Re: [Paddlewise] pentax WR 105

Sidney_Stone_at_amsinc.com wrote:
> 
> I actually keep the pentax on my boat deck or around my head when paddling.

The mental picture of a camera around your head is very funny to me
Sid.  Sorta like a miner's light?

> I've used it on rainy days and it has sustained going under water.  I wouldn't
> take it down in the water.  I have found in general that point and shoot cameras
> without any exposure control are going to have trouble taken long range scenic
> shots and I tend to avoid them or simply accept the results as documenting my
> trip but not as fine photography.

I think this is a very good point.  These are wonderful to spark the
memory for all the associations that we conjure recalling an experience.

The other 2 points about this is that one, 35mm is really not as
appropriate as large format for this type of work.  This has been
illustrated by the work of William Henry Jackson's early pictures of
Yellowstone, Carlton Watkins of Yosemite (both of which were responsible
in the preserving these wildernesses.  Jackson's photographs went to
Congress and resulted in Yellowstone becoming a national park, Watkin's
went to the governor of California) to the more recent Richard Misrach
and that calendar guy from the Sierra Club that promotes zone systems
and previsualization.
The second is that a photograph, when used as this formal object, is
never as impressive, to me anyway, as the actual visual display.  A
sunset, for example, is beautiful for it's wide vista and uncontained
nature in the visual periphery. By slicing a frame out of it in a
photograph seems to make it something less.  To the original witness
however, this image may incite a valuable memory.

Photography provides a good record of a changing scenery around us. 
Eugene Atget provided us with a document of a changing Paris at the turn
of the century that proves valuable and interesting to the average
viewer and historian.

I try to think how the media, while taking an impression of a 'real'
scene out there, transforms it into a photographic object with all it's
own inherent properties.  What makes this image different than what was
really going on?  How does my selection of frame alter my interpretation
of the original event?  How does my 'slice of time' recontextualize the
original event?  Makes this medium the most surreal of all- we interpret
the photograph as a direct representation of reality, proof so to
speak.  Yet, it is totally based on what we decide on the elimination
and inclusion within the frame, changing the meaning with each
decision.  A lie cloaked in an assumption of reality.  
The photograph of value to me is the one that lets me discover a new or
different way of seeing.

But then again, this is only one guys opinion that spends a lot of time
thinking about such trivial matters.

-- 
                            Gabriel L
Romeu                                                    
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etchings, objects
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