taxiscapes #2 - 8 ~ it's me, o lord

24 HOURS OPEN GROCERY ~ NYC • click to embiggen
No Parking ~ NYC • click to embiggen
Belcourt ~ NYC • click to embiggen
ONE WAY ~ NYC • click to embiggen
No Standing ~ NYC • click to embiggen
NOHO STAR ~ NYC • click to embiggen
White wall ~ NYC • click to embiggen"j" still is not satisfied - he/she really wants to know exactly "what I see and why".

Part of his/her curiosity seems to be fueled by the apparent desire to know why - given the same referent - some people see one thing or another while others will see another thing or another. Or, picture-making wise, why the same subject will yield up as many different pictures of it as there are picture makers picturing it.

So, I'll try again - what I see should be obvious - just look at my pictures. What you see is what I saw.

Having stated that, I suspect that "j" won't be satisfied with that answer because I think his/her question is more along the lines of that of Rick (Humphrey Bogart) - "Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, she walks into mine ..." or, in all of the possible POVs, in the all of the scope of your vision, in all the of possibilities of lens / framing selection, you made that picture?

As per the Edward's quote in yesterday's entry, as best as I can determine "j"'s question calls into question the idea of what objects call my pictures into being. What is it in my psyche/brain that causes me to raise the camera to my eye and make a picture?

As best as I can determine from looking at my pictures, I believe that I respond (nearly instantaneously) to a considerable variety of visual stimuli (the collective "objects" that call my pictures into being)- 1) light, shadow, and color - patterns / arrangements thereof, 2) shapes and forms - patterns / arrangements thereof, 3) visual complexity, albeit complexly "simple" - to name just a few that come immediately to mind.

I want to emphasis that I have determined this, as mentioned, from looking at my pictures not from thinking about my picturing M.O. That's because I find my picturing activity to be so spontaneous as to be purely "instinctive" or "reflexive" - I do not "think" when picturing. I do not "work" the referent - I "see", I picture, I'm gone. Badda-bing, badda-boom. Slam-bam, thank you ma'am ... next.

An aside - In order to facilitate spontaneous picturing, I don't fiddle around with lens or gear - I am almost always in a wide-angle state of mind. That said, I occasionally leave the house in a tele frame of mind but, either way, that is how I will "see" exclusively. I am never in a filter state of mind. 95% of the time it's one lens, the same ISO, the same WB, and auto-focus (center frame). I do meter manually. No fuss, no muss.

All of that said, why do I respond to the objects that call my pictures into being?

I have no idea. My attraction to such things, especially visual complexity, has always been there, and I do mean always. Before photography, way before - we're talking kid-dom here, my favored medium was pen and ink / pencil drawing - the more lines/strokes the better. Give me an ivy and vine covered stone wall to illustrate and I was in drawing heaven.

Why? I have no idea. None at all.

Call it preternatural. Call it DNA/in the genes. Call it instinct. Call it peanut butter and jelly on toast. Me? I don't call it anything, it's just what I do.

Comments

[stephen]

I'm with you, Mark. At least, as far as the "why" question goes. I've recently set up my screensaver to cycle randomly through all the photos I've posted over the past couple of years and that's told me I have something of a fixation on geometrical patterns. Which I rather suspected anyway, but this made it obvious. Why do I have this fixation? Dunno. Why did I photograph the particular patterns I did? Dunno. Other than, of course, I felt like it. "Felt" as in "was compelled to", however. No thought as to what anyone else might think of the resulting picture. Not even all that much thought about what I might think of it later. It just had to be done.

I would have to guess that "j" isn't a photographer. "j" may take pictures, but that's not the same thing. Non-photographers take the photographs they feel they're supposed to take. The photographs are, in a sense, pre-approved. Kids. Sunsets. Fall colours. Photographers take these photographs, too, but they also take photographs that leave the "j"s of the world asking why.