THE PASSION FOR THE PIC

Following on from my last post, I'll say a little bit about what I 
enjoy with photography. As described before, I haven't actually 
developed a picture that I've taken on film (which equates to 
pretty much all of those that I take for pleasure) in years, so 
it's clearly not primarily driven by a desire to see or share the 
results. In fact it hasn't escaped me that I could save a lot of 
trouble by not having any film in the camera at all, but I guess 
that's like writing this Gopher phlog without putting it online - I 
need a core purpose.

At its best I think I enjoy trying to capture something intangible 
about a place, or how I see it at that moment. The ordered disorder 
of a city and the people within, the overbearing force of an 
approaching storm, the isolation of an abandoned farm house. I 
don't know how well I achieve this, but in any case while taking 
the pictures that's something to contemplate later, the fun is 
simply in trying.

Very windy weather is often fun, when trees start to bend sideways 
and you have to brace yourself against the gusts while trying to 
keep steady for a shot, wiping spits of rain off the lens. A place 
normally still and tranquil is transformed into somewhere full of 
loud, uncertain noises and wild movement as structures of man and 
nature are both put to an uncompromising test. Exposed places 
become deserted (where they weren't already), the few forced to 
venture through them running for the nearest cover. But you stand 
against it, cold, wet, but with a purpose: to capture the scene. To 
_see_ the scene.

I also make a yearly trip into Melbourne and often get through 
three or four films over the day. I hate Melbourne, probably all 
large cities but my experience is mainly with Melbourne and I don't 
care much to expand it. Cities are the ultimate concentration of 
people and their individual achievement (as well as corresponding 
conflict), I hate people so I hate cities. But going back to one of 
my philosophies already covered here, I love what I hate and hate 
what I love, and it's no more true than on one of these day trips 
where an old country train takes me into the heart of this feared 
city to roam until the return service departs in the early hours of 
the winter night. To exist there daily would send me mad, I mean 
propper machette-wielding phycho mad, but for a day I can just 
appreciate it, marvel at it, at the people living within it, and 
those lost in its cracks. I don't carry a phone, just an old pocket 
street map from the mid 90s (I once almost missed the landmark I 
was looking for because it was in the process of being demolished) 
and maybe some selected print-outs of maps from the web for areas 
out of the CBD, so I'm always lost. But that's often the way to 
find the stranger places, and the scenes that go with them. No I 
haven't been mugged yet.

So that's photography for me. Besides the Melbourne trips (I don't 
do city driving, or try really hard not to in any case) it's 
usually also an excuse to go for a drive in my Jag. That's a 
pleasure all of its own, and also done GPS-less with a selection of 
old map books and a pre-planned route, jotted down on paper, which 
keeps off highways and into the back roads as much as physically 
possible. Along deserted roads you find the old farmhouses, rivers 
and gullies, and quiet country towns, all prime candidates for 
photos in anybody's book. Plus with usually nobody else about you 
can cruse along at your own pace, slowing up as you decide whether 
to pull over and take a shot of whatever pretty sight just revealed 
itself.


Finally I'll comment on one other pleasure which is looking at 
other people's photos. I don't go for Flicker, or any of those 
popular platforms. What I really like is finding some old personal 
website, probably by pursuing some completely unrelated enquiry and 
discovering a photos section. Odds are that it was set up in the 
late 90s or early 2000s when the tech-savvy author got a digital 
camera, or a scanner to scan in their old film photos, and they've 
since got bored with it or moved on to social media. It might just 
be a raw directory of barely-organised image file links, or have 
thumbnails and written descriptions. The photos themselves might be 
very good, or just accumulated shots from their own past with which 
you can play a fun game of piece-together-the-life, or a random mix 
of both. I might be the only one who really looks at them besides 
friends and family of the individual, but whether it's in 
appreciation their art, or just a creepy desire to peek into their 
lives, I find it an addictive way to waste time online.

Better yet is looking through old family slides from old holidays, 
mainly in the 50s and 60s. I'm lucky to have had very well traveled 
grandparents on both sides, who also took the opportunity to catch 
some remarkable scenes now long lost to time, from unrecognisable 
outback towns to foreign countries since transformed by modern ways 
and often also numerous wars. One wonders what people in sixty or 
seventy years time will make of all the troves of images 
documenting today's world? Will they even look? Will the photos 
themselves actually be kept that long within cyberspace? And will 
the important scenes that warranted capture in the film era be lost 
amongst the noise resulting from a capacity to take pictures for no 
cost and just a momentary social reward?

Well I think Gopher is actually well suited to my preferred way of 
browsing photos. I don't mean embedded images, which it doesn't 
really support. Nor thumbnails, which it really isn't good for. I 
mean plain text for descriptions, and direct links to image files. 
The mystery of browsing though barely-formatted file links in 
semi-abandoned websites, or of pulling a slide out of a box and 
having it reveal a long forgotten scene through 500 Watts of 
incandescent light. Some time soon I'll set up a section here for 
photos and give it a try. Of course all of my recent ones are still 
sitting in the fridge waiting for the day that I can see them 
myself, but there are some early ones from when I could get them 
developed locally and cheaply, as well as the odd one that I've 
taken around the farm when I happened to have a digital camera 
handy while an irresistable scene presented itself. So watch this 
space!

- The Free Thinker