Photography

I still do not own a copy of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Decisive Moment. It seems hard to get a decent copy at a reasonable price. However, Philippe Halsman’s The Creation of Photographic Ideas has been on my shelves for quite a while now. In the book opening, Halsman defines creativity and imagination as une tournure d’esprit-–or a mental attitude and ability which can be directed developed. Although this resonated strongly the first time I read the book, successive readings have let me to a different crossroad. A crossroad I am not sure how to approach. Philippe writes bluntly ...

I always thought that if I wrote about photography I would likely be about some of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photographs that I cannot shake off. Instead, I am writing about the first picture that got me puzzled to the point I needed to know how. How Jacques Henri Lartigue took such a grasping photo. The photo you can see below. Spectators on the side of the road appear angled towards the left. The rear wheel of car number 6 deformed into an ellipse with a semi-major axis leaning on the opposite direction, away from the spectators. The construct gives the frame and incredible sense of speed and urgency. Having said that, this is not what got me staring at it again and again. What keep me intrigued was how could he shoot such a photograph and get such opposing lines on moving objects forming such a surreal V. I sketched a few theories. I read a bit more, hard task when you try to avoid the answer. I barely knew anything about taking pictures then, not that now I know any better now. Yes, panning while shooting may definitely have something to do with it. So I took my DSLR to a street corner and started taking pictures of cars driving by while panning. Frames showed the blurry background, the cars were crisply focused, but I could not reproduce the opposing angles between the background and the moving objects. Now I needed to know, there was not way I was going to give up now. Then, it hit me. Maybe his and my camera were not close relatives at all. And yes, I went and I read some more about the cameras and hardware used when Jacques was taking his pictures. Eventually, I found the missing piece. Suddenly, everything felt into place. I was so painfully obvious now. I am not going to spoil the joy of figuring it out on your own. You should definitely do the exercise. Definitely, it is much more rewarding than getting the answer. On another note, a while back I got an awesome gift in form of a nice compact collection of Jacques’ pictures in Thames & Hudson’s Photofile series book. Worth checking it out if you can get a copy. Be careful though, some of those pictures may grab your thoughts for a while. ...

I have been away from my blog for quite a long time. I have barely posted anything compelling in the last three years. Most of the updates were the sporadic announcements to ACM SigEvo’s GECCO conference, but event that was spotty at best. Yes, like everybody else, I gravitated toward social media (pick your favorite poison here). I spend quite a bit of time thinking what I wanted to use my blog for. Should it be the same kind of blog? Should I change it under the hood? Should I give it a golden retirement since it seems I have no stories to share anymore? Then in the mist of all this unanswered questions, I realized I wanted my blog to be what it has been all along. It is whatever I need it to be. Yes, some thoughts are faster to share on ephemeral social media outlets, but there are things you want to keep around longer. Hence, I decided to start a face lift as part of this renewed path. Talking about look and feel, I kept it pretty similar as you may have realized. No big changes, mostly layout updates, removing as much clutter as possible, a bit of font sprinkling here and there, but eventually trying to keep it pretty much the same. I guess that I like the cozy feeling of it feeling familiar. However, one thing I decided to change, after people I care deeply kept insisting that I should, was to build a more permanent home, as I mentioned earlier, for those moments you want to keep around long after the social media rapid timing has digested them into oblivion. Curating photos into gift wrapped packages you find while window shopping was one of those itches that help drove change. As a result of it, you may now see a photo stream top main menu entry. It is a running stream of some of the photos I share on my G+ profile. Under this running photo stream, you will find soon some of those gift-wrapped packages containing some of the photos I cannot shake away. Today, I am adding one. Make sure you check it out. Will this revamping of the blog make me post more often? That is another story. ...

UofI has cancelled the classes again today. After the blizzard, today is plowing-the-snow day. Most people are stuck at their homes plowing the snow away from driveways so they can uncover their cars from under the snow hills. I guess tomorrow everything should be back to normal. I am planning to go for a walk on the snow latter thought. It looks pretty from my window ;) ...

The day after the winter 2007 blizzard