photography

There are a few cheats to make a photograph seem more interesting than it really is. Use the macro setting, tilt the camera about twenty degrees, add a Photoshop effect - any one of these, or a combination, and you’ve got yourself a picture that’s good and artsy. People may not even notice that you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing.

It’s the same way with most of life, I think. Posing, that is. A few tricks can get a person pretty far.

It’s not hard to look like you know what you’re doing to someone who has no idea how it’s done. The question is whether you can hold up when you’re among people who know far more than you.

I was reminded of that today when I read Colin’s latest Canuckflack post, “I Am a Capable Strategist and Thoughtful Person.” It’s a delicious skewering of 99% of all blog posts - mine included, I’m sure.

There are people who seem to act their way through their profession by knowing the rote way to say things (like Colin points out). And they live in constant fear that someone is going to expose them as frauds.

It’s incredibly uncomfortable to be hopelessly out of your depth - if you’re trying to pretend otherwise. It’s embarrassing, stressful - a horrific strain. But if you’re out of your depth, honest about it, delighting in it, glorying in how much there is you don’t know yet, it’s not in the least scary. It’s learning, and there isn’t much that’s better.

So you have to be honest about how you’re using tricks of the trade. If you use crutches too long, next thing you know, you can’t stand on your own two feet alone.

And of course this tied back, to me, to social media, because it focuses on the individual - not the tricks but an actual person’s thoughts and actions. It’s much easier for someone to be outed as clever, as relatable, as human (or otherwise) when you’re hearing one person, not a faceless corporate “position”.

With that said, though, social media itself can be the worst bag of tricks of all. And Jeremy’s Pop PR Jots post today relates to that - a caution that the technology you use doesn’t define whether you’re good at what you do. Any medium is just a conduit for communicating information - it’s what you’re actually trying to communicate that’s the point. We can’t become so enamored of what the latest cool toy does that we forget what the point of the toy is.

Technology, by definition, enables us to do what we do better. The question is, what do we do? It can be surprisingly easy to forget what the answer to that question is. It helps to sit back and think about what we’re really trying to do, and whether we’re really any good at it at all.

Usually it’d be a pretty big overstatement to promise you that one website will change the way you look at the world. (Well, apart from this one, obviously . But you know what I mean.) But TED will. I’m so grateful to Matt for introducing me to it.

A recent TED blog post shows a really amazing camera prototype . You’d hold up the steering-wheel-style circle, frame your picture in the center rectangle, and squeeze it with both hands to take the photo.

When I oil paint - which I haven’t done regularly for years, a self-imposed loss for which I kick myself often - I am amazed by the way it caused me to see differently. Seeing literally feels different inside my brain when I’m considering the artistic composition of whatever I’m looking at. There’s so much more to consider that you normally don’t have to notice.

And it’s hard. Often what you see looks amazing, but what you make of it - photo, drawing, painting - misses the point, somehow.

As Kapgar pointed out , digital photography makes it easy to keep trying again and again, which is a wonderful opportunity. But it’s one we can sometimes take too much advantage of, I think. Just because I can rewrite something more easily on a computer than a typewriter doesn’t mean it’s still not a good idea to write as well as I can. Same with photography. I think Bill calls it "making pictures." I like that description because it implies the deliberation that goes into the process. Harder than snapping, but I think ultimately a lot more rewarding, even for us amateurs.

One of the best tools for painting is an empty slide mount . It’s just a little cardboard frame. But it’s perfect to hold up to your subject to frame what you’re looking at. And that’s why I love the design of this prototype, because it helps you see things exactly that way.

I wonder what other small, simple things could help us see the world differently?