What Photography means to me

What photography means to me
It's about noticing things around us that we don't notice.
It's about awareness
It's about the thingness of things
It's about creating connections
It's about showing the joys and the sadness of life
It's about a sort of transcendence photography forces us to connect to the larger universe, by providing an appreciation of beauty, a sense of hope , the humour and playfulness associated with being in the flow and being grateful .
Photography connects us with humanity, our peers and subjects.
To be a photographer is to take up a Nobel way of life that requires bravery , persistance and courage to make a living.
For me it's very much about learning and growth, through photography you learn about all manner of things just by increasing awareness . A photographer must be curious and open minded.
mike

Can i take your picture?

Lets be careful out there!

Another Day

With the passion of the italian photographer Italo Calvino in 'the adventures of a photographer' i set out yesterday and this morning to photograph something from life.
I drove around 40 miles, the day was dry , the light lovely. I was listening to music and looking,being open to something that I might line up with my head and my heart and camera.
but despite the time and space to do so i either drove in the wrong direction or perhaps driving itself was the mistake.
my car was loaded up with gear from digital cameras to Mamiya RZ and 5x4 Wista.
Recently i saw some things i wanted to photograph but i choose to find out or try to discover new one rather than go back to these sites.
I realise this is a crazy way to practice but i trusted the instinct "shooting from the gut" and i was open to discovering something
but it was not to be on these occasions.

Musings on the creative process

I sometimes feel trying to understand the photograph is impossible,its promise to truth , while at the same time being a kind of fiction and promises to fix life but offers us only an images of our own mortality- its like trying to catch mercury,
so i am trying to both understand both my own thoughts and something as complex as the photograph!

I think sometimes photographers are working in the area of the sub conscious , not really knowing why they are making images but its revealed to them later on perhaps.
I see a lot of work in the ma that reflects something about the interior of the person even if thats not understood by them or by us(the viewer) just yet.

next i will go and work with passion on "whatever interests me" from now till 5th January and see where that takes me!

Best
mike

Painted from Memory (MA Project)

Painted from memory is a sort of portrait of a disappointment.

for awhile I was obsessed with ideas of love and longing.

I knew I could find my future major project by thinking through these

universal themes in art , music and writing.

I spent lovely afternoons in Dublin's National Gallery looking at work by

Murilllo and Rembrandt,plus Edward Munch.

I listened to Martin Hayes and Joni Mitchell, Tindersticks and Nick Cave.

"Trouble lies in sullen pools along the road I've taken

Sightless windows stare the empty street

No love beckons me save that which I've forsaken

The anguish of my solitude is sweet."

I began with an idea about a photographer who looses the love of a women, he has no photograph of her, so he tries to create one, using another woman as his model.

He has to paint her from memory.

He cannot either remember or forget her, without a photograph.

I was interested in how things far from us can be desirable. 
James Elkins writes in the object stares back, that ʻthe allure increases with

the distanceʼ I think thats true.

There's gotta be a record of you someplace
You gotta be on somebody's books
The lowdown - a picture of your face
Your injured looks
The sacred and profane
The pleasure and the pain
Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete
And it's your face I'm looking for on every street.

The journey's longer than
I thought my love
There's lots of things
Get in the way
But every time I think of you
You just steal my heart away

Just like the sunshine after rain
I'll come
To be with you will save the day
'Cos I know
When I'm with you again
You just steal my heart away

From Van Morrison steal my heart away

Introduction

Welcome to Mike's new blog thingy.

I have something to say.

Listen up!

Join in

Talk to each other...