ku # 525 ~ thinking, thinking, thinking

QIntessential high peaks region river • click to embiggenYesterday I mentioned a waning enthusiasm for my landscape ku picturing. I guess that should come as no surprise after making more than 1,000 ku pictures.

Nevertheless, this week I did something that I have never done before - forced myself to take a hike with the intent of making ku pictures. The word "forced" may be too strong in as much as taking a hike up here is hardly a disagreeable thing whatever your intent but I did have to will myself to do it (where's the u-shaped electric cattle prod when you need it?) in a manner to which I was unaccustomed.

That said, the point of the exercise was to see, once I was out there, if the natural world was still speaking to me in the way it has up until this point, which could be summed up like this - I listen. Nature speaks. I picture. Or, like this:

That's one of the problems about taking pictures, some people think when they are taking pictures ... they shouldn't think, thinking is bad for taking pictures. Thinking is good for conceptualizing. Taking pictures has to do with seeing things, being surprised, being interested, it is not about thinking, it is about discovering." - Eliott Erwitt

Of course, Erwitt (and I) are speaking about making "conceptual snapshots" - those pictures with which the "mental labour employed in it" is expended well before one takes camera in hand and ventures forth to picture. And, as I mentioned in yesterday's entry, I have been more engaged recently in thinking as part an integral part of the act of picturing - "constructing" and "staging" the visual referents in my decay & disgust pictures.

I must admit that all of this picture-making thinking has led me to a moment of self-doubt about my non-thinking ku picturing - is it just the lazy way of making a picture? You know, you just do a few index finger stretching / flexing reps, use a little Visine, grab a camera, and get to it.

I mean, how hard is that?

OK. OK. Calm down. It is should be obvious from the sheer astronomical number of mediocre and outright bad pictures out there that making good pictures (see Ku # 522 ~ it's a matter of educated opinion for a notion about "good") is not all that easy. But, I think you get my point.

So, you might ask (getting back to the matter at hand), how did the forced march go? Quite well, in fact. Once in the environment, I found the natural world is still singing and speaking and my eye is still seeing. It was a very productive hike, picturing-wise. Several good additions to the ku body of work were created, including one that may turn out to be one of my all-time favorites.

It appears that I've still got the ku in me. In fact, I am relatively certain that I will always have it in me. It's just that, to paraphrase the Walrus, the time has come to think of other things ....

There is, however, plenty more ku to come.

Comments

[Mike]

Ku Ku Kajoo!