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Author Topic: LuLa forum, hope you'll check out my new site  (Read 6473 times)

fredjeang

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LuLa forum, hope you'll check out my new site
« Reply #20 on: June 24, 2010, 06:13:13 am »

Quote from: stamper
You don't seem to be short on motivation; that's my single biggest problem these days, that and boredom with the local scene. And time: I seem to do nothing, but it takes all morning to do it. Then I go eat and after that it's either too hot (now, at last!) or I get sidetracked by the computer.

I need a holiday from  myself.

Rob C


I couldn't have written it better myself. I have wandered far - I don't drive - in the nearly ten years that I have been in photography and seeing something different is difficult. Maybe a new pair of eyes?
Stamper, Rob, myself (I'm also answering to myself here) etc...

I think that we do not need a new pair of eyes, but we do need a new movie that these eyes are watching.
In other words, we need a physical move. Like what Michael is actually doing.

What do you feel when you hear about Michael's move? You feel that is going to boost his life in a good way, don't you? Well,
that is my feeling. He is moving the stagnated soup, he is offering himself another panorama. No doubt that the pics will
increased and the inner sensation will be feeded by all these new stimulations.

There is nothing more killing that staying in the same place and watching every single day the same movie.
First, you think that it's you and make the resolution to extract something interesting when there is nothing stimulating any more.
And that is when we start these abstract experiments, these macro shots of available objects.
A srewdriver suddenly becomes a pretext of beauty. A dead car engine under the morning sun. Wired textures.

Seeing the beauty at the street corner is indeed a great and frustrating exercice.

Great because it just forces to enhance the perception, being able to find beauty in every single moment, included the most difficult ones.
And it is true that there is, that sometimes we do not see enough where the photography is, and it might be just there.

Frustrating because every attempt, succeded or not, is filling the glass. There is a time when whatever water you put into the glass it just can
be filled any more. Why? because the glass has a specific volume. It can handle a certain quantity. So whatever the efforts are, the capacity is
what is. There is no other solution than taking another empty glass or changing it. That is the sense of the move.

Many great artists have always made physical moves when things where stagnating. The danger is just to think that one's vision is not
good enough when the real thing that should be done is just a physical move.

Let allow myself to introduce a crazy idea. What you could do, Rob and Stamper, is make an exange. Rob goes to Glasgow and Stamper goes to the Island for awhile. That sounds crazy isn't it? but it actually would operate a great move and inspiration on both.
Yes, your Scotish town has changed, but you will walk in those streets with the camera, something powerfull will happen. Maybe your very best pictures are there, waiting for you.

We should not treat themselves bad, thinking that we can not see the magic any more. What we need IMO is just a move.
Artists do that constantly, animals do that constantly. And even Mother nature does not like stagnation. Everything is constantly moving.
If we stay still for too long, IMO, we are just going against the natural law. And the price to pay at this toll is pretty high.

Let's move!

Cheers.
« Last Edit: June 24, 2010, 06:21:48 am by fredjeang »
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Rob C

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« Reply #21 on: June 24, 2010, 10:50:51 am »

Does anyone else feel that this site has become far more gripping of late?

The idea of moving is great, but it also carries the same, tiny practical flaw as that M9: cost. I have sometimes thought of leaving the rock and returning to the city whence I came, but I know that it's been far too long: thirty years, more or less, with only a few six-week visits in between those years. When I was there last - almost six years ago - I realised I no longer knew the place. Worse, I also realised that memory was stronger than new experience: I hated the changes and thought that all the new buildings, the new roadways, all of it were mistakes. I remember being able to cycle to school and then, when I was older, to work from south Glasgow to Paisley without any trouble at all - in the fogs I just pushed the bike, and in the ice I just fell off. Today, I'd be a traffic statistic.

Fred, I have to ask you the same question, then: why did you leave France - was it to escape the cons and the mecs, the flic? Did you just fall in love with Victoria Abril or Penélope Cruz? Who can tell, and even you will find it hard to know. I thought I had it all sussed too, that it was all to do with photo locations and work - I no longer really believe that about my motivation, I think I was actually looking to be Robinson Crusoe. And damn, did I succeed! Thank God my wife was as certain about it all as I was in those early years; the one time she had doubts was when the first grand-child came along, but that natural wish to be with the new young life passed into a more sensible idea of the place of an older person within family life - don't smother!

As I may have mentioned, when we first drove from here to Scotland I fell in love with the area around the Dordogne and property there was, then, far cheaper than in Mallorca. I was very tempted and felt we needed a change. But, Ann said one thing when I pointed at a wonderful little house up on a mound in a field: Rob, have you failed to notice the amount of firewood they have stored alongside that house? Hmmm....

Cities now make me fairly uncomfortable, I feel threat where it may exist only in my mind, or it may be real. I don't think I could tell the difference anymore until it was too late. Even laid-back Palma de Mallorca can scare the wits out of people in some places - the police won't go into some gypsy areas of the city without lots of back-up and automatic weaponry. Raids make the papers with full photo coverage. Ah the drugs, theft and prostitution trades! Why be a photographer if all one seeks is money? One can be a whore in a whole lot of other more highly rewarding industries!

Rob C

fredjeang

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« Reply #22 on: June 24, 2010, 11:42:40 am »

Rob, are you serious about Mallorca?
Did not know that.

Why did I land on Madrid from Paris?
Total casuality. At that time I was not looking for a change in the terms I expressed there. No girl involved either.
I was about to establish my residence in England. I always loved England more than France (and loved the british girls! and also had a scotish girlfriend...wild!!!)
Then an English friend who was building his home in andalusia offers me to spend a summer in his Madrid's flat.
I just falled in love with the climate, life style quality and the special atmosphere of Madrid and decided to change my English move for Spain.
All has just been improvised in a question of days, based on an organic sensation if I might say.
I don't regret the move at all, but feel that it is time for me to leave Spain in a close future.
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Rocco Penny

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« Reply #23 on: June 24, 2010, 03:05:03 pm »

Quote from: Rob C
Does anyone else feel that this site has become far more gripping of late?

... I feel threat where it may exist only in my mind, or it may be real...
...- the police won't go into some gypsy areas of the city without lots of back-up and automatic weaponry...
... Ah the drugs, theft and prostitution trades!  Why be a photographer if all one seeks is money? One can be a whore in a whole lot of other more highly rewarding industries!

Rob C

Rob,
You might be the old man I want to be.
If I'm reading you right, you're saying you'd rather take photographs of thugs, criminals, miscreants, and more or less dubious characters than to take a good job that pays say 100K a year?
Or am I reading too much into what you're saying?
OK just paying attention
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Rob C

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« Reply #24 on: June 25, 2010, 03:29:58 am »

Quote from: Rocco Penny
Rob,
You might be the old man I want to be.
If I'm reading you right, you're saying you'd rather take photographs of thugs, criminals, miscreants, and more or less dubious characters than to take a good job that pays say 100K a year?
Or am I reading too much into what you're saying?
OK just paying attention



Rocco

That's a very flattering communication! No-one has previously even hinted at the possibility of wanting to be me; I am humbled.

But hell, I don't like being humble! Some time after my mother died I was looking at her Eng/Span/and the other way around dictionary and there, on the inside of the dust cover, she had written: defiant, flamboyant, triumphant. I have no idea if she had been trying to send me a posthumous message having perhaps had an inkling of her own end, but whatever else, it sure summed up her approach to living. I have pondered that little three-word message ever since.

I never was much into celebrity photography, so as far as taking pics of thugs, criminals etc. perhaps you are reading too much into my words? That all depends on how much I should read into your 'confusion' of course, but were I getting 100K at the monet I would probably already have that M9. Funny, before I could afford a 500C I used to salivate about it just as I now do over that little German piece. (Not Claudia, she's a large German piece and I have already been in love with BB so why accept a copy?) And once I had the 500C - well, I just forgot about it and had to get a back-up.

Ah the lure of what one believes unobtainable.

No, maybe you want to reconsider being anything like me - personally, I'd rather just again be in that beautiful time zone between 35 and 50!

Ciao

Rob C
« Last Edit: June 25, 2010, 03:31:32 am by Rob C »
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Rocco Penny

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« Reply #25 on: June 25, 2010, 11:43:11 am »

Michael LS, I love the kerchiefs. Very pretty.

Rob C

Yep my Ma is funny too.
Marched in the civil rights and anti war rallies in the 60's as she rode horses and avoided redneck's passes.
Ran a ranch, had only about 25 head, but would tell a cowboy how to do it.
My Pa did lotsa work too, with the horses and regular job he was as busy a man as I ever knew.
He got good at roping the ass end of cows like a pro.
He always would ride a horse he rescued from the auction.
Would wait for a dangerous type of rodeo bronc, or just any horse he had a feeling for.
He was right sometimes and wrong sometimes.
He had a big gelding named Coffee that once took off with me on the back of it and wouldn't stop until I fell off at the fence.
Mean damn horse.
Anyway, the reason I said anything is because you seem oddly suited to telling the world to bite your rump,
and I couldn't agree more
As to my confusion,
yeah have you seen Royal Tennenbaums?
The kid that Bill Murray's character is testing?
Yep
one dent, two dents, three dents  
Oh well,
photography has me busy so the danger from horses is considerably less now...
take it easy,
and sorry for the load of c  r  a  p  in your thread Michael
« Last Edit: June 25, 2010, 11:44:37 am by Rocco Penny »
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Rob C

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« Reply #26 on: June 25, 2010, 02:58:53 pm »

Hi Rocco

No, I haven't caught the Tennenbaums - sound as if I know of them but in reality it's just an echo of something that passed in the night. Many good things are like that - both echoes and impossible to pin down; probably like good horses, but I don't know much about them either, except that they are very fierce and bite and/or crush if they catch you in close quarters. I'm told they are also dumb, but I think it's just a clever ploy that gets them the sympathy when they kick some poor unfortunate's head right off.

I hate bullfighting, and I always thought that the picador's horses were terribly brave, facing down the bulls like that, and all; then, one night, I was sitting in the wrong seat facing the tv in the local bar having something to eat and the fights were on. Hell's bleedin' bells - the poor old nags are blindfolded! Who would have guessed. I suppose I should have.

But I have worn Levis all my life.

Rob C

Rob C

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« Reply #27 on: June 25, 2010, 03:00:19 pm »

Oops! Another double!

Rob C
« Last Edit: June 25, 2010, 03:01:04 pm by Rob C »
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