the end is where we start from

Here in the west we think of time as being laid out in a line, with a beginning and an end, but an older and more eastern view of time is that it’s circular. Think of a clock: when the hands reach twelve, time doesn’t stop or end but continues cycling round again and again. The end is the beginning, the beginning also the end. Life is a continual cycle of these endings and beginnings: the seasons, the days, the years, the tides, life, death. And it makes more sense to look at them as transformations from one thing to another, endlessly circling round. Winter doesn’t end one day and spring start the next – it happens in a merging of one season into another, the earth transforming itself again and again, year after year.

Circles are the stuff of life, not straight lines. Even space seems to be circular – if you were to keep walking in a straight line, you’d eventually end up back where you started. Maybe, if we were able to send a space ship into the universe and have it follow a straight line, it might also end up back where it started – we don’t know yet but it seems likely our universe is spherical. Our planets and stars and moons are round, and they circle round each other. Our bodies have circadian rhythms, and plants die and are absorbed into the earth only to decay and give life to new plants, and so the cycle goes on. Our experience of life is truly circular, as T S Eliot understood well:

'What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.'

This will be my last post as a Mortal Muse, and marks an ending but also a beginning. I’m sad to leave, but in the end lies new opportunity and a transforming of my life in another direction. And I hope to circle round again, doing some guest posts here, returning to the same familiar place but perhaps one that has seen some changes too, having been on its own cycle of change. (Each spring is both the same, and different.) I wish every success and happiness to my fellow muses and to you who read this blog; I hope the cycles of our lives will interlink in places and we’ll see each other again.

Elina's wonderful image gives us a real sense of the planet whirling round, and the rhythms and cycles of the clouds and the weather. My own photo reminds me of how small our worries and our selves are compared to the grand, universal, cycles of life.  And, yes, I know it's sepia and not black and white but I never shoot in black and white, and as it's my final post I think I can get away with it :-)

gilly of the camera points both ways

can you hear your soul? by elina_

learning to see

Many years ago when I was studying psychology, I was surprised to learn that seeing is much more than just the imprint of an image on the eye. Our eyes register what’s in front of us just like the camera film or sensor does, but we have to learn how to interpret that image.  Seeing really happens in the brain - for one thing, the image that your eye records is actually upside down, and it's your brain that makes it appear the right way up.  When researchers gave people glasses to wear that made everything seem upside down, within a week or so of continuous wearing, they were seeing the images as if they were upright.  Once they took the glasses off, everything went upside down again because their brains had adapted.

There are fascinating accounts of people who’ve been blind from birth and have had their sight restored but still can’t ‘see’ properly. The shapes, the light and dark, the colours, are all there, but they simply don’t know what they mean.  Michael May had his sight restored after being blind from the age of 3 and three years later still couldn’t identify faces – even that of his wife. When he first regained his sight he had to grapple with the difficulties of interpreting what he was ‘seeing’ and although he’d become an expert skier while blind – using a guide to give verbal instructions – he found he now had to close his eyes while ski-ing or what he saw became overwhelmingly confusing and dizzying.

We learn to use our sense of sight while very young, and like everything we learn young, it’s easy to get set in our ways and take things for granted. We don’t think about how we walk, for instance, unless something happens to us that means we have to learn how to walk all over again. Taking up photography is a little bit like this, in the sense that we have to learn how to see all over again, in a different way. The irony is that Michael May might well make a good photographer, because as photographers we have to try to forget about the object that we're photographing, and instead see it in terms of shapes and lines and light and colour and movement.

I love this photo by photo art heart - she's cleverly caught the scene in front of the viewer, and we might wonder how the person behind the sunglasses is really seeing it.

gilly of the camera points both ways

untitled by photo art heart

in the empty moments

What do we really want to know about someone? There are so many ways we can define ourselves, but do they tell others anything about what really matters, about who we really are?  If you've ever scanned the ads on a dating site, you'll know that they don't - you can know all sorts of things about what someone does for a living or what they do in their spare time without getting any real sense of what that person is like.  I've found it so hard to know what to write for this post, because everything I thought of to say about who I am seemed superficial or misleading.

The words of The Invitation, by Oriah Mountain Dreamer kept running round in my mind. If you’ve never read these wonderful words, I encourage you to seek them out and read them. Her words explain how I feel so much more eloquently than I ever could:

‘It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing......
‘I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.......
‘I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon “Yes!”.......
‘It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.......
‘I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.

What tells someone who we are is not the face we present to the world, the hobbies we have, the children we nurture, or the living we make.  These are outward expressions of different parts of us, of course, but if - heaven forbid - these things were all taken from us, the essence of who we are would remain.  When I get to know someone properly, I want to know who they are 'in the empty moments' and I want them to know that about me.  This isn't something that can be rushed - it takes time, and acceptance, and a lot of listening, and it can't be done with more than a few people in a lifetime.  It makes us very vulnerable when someone knows us like this, but it's what we all long for - to be truly known, recognised, accepted, and loved.

This has been a tough post to write; the choice seemed to be to settle for some small aspect of who I am which wouldn't really say a lot, or to reveal far more than I feel comfortable doing in such a public space (but I think what I've said here tells you something about me anyway). It was difficult to choose pictures too - in the end, I chose a photo of my own that says a lot about the connection between two people who really know each other: their hearts touch.  And this one by Stephanie Mull seemed perfect; it simply says 'you are unique'.

gilly of the camera points both ways

unique by stephmull

music and photography

I’ve been intrigued lately with connections between music and photography. It’s well-known that Ansel Adams had to make a choice, early in life, between a career as a concert pianist or a photographer. He chose photography, but his musical background shows in a much-quoted line from him comparing a negative to the score and a print to the performance. Edward Weston said that he knew he’d got things right photographically when he heard a Bach fugue in his head; for Minor White, it was Bartok.

There are many other types of artists, too, who saw their art in terms of music: Whistler, with his ‘Nocturne’ series of paintings, and Goethe, with his view that architecture is ‘frozen music’. (I love that last one – I sometimes look at a building and wonder how it would sound.) And many well-known musicians have produced equally impressive visual art: for example, Jimi Hendrix, Berni Taupin, Bob Dylan, Freddie Mercury, Janis Joplin, Leonard Cohen, Miles Davis and Kurt Cobain are or were all talented painters.

There are obviously some big differences between music and photography – the most obvious one is that music takes place over time, while photography concentrates on one moment. But there are some strong similarities too. The range of light to shade in a photo is like the range of high and low notes in a piece of music, and good photographs almost always have rhythm and repetition in them, just like music. You could even see the subject of your photo as the melody and the background as being like the underlying structure of the music, which isn't noticed so much but which is needed to support and enrich it.

Music can be said to have colour and feeling, just like photography, and if you’re into physics, sound waves and light waves behave in similar ways. And importantly, both music and photography are a mixture of the technical and the artistic. While a photographer or musician needs to master their camera or instrument in order to produce good work, a perfectly played piece can leave you unmoved, just as a technically perfect image can be empty and soulless.

If your photos were music, how would they sound?

Nowhere does the idea of architecture as frozen music seem more appropriate to me than inside a cathedral, with its rhythms and patterns of light and dark. And in Cathy MCC's image below, music came along in the most unexpected of places when she spotted this dried-up grass in the shape of a treble clef.

gilly of the camera points both ways

music everywhere by cathy mcc

and the next theme is.........WATER

Since somewhere between 70-75% of the earth's surface is made up of water, most of us have no shortage of the stuff.  In fact, many of us at this time of year have rather too much of it, so let's make use of that and go for water as our next theme.

You might choose to photograph the ocean, a river, a waterfall, a lake, a fountain, or maybe just a puddle.  Maybe your water might be falling from the sky, as rain or snow, or it might show up in the form of mist or fog.  It might be morning dewdrops, or it might have hardened into ice.  It might be the water you shower under in the morning or the bath you soak in after a hard day, or it might just be the glass of refreshing water you're about to drink.  Maybe you'll find watery reflections, or steam on a mirror or a window.  It could even be a tear running down someone's face, or a wet pavement on a rainy night.  Look around you and notice just how many ways water appears in your life.

Here are some inspirational images of water to get you going.

sunlight and water by gilly

clean tap water by pmaelee

 untitled by lenoirrr

rain/sun by shawnee's sky

a hot bath is better than therapy by gilly

We look forward to seeing your WATER photos in our Flickr pool.

And remember to join us tomorrow when we start musing on Words - as always, on the last day of the theme we'll be holding our usual linky party where you can add your own links and show us how you've interpreted Words.

gilly of the camera points both ways

and the next theme is..........WORDS

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but words can make good pictures too.  If you start noticing, you'll see words everywhere.

Maybe you love to read on a sunny veranda:

day 221 by preserved by a promise

Or curled up by the fire with a cup of something hot:

reading by the fire by autumnsun08

Or you find your words in a recipe for something delicious:

365:103 by rocking_robin

Perhaps there are words to treasure in a hand-written letter about a child:

new beginnings by gilly 

Or by a child:

true love by gilly 

Or maybe you like your words packaged in modern technology:

wordless sunday by islandgirlsj

Even if you don't like to read, there are words everywhere you go.

On street signs:

brookfield street by alphabet soup studio

sign by ~ania

eat by mary vican

Or graffiti:

 kiss me by xojy

Where do you find your words?  Which words are important to you?  We look forward to seeing your WORDS photos in our Flickr pool.

And remember to join us tomorrow when we start musing on Looking In, Looking Out - as always, on the last day of the theme we'll be holding our usual linky party where you can add your own links and show us how you've interpreted Looking Out, Looking In.

gilly of the camera points both ways

dreaming in black and white

Alright, I confess – I’m one of those irritating people who look at a beautiful black and white photo and say ‘I wonder what that would look like in colour?’ I’m a colour addict; I love it, yearn for it, am inspired by it, delight in it. So I wasn’t too happy when we came up with this theme but, hey, I like a challenge.

Even though I enjoy looking at other people's black and white shots, I don’t think I’ve ever deliberately taken a photo in black and white. I’ve converted quite a few colour ones when I felt the colour wasn’t doing anything to add to the picture, but I find it almost impossible to bring myself to shoot with black and white in mind.

One thing I really do like about black and white is its strong graphic qualities and I also love that sort of glowing effect that some people manage to achieve. Taking the colour away immediately puts a photo at one remove from ‘real’ life and imparts a dream-like quality to it. (They say most people dream in black and white; I don’t know how true this is as I’ve always dreamt in vivid colour - see, even in sleep I have to have colour!) Something I often feel in winter is this sense of not quite being part of the world; it's a half-asleep, dream-like time for me. In summer I’m outside a lot and feel like I belong in the world; in winter, I’m more often inside and looking out on it, and I feel a bit disconnected, and even slightly lost. It's a feeling that's emphasised by the soft, muffling effect of snow on both sound and colour; black and white shots do convey this feeling a lot more effectively than colour.

The photo above had very little colour in it to begin with – just the brown trunks of the trees. I converted to black and white and added an Orton effect to give it something of an other-worldly look.  ~Ania♥ has also added an Orton effect to her picture, which I think gives a very dreamy, not-quite-there feeling to the scene. In the comments section of her photo on Flickr, she shows the same scene in autumn colour; go and have a look - it makes for an interesting comparison. Does colour make you feel most alive, or do you prefer black and white?

gilly of the camera points both ways

winter visit by ~ania♥

fresh beginnings

What a wonderful word ‘fresh’ is! It’s the very opposite of stale – new, refreshed, different, bright, clear and invigorating. Many of us use this time of year to make a new start in some way, whether that’s taking up a new art form, resolving to eat more healthily, changing jobs, or some other change we feel the need to make. But I’ve never felt that January 1st is the right time for this; I still feel mired in winter, waiting and hibernating. The Chinese seem to have timed it much better, with the Chinese New Year happening once we’re well into February. By February, small buds are beginning to appear, the tender, vulnerable tips of bulbs are showing (sometimes through the snow), and the light is lasting noticeably longer each day. The tiny beginnings of spring are showing up.

For me, this is the real fresh start to the year, when winter is reaching its end, and all the possibilities of spring and summer are lined up like a feast of delicious foods. This year, I have a real fresh start after a long spell of feeling stuck and stale. After several months of unemployment and, before that, several years with the cloud of threatened redundancy hanging over him, my husband has a new job. He’ll start in February and it means a move to a new place several hundred miles away from where we currently live. It’s both exciting and daunting. Daunting, because I’m leaving behind good and valued friends, a place I love, and a whole network of support in the form of good hairdressers, car mechanics, therapists, specialist shops, and all those things that make life comfortable and easy. But it’s mostly exciting, because I’ll have a whole new area to explore (including three new cities within easy reach), new places to photograph and, hopefully, new and equally good friends to make. It also means a move away from a house with which I’ve never been terribly happy, and the promise of a new home that’s filled with the light and space I’ve been craving. I’m very happy about the coming of fresh things this year.

Those little water droplets in heavenly~flower’s photo look like jewels - bright and fresh and sparkling with promise. And tulips are my favourite spring flower, especially when they’ve just been showered by fresh spring rain.

gilly of the camera points both ways

bejewelled by heavenly~flower

many muses musing - GLOW

thankful for weekend getaways by ~becky sue~(rsl photography)

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re fast approaching the Winter Solstice, that time of the year when the night is longer than the day and the dark seems to have the winning hand. But the Solstice marks a turning point: from now on the days slowly begin to grow longer and the nights shorter, and these long, dark hours are really a sign that the light is on its way back.

Mid-winter festivals the world over are about celebrating the return of the light; they symbolise a battle between light and dark and the eventual triumph of the sunlight that we need in order to survive. And that's why this time of year is full of our attempts to bring back the glow of the sun: we burn candles, set light to Yule logs and glowing fires, and light up our homes and our streets with strings of bright, glowing, coloured lanterns and lights.  Sometimes, as in ~becky sue~'s stunning photograph, the low mid-winter sun itself creates a beautiful glow in the evening sky.

I hope my giveaway today will bring a little bit of a glow into someone's life.  I have a copy of my ebook for one lucky winner: Photography Outside the Box: loads of creative ideas and inspiration for what to photograph next.  It has over 150 photos and enough ideas to guarantee you'll never run out of inspiration again.  You can read more about it here.

I look forward to seeing where in the dark mid-winter world you find your GLOW.  Please link your blog or flickr url in the linky tool provided below and/or leave a comment on this post for a chance to win the giveaway (max 2 entries per person).

Your creative holiday prompt for tomorrow is: MAGIC

Wishing every one of you a warm and glowing mid-winter holiday, and a new year filled with the glow of love and happiness.

gilly of the camera points both ways

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the feeling of gratitude

I’ve been finding it so difficult to write on this theme. On the one hand, there are so many things to be grateful for in my world that I couldn’t decide on just one to single out. But it’s also been difficult because even though I know in my head that I have so much to be grateful for, my emotions right now aren’t following suit. I know I’m grateful, but I’m struggling to get the feeling of gratitude up and running. Have you ever felt like that? I’m guessing most of us have.

Things go wrong and life doesn’t always go our way, but there are always two ways to tell the story. This year has a been a difficult one in many ways: my husband’s been made redundant, I’ve been ill for most of the year and not able to work, we have the resulting financial problems, we had the death of a close family member, and we have the current stress of what sometimes feels like fruitless job searching, with the accompanying worry of ‘what will happen if?’. But there’s another way to tell this story: unlike some, we have a decent redundancy package; we’ve had more time together in the last few months and have become closer; we’ve talked in depth about the things that are important to us; we’ve had to cut back in so many ways that it’s clarified our values and what matters most; although we lost someone, we’ve also given thanks for a life well lived; and we’ve realised how very much we really do have. There’s always two ways to tell the story, and to me that’s what gratitude is about: spending at least as much time focussing on what we have, as we do on what we don’t have.

When I get into this state where I can’t get at the feeling of gratitude any more, there are two things that save me – photography and getting outside into nature. Photography helps me lose myself and my worries for a few hours, and being in nature puts it all into perspective and makes me realise that in the big scheme of things, it’s all very small beer. And there’s always some little miracle of colour and light to lift the spirits, as in anngeedee’s lovely shot of swimming birds.

gilly of the camera points both ways

finding winter warmth

I can enjoy feeling cold, in very short bursts, but cold is only good when you know you can get warm again. A lot of the pleasure of being out on a sharply cold, frosty day is in knowing you’ll soon be warming up – the anticipation of the steaming shower, the hot bowl of soup, the blazing fire, the warm dry clothes. When I think of being cold and getting warm again, a small poem by T E Hulme goes around in my mind; it’s about a gentleman who’s fallen on hard times and is sleeping rough on the embankment of the Thames River in London, on a cold frosty night:

"Once, in finesse of fiddles found I ecstasy,
In the flash of gold heels on the hard pavement.
Now see I
That warmth’s the very stuff of poesy.
Oh, God, make small
The old star-eaten blanket of the sky,
That I may fold it round me and in comfort lie."

When you’re chilled and cold, warmth really is the ‘very stuff of poesy’ and all of us gravitate towards it, even birds and animals. When I first saw Stephskimo’s photo as a thumbnail, I didn’t notice the pigeon staying warm by sitting on top of the light; when I saw it bigger and then did, it made me smile - that's one smart pigeon.  And last winter, my cat spent a little while looking out the window at the snow, and then decided that sitting in front of the heater was a much better idea.

gilly of the camera points both ways

finding winter warmth by stephskimo

three cheers for messrs daguerre and talbot!

Photography, as everyone knows, is all about light and the early history of photography is all about the various methods used to try and fix the light to make a permanent recording of a passing moment. The camera obscura – which works like a pinhole camera and could project a live image onto a surface – had been around for a very long time (it was known in ancient China).  So it's hard to believe that it's only 180 years ago that Daguerre and Talbot, working in different countries, finally figured out how to ‘freeze’ and preserve the projected image. It’s difficult for us to imagine how exciting it must have been in those days to see a scene permanently recorded just by the action of light on chemicals. We’ve become so used to the idea now that we completely take it for granted.

But imagine if you’d never seen a photograph before, if all that you knew was the long, slow process of drawing and painting. Imagine that your knowledge of how things looked in the world had depended totally on these up till now. Wouldn’t it seem like an absolute miracle that within a few minutes you could have a picture in your hands that recorded every detail of the scene in front of you with total accuracy?  And, in the 1950s, when Kodak automated the process and made cameras cheap enough for everyone to afford, anyone could do it.

Things have moved on since then, and we're no longer obsessed with making everything in a photo look sharply detailed just because we can.  Other things have become more important to us, and the quality of the light is one of these. Some kinds of light truly are fantastic and give our photos real impact, and the right light can make a very ordinary subject look extraordinarily dramatic. Both these images have a strong sense of movement, but what really makes them work is the light. The play of light on autumn leaves in a stream becomes a colourful abstract and in Mary "Manya"'s photo it turns a swimmer into a blaze of glory.

by gilly of the camera points both ways

I tried to capture a mermaid by mary "manya"

coming home

It’s been hard for me to think what to write about this theme - I pondered for a long time over what home means to me. It means comfort, soft cushions, warmth, good lighting, the smell and taste of home-cooked food, books, music, conversation, a garden, a place of my own to write in, and many other things, but I could have all of these things and there would still be something lacking. Then I realised that home really isn’t about the place I live in, it’s about the people who inhabit that place. There’s my husband, naturally, and without him nowhere would feel good for long, but he hasn’t always been with me and when I was living on my own my pets were the ‘people’ who made the place home.

For sixteen years I had a handsome Golden Retriever called Raffles. He had such a lot of character, along with one of the most loving natures I’ve ever experienced. He loved being funny and would play to an audience, and I couldn’t help but laugh when I was with him. He saw me through a bad marriage – and in those days he was the one thing worth coming home for – and he was with me for some of my single years after I was divorced. I have two cats as well, and when I came home after a day at work all three animals would come running to meet me, Raffles’ tail wagging so wildly that his body got thrown around with the force of it, and one cat underneath him weaving through his legs. I was often lonely in those days, but my pets meant I never came home to an empty house and was always welcomed back. To have three living creatures so pleased to see me was warmth for the soul.

So when I saw this wonderful photo of canadianchick1959’s dog Max, those melting brown eyes brought back many treasured memories of Raffles, who died a few years ago. In our home, in the stairwell, we have a couple of shelves where we place mementos of pets that we’ve lost. Most of them are rabbits – my husband adores rabbits and unfortunately they don’t live very long – but my lovely old dog’s ashes are there too, in a little wooden box, along with his collar and a photograph. In a sense, he’s still there to greet me when I come home.

by gilly of the camera points both ways

me and my shadow by canadianchick1959

a softer, kinder world

I’m short-sighted, so without my glasses blur is my natural way of seeing. When I first got glasses many years ago, and the world suddenly came into sharp focus, I got very excited. Everything looked so different to me, sharp and clean. But once I got over the novelty of it all, I realised that I’d come to like the softness in my natural sight; the world seemed a kinder, gentler place without all those hard edges.

I do like being able to see clearly when I want to, but sometimes I can feel overwhelmed by the amount of detail and visual clutter that we’re bombarded with most of the time. Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved any photographic technique that leads to blurring, whether it’s done in camera or afterwards. I love the way it smears the colours like paint and turns the most banal of subjects into something mysterious and fascinating, and the way it takes away detail and lets you concentrate on what’s essential - the colour or the light or the shapes.

My short-sightedness isn't so bad that it leads to the depth of blur in these two photos, but I like the way they evoke a mood through only supplying an impression.  It makes me ask questions, like who is the mysterious figure with the red umbrella in ~ania's♥ photo, and where is she going on such a snowy day?

gilly of the camera points both ways

girl with an umbrella, by ~ania♥

a universe with a universe, revealed

I like small things, and I like detail. I’ve never been one of those photographers who loves to shoot big wide scenes with lots happening in them. No, I’ve always been drawn to moving in close. Things look different up close. In fact they often look like other things. They certainly don’t look much like themselves.

Minor White said that we shouldn’t just shoot things for ‘what they are’ but for ‘what else they are’. This can be hard to see sometimes when we look at the big picture, but much easier when we go in close.

One of the things that stops us ‘seeing’ artistically is that we have a tendency to name and categorise things, and once we’ve done that we stop properly seeing them anymore. That’s what usually goes wrong when people learn to draw; they mentally label the thing they’re drawing and then they draw what they know about that thing, not what they actually see in front of them. So when they draw a chair, they might draw all four legs because they know it has four legs, instead of noticing that they can only see three.

It happens in photography too. We take pictures of ‘things’ instead of looking to see what else is there that might be more interesting. So we see a tree and take a tree picture, but our image could gain extra depth if we made it instead about light, or colour, or lines, or loneliness. When we start looking for what else is there, we start producing better photographs. And it’s much easier to forget what something is, and see what else it is, when we move in close.

The photo above is of an abalone shell, but to me it looks a little like a spaceship travelling through an exotic galaxy. In Elizabeth's photo, below, we can see a whole cosmos in a small piece of ice.

"William Blake saw ‘the world in a grain of sand’. It can be seen in many such things, for in the smallest cells are reflections of the largest. And in photography, through an interplay of scales, a whole universe within a universe can be revealed."
Ernst Haas

Gilly, of The Camera Points Both Ways

 

cosmos by elizabeth glass

this is jojo

This is JoJo, my mother-in-law. This photo was taken when she was in her thirties, and she’s now 88 and suffering from advanced Alzheimer’s. She no longer knows her own children, or even her husband of 60 years, although occasionally there’s a rare moment of lucidity when, for a few precious seconds, some electrical connection takes place in her brain and she knows exactly who he is. I’ve met her many times, but I’ve never known her, because the disease had made its inroads by the time I met my husband. And yet, when I look at this photo (which sits on our mantelpiece) I get a sense of the person she was: warm, funny, loving, kind. Her character shines through, even in this posed studio shot.

It’s a sad end for someone so vibrant, and yet in one way I actually envy her. Why? Because I have never known a woman so loved. My husband adores her, as do his three siblings, and they all make regular visits to see her even though it involves a long journey (involving air travel for some of them) and she doesn’t know who they are once they get there. My husband often says: “She managed to love us all equally, but at the same time made us all feel as if we were the special one”. It takes an extraordinary person to do that.

Her husband, my father-in-law, is devoted to her, having cared for her himself at home for nine years and then, when it got to be more than he could cope with, visiting her every day in the care home and spending hours encouraging her to eat. He takes in little tidbits that he knows will tempt her, talks to her, holds her hand, and just generally loves her - we should all be so loved.

There’s a story I came across about an elderly man who needed attention to a minor wound. He kept checking the time and was asked if he had to be somewhere. “Yes”, he replied, “I need to go and visit my wife; she has Alzheimer’s and I visit every day”. When asked if she would be worried if he was late, he replied that she no longer knew who he was. The nurse was surprised, and said, “So you still go every day, even though she no longer knows you?” The elderly man replied, “She may not know who I am, but I still know who she is”.

This photograph, this face, reminds her family of what she was and who she still is somewhere deep inside. It also helps those of us who never knew her to feel that they do, just a little. That’s the extraordinary power of photographs. If I had my way, in the room of every person suffering from dementia there would be a photograph like this, to remind the nurses that they’re caring for someone very like themselves, who once had a full, rich life, told stories, created, loved her husband and children, worked, cooked, was funny, happy, and sometimes sad.

The woman in this wonderful photo by Cynthia Brown Images also has such a lot of character that we feel we know something of her even though she lives very far away from most of us, and in a culture very different to our own.

gilly of the camera points both ways

Update: Since writing this post, Gilly has informed us that JoJo has passed away. Please join us in sharing your condolences with Gilly and her family in this time of sadness. -- the Mortal Muses

mekong boat mumma by Cynthia Brown Images

space to breathe

It’s all about leaving space. Empty space, but that makes it sound worthless and it isn’t. We need space in our lives, time to stand and stare, time to ponder. It can look like empty space from the outside but from the inside it’s rich with possibilities. It’s too easy to cram our lives with too many activities, too much to do, leaving no space to renew ourselves, and creativity only really happens in the empty spaces.

We need that space to allow us to breathe easily; it’s the space that makes the rest of our lives satisfying instead of an endless, tiring, round of busy-ness. A bowl is only useful because of the empty space inside it, and music can only be made because of the space inside the instrument.  And of course, music is only music because of the spaces between the notes – otherwise it would just be a jumble of sounds.

Negative space in photographs also gives room to breathe, to appreciate the subject of the picture, to avoid being distracted by other things. And just as having that space in our lives helps to enhance the rest of what we do, having that space in our photos – the space we call negative - can positively add something, as it definitely does in this beautiful image by lwsantos.

gilly of the camera points both ways 

img_5343-1 copy by lwsantos

muse university - getting started with street photography

getting started with street photography
by gilly of the camera points both ways

God and Mammon by gillyinkent

Street photography always sounded like a great idea to me, but when it came to actually doing it I nearly always chickened out - I’d see a great photo opportunity and then be too nervous to go for it in case I was spotted. It can seem really daunting at first, and when you’ve never done it before you can feel very self-conscious, but there are some great shots out there just waiting for you to spot them. Street photography can be one of the most rewarding kinds of photography there is—there’s nothing like going out not knowing what you’ll find, and then coming home feeling all excited because you got something great. Eventually I found ways of getting started that worked for me, so I want to pass on what I’ve learned in the hope that it might make it a bit easier for anyone else who’s just beginning and is a little nervous about getting out there.

What is street photography?
There are lots of arguments over how to define this, but for our purposes here I’m taking a really loose definition of street photography as simply being about life in the street or other public places, in all its shapes and forms - any kind of street, any kind of life, and even inanimate things as well.

Cameras and lenses
Any camera will do, but the smaller the camera the less obvious it will be what you’re doing. All of my own street photographs were taken with a hefty DSLR with a large telephoto lens, but people do look at you when you’re using one of these and it’s hard to be unobtrusive. (But if that’s what you’ve got, then that’s what you have to use and you just need to find a way of working round it.) A compact camera helps you blend in more, and if you use a phone camera hardly anyone will pay any attention to you at all.

When it comes to lenses and focal lengths, a wide-angle lens will give you more depth of field, which is useful when you’re in a hurry and might not get the focus spot on. The downside is that you have to get close to people to fill the frame with them and that takes a bit of courage. With a telephoto, you can zoom in from a distance and get the shot without being spotted; hardcore street photographers look down on this, and it is a little sneaky, but when you’re new to it it’s a good way to get comfortable. Your shots won’t have the immediacy they would gain from you being closer to the action, but you can still get good results this way.

Many street photographers rely on a 50mm prime lens, which is a good all-rounder and is small enough not to stand out. Fixed 50mm lenses are relatively cheap and usually allow you a wide aperture setting as well, which gives a faster shutter speed and is a big plus when it comes to this kind of thing. But just use what you have to begin with – you can get all kitted up later if you decide you like it.

Settings
Let’s make life simple: keep your camera on Program and Autofocus so that you don’t have to worry about settings – there are enough other things to think about at first. Once you get more comfortable, you can pay more attention to getting the settings just the way you want them; eg, setting Aperture Priority and choosing a shallow depth of field can help isolate your subject in the frame.

Don’t even think about using a tripod; it’s not only going to make you look very obvious, it will take away a lot of the spontaneity you’re after. In low light situations, increase your ISO instead and you’ll do fine.

Positano scooter by gillyinkent

First steps
One of the best ways to get started if the whole thing makes you nervous is to avoid shooting people at first. There are lots of quirky and interesting things other than people on the streets; look for things like signs, reflections, lost and abandoned items, shop windows, vintage vehicles, repeating patterns, colours, etc.

Or you could start with animals - the animals won’t object and most pet owners are quite happy to see you photographing their dog or other pet. You can always ask first if you think they might not be. Here are two photos by my friend Mike that show the kind of thing you might find if you keep your eyes open.

untitled by Mike

the skateboarding dog by Mike

Another good way to get started is just to choose one theme and then go out and look for it. (And if you happen to see other things on the way, you’re allowed to shoot those too!) Thomas Leuthard (see link at end) suggests choosing a colour, a theme like ‘phones’ or ‘shoes’, or a type of lighting, such as backlight. Once you’ve decided what you’re looking for, it’s amazing how you’ll see it everywhere. If you don’t believe it, try this one day: choose a colour and then look for it wherever you go—I guarantee it’ll be popping up everywhere you look.

You can also ease yourself in really gently by not even using a camera at first. Just start looking at what you would take if you had a camera with you. It will help you get your eye in and start seeing where there’s potential for a really good shot. You’ll feel much more confident when you finally do take the camera out with you.

Shooting people – how do you approach it?
But let’s say it’s people you really want to shoot – and after all, this is what most street photography’s all about. You have a choice here - you can try to go unnoticed, you can ask for the photo, or you can just take people by surprise so that they know you’re taking it but you’ve already got the shot by the time they realise that. The last method takes courage, and occasionally could land you in hot water, so it’s probably not a good place to start. If you use the second method – asking people – that can work well if you want to concentrate on portraits, but obviously you lose the candid nature of the shot that makes street photography so distinctive.

The most comfortable way for beginners is to try to go unnoticed. To begin with, go somewhere where there are lots of tourists, or to a big event where loads of people are taking photos. You’ll blend right in and won’t look any different from anyone else. You can pretend to be taking a picture of a building or the main action while really you’re photographing the people there.

Another good way to get started is to find somewhere promising where there’s a seat outside – perhaps a café, or just a bench in the street. Then have your camera ready and just wait to see what happens.

And yet another way to do things is to stay at a distance and have your people small in the frame; this picture was taken from down at street level. I liked the repeating patterns of the building itself, but then this man came out for a smoking break and it was just perfect. A moment or two later he spotted me and started grinning broadly.

Smoking break by gillyinkent

Photographing from down below or higher up works well as people don’t tend to notice you doing it. Although this one looks like it was taken on a beach, it’s actually the bank of the River Thames in London - and no, it isn't usually sandy, the sand was imported to make a fake beach for a sand sculpture display.

For sale by gillyinkent

You can also look for people who’re so involved in something that they won’t notice you. People talking on their mobiles usually aren’t paying much attention, and if two people are in conversation they probably won’t see you either. People reading are another idea, and you could try shooting through windows into interiors as well. This is a beautiful shot taken by my friend Eileen through a steamed up café window.

Le Club by eileen r

You can also photograph people from the back, or just photograph their feet or hands – they won’t realise what you’re doing.

Splash 1 by gillyinkent

Colour or black and white
There’s a tradition in street photography that it should be shot in black and white. There are some advantages to this – someone in the background in a red jacket will blend in rather than stick out like a sore thumb, and the lack of colour can help simplify what’s often a very busy picture. And, for a vintage look, you could try shooting in sepia, as in this photo:

Vintage Venice by Kat Eye View

But if you’re really into colour, like me, then colour itself can become the subject of the photo. You just need to be aware of how all the colours in your shot are working together and that nothing in the background is clashing.

Red Coat by gillyinkent

Blue Bicycles 2 by gillyinkent

Safety
Finally, a word about safety. If you’re shooting in a rundown area then it’s generally not a great idea to flash an expensive camera around. Be discreet - instead of carrying a large and obvious camera bag, wrap your camera in a scarf for protection and stick it in your tote bag. Travel light—don’t take everything you own, just the camera body and lens you need. Having said that, there's rarely anything to worry about in most places, so don't be put off by safety concerns - just use common sense.

And what do you do if someone does spot you photographing them? Most will just carry on without a word, but occasionally someone might confront you. If you stay polite and explain what you’re doing, they’ll nearly always be ok with that. If they do get difficult, just delete the photos and let them see you do it. It’s pretty obvious that you should avoid taking photos of anyone who looks like they might get aggressive if they saw you, and it’s usually not a great idea to photograph children without permission. And if you’d like some ready-made excuses, see Thomas Leuthard’s ebook, below.

Note: legally, in the UK at least, you are free to take photos of anyone – even children – as long as they’re in a public space, but since I don’t have legal training please double check the situation for yourself by Googling ‘photographer’s rights’ plus the name of your own country.

Oodles of inspiration
I recently came across this free ebook by Thomas Leuther, called Going Candid. It’s very helpful and clearly written, will give you everything you need to get started and then some more, and it’s full of really inspiring shots. And did I mention it’s free?! If you’re at all interested in street photography, I suggest grabbing a copy right now.

Here are a few more of my favourite street photographers and resources to inspire you:

Saul Leiter – a New York street photographer in the fifties, Leiter specialised in interesting reflection shots. He mostly shot in colour, which makes him a little different from the rest.

Elliot Erwitt – Erwitt has a fantastic sense of humour and many of his street shots are very funny indeed. He also did a whole series with dogs.

Jay Maisel – another favourite photographer, who has a lot of street photography in his portfolio. He’s another one who uses colour really well.

Henri Cartier-Bresson – the most famous of them all, and the originator of the phrase ‘the decisive moment’.

Vivian Maier – unknown until recently, she was a nanny who happened to take wonderful street photos and produced a massive body of work. Her photographs were finally discovered in 2007, in a thrift auction house in Chicago’s Northwest Side and are now being archived and sorted for posterity.

In-public – a great resource for a wide variety of contemporary street photography.

Who's your favourite street photographer? Why not leave a link below so that we can all enjoy their photos too?