organised chaos

Currently
Playing: Cat Power – I Found A Reason.

At the end
of an absurdly long day, when all you want to do is to just lie sprawled on
your back, spread across your bed with arms spread-eagled and close your eyes,
play Cat Power as you rest your aching limbs and throbbing head. There’s a
floating quality to this song, don’t you think?

—————

Everyone’s
got new cameras. Lutfi, Noi, Raihan, Raihan’s friend… Is there something I
missed? Seems like it’s the season to go trigger-happy with the cam.

I was
thinking about how I see photography as something close to having a celebrity crush.
Celebrity crushes are fun because we don’t go too much into depth and detail of
who the icons really are. The attraction is skin deep – the appeal is really
more in the image rather than the person himself/herself. We know it, we’re
aware of it, but we do it out of general fun because it’s not supposed to be
taken seriously anyway. Well, unless you’re 13 and convinced there’s no one
else for you. Looking beyond the image usually disappoints us because we might
see things we don’t want to. Like him having a kid out of wedlock (a norm these
days), like her posing for Playboy…it damages the fantasy.

It’s almost the same thing for photography.

I once
thought taking a class was the answer to taking better pictures.
I wanted proper developed skills to produce equally proper developed photos.
I’d go through countless photography websites, trying to memorise technical
terms and relate it to capturing art, scout out camera sales to see what would
be the best equipment to save up for. It dawned on me after a while though that
I wasn’t enjoying the experience. It had gotten too… technical. I wasn’t doing it for the art itself anymore. Instead, I
was trying to prove to myself that this was one hobby I would take seriously,
and the result was that I saw photography in a different light altogether. It
just wasn’t for me, this whole other learning side to it. I’m just made this
way. I can’t get too close to an interest, to go into depth with the details. I’d rather admire from afar. I might
not know what I’m missing out on, but I don’t mind distance. Distance is good.
I suspect if I was offered to take a course in literature or philosophy even, I’d
turn it down, despite my interests in them.

I like building my own perspective
around an interest without having to study it first. There’s no foundation to
build on; it’s a complete leap of faith where you don’t know where you’re going
to land. Sometimes you find you’ve come up with a whole new concept all on your
own, no references required.

There are
people who grow better by learning the ropes in this field, but different
people, different needs, different degrees of what they want from the art.

I don’t
have an individual style when I go out on a snapshot outing, neither can I tell
you what established styles there are. I don’t know squat about lens aperture
and shutter speed, camera lingo is all but lost on me, and I may never produce
photos that people can admire on a mass scale. That’s okay. It doesn’t make me
love the art any less. If I can appreciate the whole process of capturing that
one split second from an angle for my own appreciation, that’s enough for me.

On camera
equipment: I’ve mentioned I’m clueless as to models and their features and
dials and whatchamacallits, which would rate me below an amateur. My excuse is
that I want to be challenged. I want to get a shot with a less than capable
gear, and still be able to rate the work as fantastic. In the words of a
photography writer whose name I can’t recall, getting a good photo is not about the device, but taking two steps back
and waiting for the ‘aha!’

Maybe I’m
in denial. The green-eyed monster pays a visit.

Last
Sunday, some of the girls and I went for a picnic at Selayang Park. Up in the
dusky sky were hundreds of kites flapping about as the sun began its descent. It
was incredible. There has never been a time when I wanted a reliable camera in
my hands as bad as I did in that moment.

Enough said
here.