It was such a foggy day out there that the train gave a good subject to capture as it was vavishing into the depth. Any comments would be very welcome.
Hahaaaaa! Psycho killer! That was good Gustavo! I fell down from my chair when I read that! It's always nice to have some psychosis, and I like mine!! :-D
I just try to think a bit less egomaniacal about things, though I am not sure at all that I manage to do that. Thinking about documentation, I have some strange by-taste when I see all that kind of super-fast interpretations and conclusions that many "photographers" try to press in our minds. It's like concluding about the very being of the world before taking the time to study it carefully, converting thus reality to some kind of personal sight. Or like assuming that the world has some obligation to be as I think it should be. I think too that it is much better to not infuse any kind of the own judgement into the images, but rather let them talk for themselves. And that's the hard part of it, since at the same time we are still humans along with all our pre-constructed pictures of the world.
But still a documentary should be first a documentary - a witness of what *is*. Nothing more and nothing less. I don't feel yet like having the necessary mental fundaments under my thinking in order to present "an opinion" about most of things. You know, as Dirty Harry once said: Opinions are like as****les. Everybody got one. ;-) And at the same time I got mine too! ;-)
I hope to be able to access some more neutrality but from what I see, most of the time I do place my own ideas onto the images. It is now much less than it used to be some time ago, but still I have a long way to go. This is exactly the reason why I am so happy when at least some of the images show "the story, only the story and nothing else".
Wish me good luck against my own pre-constructed mental pictures, and above all against my own as***le, that is! ;-)
You know Nick, you could be an orator. I am not kidding.
I would say, THIS is the only way to shoot documentaries. This 'Here is the story, only the story and nothing else. So, what do you think?' approach is the ONLY way to present true documentary.
Yes, the perpective, Avi! That thing that informs us about distance. About the *where*, as projected on the flat plane with the wish to keep as much of the character of space as possible. To generate the illusion that space is on the flat screen, so to speak. Still I don't quite get it, but after some centuries I am sure I'll be able to so that! ;-)
About the mood... it is the intended absence of mood. Much like a completely detached observer who reports about this and that. It's trying to be only the "neutral" carrier of the message, while I also know that perfect neutrality is impossible. But it is worth to try to approximate. Many would call that "cold", "machinery" and the like, but if we consider it with less "fear" it proves to be more human.
Why I say that? Let's start with the two movies, Flags of our fathers, and, Letters from Iwo Jima. For me, Eastwood excelled here exactly because he avoided that "pathos", that kind of automatic dedication to some special own interpretation and its spreading out to the spectator, listener, whatever - or he tried very hard to avoid that. And it is this that first enables us to also listen to the "other version" of it. It helps coming closer. Much like asking: Here is the story, only the story and nothing else. So, what do you think?
In order to get some unbiased opinion form you and anybody else, I have to try to avoid putting my own opinion on the image. I guess, I'll be trying to do more and more in this direction, though it's not easy. Perhaps also it is my curiosity to know how you, all guys out there, see it.
Anyway, "the news" is just the news, just what *is*. Anything else is, to me, already pre-forming opinions, and a pre-formed opinion cannot be the opinion of *my* Avi, or *my* Visar, or *my* Andre, and so on.
Which reminds me of... the pre-formed opinions about a war, that were consciously constracted by that clever guy still in the white house. The public was so enthusiastic and believed in some passionated wish to free a land from its dictator. The results are obvious today, but one of my questions goes into another direction: How much did the media helped forming all the "reasons" and thus *opinions* based on non-existing "facts"? I think they did a very good job! ;-)
When we transmit a message, we'd better avoid bias. Goes for photography too, ey?
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