Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Words I love to live by..

Earlier this week, I took a look at my "favorite quotes" section of my facebook account and realized there are so many quotes which I love but have often forgot.

For example:
Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgement that something else is more important than fear. -Ambrose Redmoon

or:
The important thing is this: To be able at any moment to sacrifice what we are for what we could become. - Charles DuBois

These are words which I would live by and think about at the time of discovery, but as easily as they appeared they slip away, as if just a fleeting thought. Upon learning this of myself, honestly, I was disappointed. There were so many time where I could have used these quotes for encouragement and inspiration, but having forgotten them was as if I had never known them in the first place.

On the same topic, I was reading blogs and articles this morning posted by fellow photographers.
Adobe Lightroom posted this article on Facebook : Artists and Photographers: 20 Best Pieces of Advice in 2010

There, as I read through, I was inspired by the iPhone photographer, Aik Beng Chia, and his words. He mentioned a quote by Sion Fullana, which said, “Look around you and fall in love with tiny details.” Chia says that he lives by this saying when shooting and automatically I related to him. The photo that was posted as his example in the article was of the silhouette of a girl in pig tails, holding a bunch of balloons, floating off into the sky and a man on the ground walking right past her, looking at Chia and his iPhone, as if she wasn't even there... I feel like Chia is saying that the detail of the man not noticing the girl, probably because she wasn't there in the first place(he traced her in, using Sketchbookmobile), is what made the photo.

I could be completely wrong on this, but I still feel as if I know what Chia meant. Fullana's quote is a mantras of mine as well I mean, in phot
ography, I look for the details which most people overlook. They may look directly at the same things as I do, but miss seeing what I see. Maybe that's because often I see with the eye of a 50mm f/1.8 and most non-photographers aren't sure what that's like, but detail (and lack thereof, actually) is what I live for when I create.

I guess the difference between Fullana's quote and the earlier two is that I've gotten the revelation of this one and the others' are still just warm and fuzzy to me. I haven't gotten their full meaning yet, and maybe that's why they are so easy to forget.

Well anyway, Happy Wednesday!

4 comments:

Hope said...

I know precisely what you mean - well not the lens part as much as the quote part. That's why I wrote them on my walls. ;)

Unknown said...

hehe, yes, I guess I understand why now, but I think if I did that I'd start getting annoyed at my quotes.

Unknown said...

The problem with quotes is that you didn't come up with them yourself so it won't mean the same thing to you as it did for the originator. You can however, glean insight and knowledge from other's quotes. It is nice to hear what others have to say and to interpret it as it pertains to your life, but even better to create your own quotes - not necessarily in words, but in how you live your life. Be it your photography, your work, your projects, or how you interact with others. Those quotes from others that you have read and feel like you have forgotten are already part of you and subliminally will show through in your work. That is your legacy and people will remember your "quotes" in their own way as well...

don said...

I think "seeing" is one of the biggest benefits to being a photographer (including amateurs). One tends to notice things including details others miss. The ease of snapshotting with digital cameras may not produce that same improvement in seeing. Got think about this. I enjoyed reading your ideas and the quotes and seeing your pictures. I check on you on Facebook rather frequently.