I’m curious by nature and embarking in new things now and then is not unusual but then, if I’m honest, the honeymoon period stretches a couple of weeks at best. People closer to me would actually be thinking: “Two weeks!?! That long?!?”
Since I decided to start this blog and open up my creative side to the rest of the world, I took up photography, well… I bought a photo camera, that is. I was also very much influenced by @zhang3__ a.k.a. Jennifer during our last trip together. In the last fifteen years, living, travelling and working in different countries I did not take a single picture of the places I’ve been, people I’ve met and stories I’ve encountered. Jennifer, which is a fashion designer and prominent fashion blogger/influencer in China, spent a big deal of time desperately trying to teach me what a good picture should look like in her line of work. I did what I could but I was defensive, defensive towards a way of looking at the world and defensive towards “taking pictures” where I struggled to find a reason to spend so much time beyond a camera. The turning point was in Venice: boarding a Gondola to take some shots of her in a customer’s outfit the Gondoliere asks, “Is this your job or are you two together?” – “A bit of both” is all I manage to say not knowing the answer to either question. That got me thinking about this form of communication I never considered: images, moments snatched to the savage blurring of time.
In the following days of the trip, Jennifer keeps challenging me about my “prejudice” not in words but in actions. She does this thing to me… I catch her looking at me as if she is seeing something in me I’m not aware of, something that comes out in glimpses only now and then. She seems to like it, so much so that it is worth waiting for it to happen. And she takes pictures of me, of these moments she has the patience to wait for…. “Look, isn’t this a cool pic?”- “Yeah, somehow you manage to make me look good!” I say -“That’s because I do it with love. The pictures you take of me are ugly… because you don’t love me” she jokes.
This blog exists because I’ve got a story to tell and because of my love of words. Once they are out, dangerous, emotive, unchangeable words. I confess: my words are stuck at the moment, clogged in the funnel that connects my thoughts to the page. My words are in a Venturi funnel where the pressure of their sheer volume and density pushes them through the choke of the page and when they get through, they come out too quickly and not with the same pressure, not the same impact and weight I want them to have. My voice is distorted. I want to say too much and all together. This is the way it is as I write this post but I’m giving myself time for the pressure to ease, to even-out. Maybe soon the flow of my words will be the way I know it can be and my voice will be clearer, louder.
“If you are good with words already, why don’t you consider how powerful can they be matched to images” says Jennifer. I took that in and I’m now exploring it.
I’m not a photographer, not in technique nor knowledge let alone experience. I’m not a photographer but I like what photography does to me. Forces me to be patient and to have an open mind before a quick eye and all I know is that my taking pictures feels like a good outlet to what I have inside while I wait for my words to get straight again.
live near the town park, a small little park with a greyish/greenish pond in the middle. I would have never considered it as a place to take “beautiful pictures” but the other day, attracted by the sound of Scottish bagpipes I pick up the camera and go there “something interesting in that park for once!” I think. But, what is the saying? Oh, yeah! Karma is a bitch goes the saying. By the time I got there, the concert was over and I’m left alone with my camera and the distorted idea that “there can’t be anything interesting in this park around the corner and it sucks anyway”. I sit on a bench, then another and start looking at ducks and geese, there is a dim white light coming through the clouds and also the pond is not grey/green anymore but reflects the light back as a silver plate. I get over my disdain and I start shooting. These living creatures move, eat, fly, live…. It takes an open mind to connect with them, it takes patience to snatch a wings’ flap from the savage blurring of time.
