043: Smile

Smile, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Happy Sunday

Imagine you are at the side of a pool looking out along a diving board, are your pictures 'out there' on the board, while your diary writing is the real you safely on the land? Is there any risk that your art will just slip out too far, or that you and your writing might fall into the water? What if you walk too far out along that board to reach your art and then cannot find your way back? I mention this only because I notice that many people write about one thing, often the mundane real life stuff or technical description of the photographic process, and then their photographic images show something else. Can we tie our words and the expression of our images closer together, or is it necessary for some reason to keep them apart? Are our happy pictures a reaction to something else in our lives, or a striving for something we are not sure about?

Our words are one expression of ourselves, and our images are another, but neither are actually us, although together they give other people a better picture of us than either alone. Instead of imagining our lives and art as a diving board, perhaps it would be better to consider a see-saw instead, with our words at one end and our images at the other, with us as the fulcrum, that point of balance. Perhaps we use our pictures to express what our words cannot, together they better forming or describing our art, or to balance less positive elsewhere in our lives? If this is the case, if we change what we write about, does it also change what we photograph and display for others to see? If true, perhaps if we change what we write in our diaries, we will also change what photographs we choose to take or show - and vice versa? It might be easier to show in images what we lack the confidence to do so with words, or the other way around, and by experimenting with the form we have more confidence in might help us to do more with the other?

By creating this image of me pretending to smile, it helped me write that I was feeling sad that my wife had to stay on for another ten days in New York while I returned home. Would I have written that if first I had not taken the picture and then played around with it until it fitted my mood?

028: Off With His Head

The Man Who Fell To Earth, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

The images were supposed to be accidental, but life is short and why waste a great image idea?

It is important to remember the relationship you have with the world around you, here the idea of a cut off head image and the shape of my new vase just came together and then sparked off the linking 'man who fell to earth' concept (it's a film from the 1970s).

Working on art in one part of your life helps to spark innovation in other parts, and with practice you can end up with more innovation than you can handle. Bu the practice is important, especially in a world where most people feel safer if you remain, like them, as a passive observer instead of a creator.

Creation and observation are two different skills, one passive and the other active, and most commentators are observers of other people's art and are quite happy if you restrict your thinking to their commentary. Creation, on the other hand, means your personal involvement in all phases of what you are doing.

27-Smile... It's Friday

The end of my rainbow, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Smiling, and a shot straight out of the camera.

Always be prepared to drop an idea when it begins to fall apart. This one was supposed to show the top half of my head in the main mirror, and my smiling mouth offset in the small mirror, but it was just too difficult to set up without the shower appearing in shot. So I dumped it, and went for putting the beer in the small mirror and then doing a series of shots until I was in shot - and by some luck I picked up some of the flash on the side of my face.

The camera I set to the 'dusk' automatic setting after quickly trying out several other settings to get the best colour - the indoor setting was washing out the colours, while the beach and the sunset settings made everything go too red/yellow.

26: Nerds

Culturicalus Nerdii, originally uploaded by gingerpig2000.

Today I uncovered my inner nerd - not, although there is something of me in this image. After seeing so many repetitive 'silly walks' too close to the Mont Python original yesterday, I was glad that I had accidentally gone down a different road.

In a similar vein, someone wrote that they were staying in a hotel room, with no props, hence were frustrated they could not put together decent photographs. However, I think that their problem was not a lack of props but basic classicalism. It goes like this - you like taking pictures, and you look out for suitable things which would make good props. Once discovered, they become labelled 'props' in the mind, and we can use them in whatever way we feel in our photographs. However, a hotel room is full of 'hotel room things' like a bed, chair, mirror and such, and the chances are they are not what we would choose if we were looking for props.

What, though, if we were to rid ourselves of all sub-classes of object and instead just thought of everything to hand as 'things'. We exist in relation to whatever things surround us, our existence can be defined in terms of our relation to them. If we are always some form of 'we', and everything else is just 'things', then the only thing restricting us is our preconceptions of how we relate to the things. Dump that mind set, and then what you are left is the opportunity to photograph your present self in the present situation using whatever things are to hand at present. If you can achieve that, and it does require practice, then no where is frustrating because you always have to hand everything you need.

10: Fabulous Embellished Party Hats

This one floored me, I didn't think I had any materials at all for a party hat, and the ones shown on the group were terribly bitsy and twee. Then I noticed the bottle of wine we got on sunday, and wondered if I could balance that on a hat along with a glass - much more like a party hat to me, I thought. Later I noticed wifies jewellery lying in the bathroom, and wondered if I could add that to my hat. However, pushing metal spikes through my cotton hat did not sound like a good idea - but my wooly, winter hat, that would be fine.

This image shows how much I have learnt over the past week about the best way to photograph myself - an angle shot and without glasses. Using a hand is also incredibly useful, a flat edge-on hand can chop the shape, while the almost-fist elongates the face chopped off at the top by the head, as well as the sensual near-mouth finger and the dominant thumb visible in a supporting role.

7: Inspire & Be Inspired

Inspiration is not what we do normally, it is something that occurs in the dark depths of our minds. Here is my invention, designed to shed some light down those dark corridors of the mind, along which we creep blindly, felling our way.

Inspiration, like some kind of strange rabbit, can be encouraged to poke its nose out of that dark waren, but that means we have to do something specific. It is easy to go through life and only occasionally notice the nose of an inspiration rabbit, much harder to learn ways of encouraging one to appear on cue.