadows on having a personal camera (his is the Fujifilm X100V (mine is the Sony Rx100 M2)) which you must see! He speaks of taking a camera and stepping out to see the world with. Reading it is a great place to set oneself up to read this review of a photobook on a Parisian neighbourhood —
“Although the photographs hardly depict the city, I find they convey the sensation that I had, walking the streets of Belleville.”
— and all of these together shapes today’s letter, and me.
Scenes Beyond the Camera
Composition is good | Story is better | Mood is best
Forget the frame, capture the surroundings. Tell the story of what's happening beyond the visuals; not just what’s seen but how it felt to those in it. Say one story at a time. Listen for it. The listening is in the feeling. Capture the mood. The mood is the taste of things — the thing makes you go back to it. Trust yours!5
Composition is the saying of the story; the drawing the eyes to the one truth that you see, breaking the noise with lines, lights and shadows, and the eyes, capture the eyes, the eyes say everything, the language of the galaxies and stars, for all the emotions there are lie within those deep wells.
The photograph as the end of a process than a result of a tool.
We have to learn what we are controlling for. Until we step out, and think and consider what we really want to say, we won’t know what to show. Spend time with what we see, and to hear our own eyes. Let the story emerge. Proof the dough.
There is nothing like the satisfaction of moving from a thing that is not enough for you anymore; that you, your skills, have outgrown it.
We see what we choose to see
When we say that a thing is in a given place, all we mean is that it occupies such a position relative to other things - Rene Descartes
We take our measure of being from what surrounds us, and what surrounds, is always, to some extent, of our own making - Robert Pogue Harnson
— Alan Huck, I walk towards the sun which is always going down
I guess all I really wanted to say was that you should go out and take photos6. It is a great excuse to step out and see the world. And then come back and look at what you chose to see, and in that way get to know yourself and what you find beautiful.
This issue was written incidentally on the night of 19th of August — World Photography Day
Somewhere in all this I read or head of the concept of listening with your eyes as a photographer. The idea is to be more aware of your surroundings.
His essay on the photograph of the first human is by far my favourite, but that’s like choosing one’s favourite song really. Maybe I’ll send a Daak in the future just on this channel
I first found the quotes from Alan Huck’s book in this video by Soth
This NPR essay on Robert Frank captures the influence The Americans had on America
Beauty it turns out is more personal than universal. This paper concludes that universal shared taste on beauty is only a third. Meaning only 3 out of your 10 friends will feel the same on what you think is beautiful. This should set us free!
Last was a long weekend here in India and I took the opportunity to do just that, and I loved to tell the tale — a dozen odd photos from a walk in my neighbourhood on India’s Independence Day
Apt graffiti! Looks very familiar.