{"id":1318,"date":"2009-09-22T23:59:14","date_gmt":"2009-09-22T14:59:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2009-09-22\/1318"},"modified":"2009-09-22T23:59:14","modified_gmt":"2009-09-22T14:59:14","slug":"delighting-in-a-chasm-between-artistic-senses","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/2009-09-22\/1318","title":{"rendered":"Delighting in a Chasm Between Artistic Senses"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n
\nNOTE<\/b>: Images with an icon next to them have been artificially shrunk to better fit your screen; click the icon to restore them, in place, to their regular size.\n<\/div>\n\n\n
<\/a>\nNikon D700 + Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4 — 1<\/sup>\/<\/big>125 sec, f<\/span>\/1.4, ISO 400 —\nmap & image data<\/a> — nearby photos<\/a><\/span>\nThrow-Away Test Shot<\/span>\nPhoto by St\u00e9phane Barbery<\/span>\n( I think<\/span> this is almost the perfect photo, but St\u00e9phane doesn't think it's very good )<\/span>\n<\/div>\n\n

French writer and photographer (and Kyoto resident and friend) St\u00e9phane\nBarbery is an artistic guy, whose artistic sense differs from me in just\nabout every way. Since I have<\/span> almost no artistic sense away from the\ncamera, this is probably a good<\/span> thing, but our different ideas about art\nare clearly apparent in our photography.<\/p>\n\n

Most photos I post on my blog are simply props to tell a story,<\/span> but the photos I post<\/span> for the sake of their beauty or\ninterest<\/a> tend to be full of rich colors and scenes. On the other<\/span> hand,\nSt\u00e9phane's\nphoto books<\/a> and photo site<\/a> are full of pictures that speak to the viewer\nin a completely<\/span> different way, using subtle colors or an explicit lack of\ncolor.<\/p>\n\n

As I mentioned in my previous post, Eclectic Photo\nGeeks at the Eclectic Music Concert<\/a>, St\u00e9phane took an opportunity\nbefore the\nconcert<\/a> to give my Nikon D700 a try,<\/span> particularly enjoying a thin<\/span> depth\nof field with my Nikkor 85mm f\/1.4 that his current camera can't match.<\/p>\n\n

His test shots were all on my memory card when I got<\/span> home, and most were\nindeed throw-away test shots, but the shot shown above, of vase in front of\na large<\/span> paper lantern, stopped me in my tracks. It's not at<\/span> all the kind of\npicture that I would<\/span> take, and it seems to me that it is<\/i> the kind of\npicture that St\u00e9phane would<\/i> take (and, of course, he did<\/i> take\nit), so I was<\/span> thrilled to find a “bridge” between his artistic sense and my\nown. I really<\/span> like that shot.<\/p>\n\n

Unfortunately, the bridge remains elusive, because St\u00e9phane does not like\nit. He futzed<\/span> with it a bit<\/span> in Lightroom, posting the result on\nhis Flickr page<\/a>, but says that he is still not at all satisfied with\nit. It's just as<\/span> well because I don't<\/span> care for the revised version anyway,\nin that it destroyed whatever it was that I thought<\/span> was special about the\noriginal.<\/p>\n\n

Although our artistic senses don't match, I feel I<\/span> can learn a lot<\/span> from\nSt\u00e9phane. He understands<\/span> his own sense, and can articulate well why he\nfeels as he does. (He articulates it to me in English, which I appreciate,<\/span>\nbecause I remember<\/span> nothing from my one semester of French in college 20+\nyears ago.) So, conversations with him are always a learning<\/span> experience for\nme... not learning “correct” or “incorrect”, but merely new ways to think\nartistically.<\/p>\n\n

He has a new<\/span> photo book coming out next month,\nUn\nan \u00e0 Ky\u00f4to<\/i><\/a> (One Year in Kyoto). On a different<\/span> front, the English\ntranslation of a novel<\/span> he wrote with his wife is currently #33 on Amazon's Best-Seller List<\/a>. The original<\/span> French\ncame out in 2006, but seems that it's still #8 on Amazon France's\nbest-seller list. (For reference, the most recent edition of my geeky technical book<\/a> peaked at #31 when it came out in\n2006, but it's now ranked at Amazon.com at #20,213.)<\/p>\n\n

(Maybe some day I'll get a second shot at best-seller ranking with that photography\nbook I've got in me somewhere<\/a>...)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

French writer and photographer (and Kyoto resident and friend) St\u00e9phane Barbery is an artistic guy, whose artistic sense differs from me in just about every way. Since I have almost no artistic sense away from the camera, this is probably a good thing, but our different ideas about art are clearly apparent in our photography.<\/p>

Most photos I post on my blog are simply props to tell a story, but the photos I post for the sake of their beauty or interest tend to be full of rich colors and scenes. On the other hand, St\u00e9phane's photo books and photo [...]","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/regex.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}