The level on my camera is just as important as the frame but not always. I get an immediate satisfaction to see the white line across my viewfinder suddenly go green, nudge it to the right then nudge it back in small bits, at level it turns green as if the world becomes right for pressing the shutter at the green go moment. Obsessive compulsive behavior at more levels that is perceptible, the green GO helps my wide angle lens tame perspective by making some parts of the image equidistant to the focal plane.
I am old enough to have relied on physical levels do do the same on an analog device, or even metaphorically bend the camera to visually achieve the same result, so that makes me ponder if this is just an old habit, therefore having technology built into your viewfinder that does the same thing is just a quick fix to my equidistant addiction. In retrospect it is a style element incorporated into the act of choosing the frame and how elements inside relate to each other.
The beauty of the exercise is that I can take it or leave it, some pictures simply don’t want to go that way. Again reinforcing this idea of using elements of style to conform the image before me, but more importantly it is through this exercise that my connection to the subject exists. You move up, or down, closer, farther and take the picture. A subjective exercise through objective devices, a picture therefore becomes subjective, an interpretation, a work of self expression.
CDMX 3/14/2019
Onto CDMX
time passing in between to get there
Tine in between /things-found
About an hour left in between now and then, once more waiting to board a plane taking me back to CDMX. To actively wait by filling the space observing light, then predicting how the lens will translate that same space into a representation. It’s been longer than a year since I last engaged in distant travel, yes I have gone back and forth for many visits… But that is where I belong in this timeline prescription for life, there are moments of reflection, and then a flick of the camera’s on-switch.
…following that prescribed life
…. and the time in between
It comes from following that prescribed life, and the time in between while the parts unravel, allowing me to snap those moments you can look at in this site’s /things-found. Just like everyone else’s, my life timeline allows for in-between to manifest, there are no accidents, only spaces of consequence for the pictures to be contemplated and taken. Perhaps what drives making the picture is the creeping mood of loneliness and connection, the spaces that allow my experience to transcend in an instant, a conscious snap of the shutter. There is no explicit direction, just things that evoke easing into my rhythms.
It ends with the flick to the off-switch, nothing more to see… Onto CDMX.
JFK 3/11/2019
