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Constant search.

Tom dinning

Registrant*
There’s a part of my brain that constantly searches.
I fear if I find all the answers my brain will stop.
Nothing appears as it is or should be.
No word spoken is enough.
No sight seen shows it all.
No sound sings the right tune.
Seeing another way is squeezing the blood from the stone
924
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
The purist among us, even within myself, would suggest this isn’t photography.

I would wholeheartedly agree.

The art, mechanics, intent, recording of photography has long ago stopped. What follows is something else.

Because it has its origins in photography we still assign the title of ‘Photograph’, with reservations.

Somewhere, we might agree that the connection to the photograph is so distant that we need another name, another genre.

On that matter, mainly due to our own inability to identify at what point the photograph becomes something else, we will continue to differ.

Meanwhile, I keep searching; not for any truth (a term so loosely banded about as if it is a universal constant), but something hidden in myself.

It’s not the ability to operate a camera or have the latest and greatest devise or make beautiful, sharp images that I seek. In fact, these things often get in the way of what I seek.

It is something in me that is the guerdon. It’s the pleasure, the frustration, the anger, the joy, the disappointment, the unfathomable misunderstanding of living that I wish to reveal. Not to others; to myself. Then hope that someone else might see it as well.

925
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
The urgency of extraction of such ideas, concepts, ‘visions’ if you chose, coincides with other body functions like breathing, heart beat, cadence, sleep, and bowel moment.

If I lived in another time or place, or been born into different circumstances, I might paint, build stone walls, chisel plaster, mould glass, carve wood, dress hair or millen.

The urge to DO something to release the pains of living is within us all.

How well we do what we do is only measured by what relief we gain from our achievements.

Even the Buddhist must suffer to gain enlightenment.

The turmoil comes not from those who don’t understand the results but don’t understand the internal process, the struggle, the pain of origin, the inevitable death of an idea.

926
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
How is it that we have come so far and yet we still struggle with the expression of our own feelings.
We invent words, we sing songs, write poetry, shout, cry, even kill ourselves in the pursuit of contentment.

The young girl hangs over the balcony and waits for the orchestra to take its place. She craves to hear. Even more so she craved to be there among them, filling the room with her thoughts. She want people to know she needs to express herself. This might be a way. She learns, she struggles, she succeeds in the eyes of others yet she will never be quite satisfied. She will always have more, not to give, but to answer to. He accomplishments will be to satisfy her own needs. For her, listening will never be enough. She must DO.

927
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
An interesting set of images.

This is especially impressive:


928


It allows the imagination endless questions!

Asher
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
Hi, Tom,



How ya figger?

Best regards,

Doug

Merely the musings of a melancholiac, my friend.

There’s no rocket science or any form of precision in my thinking.

At one end of what we do is take pictures of things.
Asher raised the point when he asked us to tag our images. I stared at my photos and couldn’t for the life of me name things.
“What do others want to see?” I asked myself.
“How can anyone search for love, sadness, loneliness, fear, relationships, suspense, or a memory in a photo?”

I know what Asher wanted but I couldn’t provide it to him. I still can’t.

So the photos I take have become the other end of the spectrum.

They are expressions of thought for which I might be the only person who has the translation.

They are beyond metaphors. They are the thoughts themselves, constantly shifting and changing as my brain experiences more or forgets more. They are re-edited over and over again until they are no longer records of the past but images of the present state of my mind.

All this might sound a bit weird. I agree. My grand daughter says I’m a bit scary when I talk like this. Not in a nasty way, she adds. Just weird scary. Like a shadow she can’t quite see into.

So what I do might be recognised as photography by most, I’ve lost the ability to see that succinctly, that clearly, that defined.

929
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom,

The Irish were said to be “blessed” with poverty, tiny attic lodgings and no heat for shivering poets and story tellers.

Pain is said to open one to poetics and excess wealth to dullness and gluttony!

Growing up very poor after the war might just be that spark that allowed my to “feel” more and be over-reactive!

You have raised an important voice about key-wording of art that is emotive and more challenging abstract too!


935



I suggest that pictures like this one by all labeled “abstract” and “emotive” as a start.

Asher
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
Tom,

The Irish were said to be “blessed” with poverty, tiny attic lodgings and no heat for shivering poets and story tellers.

Pain is said to open one to poetics and excess wealth to dullness and gluttony!

Growing up very poor after the war might just be that spark that allowed my to “feel” more and be over-reactive!

You have raised an important voice about key-wording of art that is emotive and more challenging abstract too!

I suggest that pictures like this one by all labeled “abstract” and “emotive” as a start.

Asher

I agree, Ash, but I wonder if we would agree on the reasoning.

It is certainly accentuating concepts such as form and colour over object or structure.
It would be difficult to imagine the original objects.
It is a part of a whole.
It is about an intangible idea.

The problem I face is so are most of my photographs, even those that are clearly identified and objective.

936
 

Peter Dexter

Well-known member
“That’s art, that’s the game: It’s not about the facts.”

A statement made by Serkan Özkaya, a New York artist who created a reconstruction of Marcel Duchamp's final work Given: 1. The Waterfall, 2. The Illuminating Gas (English translation).
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
First Tom,

This picture does make me stop.


937

There’s intense nature in the foreground with a slope curvaceously descending to the right. That concavity of the grass edge on the right side, pulls away from the water to expose it and pull us towards the infinite unknown future ahead!

Quite remarkable and although could have been achieved by a chance snap between a sophisticated wedding shoot of the bride and her entourage, as it is, isolated, with no explanations, it is already “Art” as at the very least, I, (the minimum of merely one person), have been moved by it and believe others will too and will recruit them!

A lot to think about!

Keywords?

This image is likely to be “meditative” for many folk. A lot to imagine about what lies before us. A lot to question.


Now @ Peter,

“That’s art, that’s the game: It’s not about the facts.”

Agreed. A wise statement! I will have to look up Serkan Özkaya: he’s new to me


But back to keywords, the picture does have simple call outs: “water edge”, “mist”, “water”, “grass”, “wild flowers”, green, too!
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
I’m probably too abstract for the tagging thing.

The importance of the Visual form is related to circumstances as much as anything, maybe even more.
My mood on the day, the experience of weather, the place, who I was with, who I wanted to be with, feelings of expectation, fear, family, friends, the sounds, all have an impact on what is recorded and how I interpret that.

Reducing such an image to a few nouns seems such a waste.

Then I wonder what purpose that would serve?

It might seem I’m being difficult and antagonistic. Not so, at least not intentionally.

I’m trying to dismantle the task to better understand it.
When I was an early teen my mum bought me a watch. I’d never had one. I pulled it apart to see how it worked.
Unfortunately I couldn’t put it back together. Mum was not impressed but in some way understanding.

Like a joke, dismantling it doesn’t always make it better understood, though.

It’s probably best if I continue on the way I have. That ensures at least one of us is content.
957
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom,

While I really enjoy every line of the essay, it has nothing to do with the mechanics of keywording. These are not intended to help you in any way.

The purpose is simply to state what items or physical qualities might be there or identified.

Is there a plant there? No?

Would they be a cat? Yes! Great one key word.

Anything else?

Well it’s

“alone”

And any other observation a happy, depressed, bright or dull human might notice.

Nothing personal needed.

Asher
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
Tom,

While I really enjoy every line of the essay, it has nothing to do with the mechanics of keywording. These are not intended to help you in any way.

The purpose is simply to state what items or physical qualities might be there or identified.

Is there a plant there? No?

Would they be a cat? Yes! Great one key word.

Anything else?

Well it’s

“alone”

And any other observation a happy, depressed, bright or dull human might notice.

Nothing personal needed.

Asher

The photos are incidental or accidental to my thought patterns.
They just happen to be on my iPad while I’m writing.
They are not meant to be part of the conversation or story line or essay or dissertation or whatever.
The photos are just there to fill in breaks between ideas and give people something to look at if they can’t be bothered to read.

Not everyone buys the magazine for the articles.

‘WINDOWS’

960


See. Even I can learn something new.
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
The photos are incidental or accidental to my thought patterns.
They just happen to be on my iPad while I’m writing.
They are not meant to be part of the conversation or story line or essay or dissertation or whatever.
The photos are just there to fill in breaks between ideas and give people something to look at if they can’t be bothered to read.

Not everyone buys the magazine for the articles.

See. Even I can learn something new.​


Tom,

You are only in contact with a small percent of the huge information train of your observations when you are awake and even distracted by your conscious thoughts.

All decisions come from your brain. Hardly incidental, even if you take pictures to pass the time.

962


Tom Dinning: “Windows”


What a skilled very experienced talented photographer and articulate cannot escape, (unless drugged), is the richness of their lifelong experience, reflect choices, likes and dislikes, hopes and fears and devotion to wife and granddaughter!

That’s why your snaps seem like actual intended photographs!

Asher!
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
No happy thoughts today.
Yesterday I dreamt of my own death.
What would that be like?
Then I thought about what it was like before I was born.
How was that?
Then, the first moment of consciousness and the last.

Today, upon wakening, I wandered through what remained to see what had changed inside my head.

As though an intruder had broken in and moved things in search of something valuable, binning anything that seemed wasteful or useless.

I noticed a lampshade slightly askew. Perhaps the intruder needed some light by which to grovel in the darker areas of my subconscious thoughts.

What metaphor can I find which is analogous to my mind?
65AADA4F-B077-4407-AF0D-0D7DB28BAD7A.jpeg
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
...but I do like the scaffolding at at night!

So how do you do the processing, apart from a keg of beer?

Asher
 

Tom dinning

Registrant*
...but I do like the scaffolding at at night!

So how do you do the processing, apart from a keg of beer?

Asher

Another assumption on your part, Ash.
The last time I had a drink of beer was somewhere about 1966.
The las time I had a drink of anything alcoholic was around 1992.

As for the processing, it’s all ACR and PS. The actual steps along the way vary with my mood.
At the moment I have a preference for a bit of cross processing with a shift in hue towards the cyan and blue green with a rather heavy tonal curve leaning left, some heavy grain and a touch of blur.
I can assure you, tomorrow could be something entirely different - or not.

72EA7DE8-995C-483F-A413-E611F31E2C2D.jpeg
 
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