Get That Shot - Event and Narrative
Earlier this year I began an art project at the San Gabriel River.
Earlier this year, I, Eric Trine, who can’t help but turn everything into an art project, went on a walk - and this is why - to see how much weird stuff floated down the river after the rain.
Following your curiosity has more to do with timing, than anything else.
One needs to grant, give, or allow time for following one’s curiosity - the white rabbit, as it were.
Following is just saying yes forever.
Following better, brings your awareness to all the millions of yes’s you say all the time.
Following better brings your awareness to the “no’s” as well.
Like Sister Corita Says in Rule #5 - To be disciplined tis to follow in a good way, to be self-disciplined is to follow in a better way.
Artists do this by establishing a work space/place - studio. The studio is the discipline. It is architecture.
It is a “good way” to have a studio space/place.
The placeness of the studio kicks our brains into gear - now is the time to make stuff because you are in the place to make stuff.
This is a long pre-amble to say, that the river project flipped my practice - centering the place as myself, my body. So that I was the walking studio. I was the space in the place. When am I not?
I always have my phone with me to take photos and videos of everything, all the time.
But this morning I’ve been going through all my photos that I shot on my “real camera.”
Everything is different when shooting with my real camera. It’s a Canon 7D, digital SLR. It’s not fancy at all. It’s weighty, with just an EF lens 17-55mm. I shoot everything on this. All the photos on this site, etc…I’ve had it for 15 years. I know the crop and zoom - and how much I can get in the frame with or without moving my body.
For this project, I picked up a zoom lens 75mm-300mm. And after shooting the same way for years, the long lens became a way of getting curious with a tool I know so well.
Cropping.
I know the crop of my iphone 12mini (my daily carry).
I know the crop of my Canon7D with 17-55mm lens.
I did not know the crop of the 75-300mm lens and all of sudden play-full-ness rushed back into the view finder!
The lens extended my vision but also extended my crop.
I could see further in the distance with greater detail - but that detail cannot be transmitted beyond the camera’s sensor.
The sensor has capacity.
So regardless of the content that the lens brings into focus, the sensor cannot sense more visual data than it can operationally process.
The sensor has capacity.
Other than that, you are free to crop however you would like.
Only a certain amount of visual information is going to get through.
What does my crop say?
I went on a walk down by the river.
I am the capacity. I am the walking sensor.
I am the manager of the crop.
This is the image that prompted this morning’s reflection.
I chuckled to myself as I went through all the photos. This is funny. I clearly wanted to get a shot of the birds in the foreground and dog in the back, lining it all up. But in the moment I had no idea how to get that shot on the lens I was shooting.
I wanted “that crop” - but couldn’t get the other stuff in focus in time.
I wanted to capture the event in an image.
I wanted to get an art moment.
And, and, and…
I did.
If you look at the image, what is in focus?
In the earnestness to capture the moment, the event, a snap shot in time - the only thing that is in focus is the little bit of rippled water in the middle of the crop.
The figures are blurred in movement, even though it isn’t a motion blur, it’s the gesture of their forms, which we know.
The dog isn’t hunting - it’s curiusly exploring.
The Stilt Walkers aren’t running away as if they are about to be eaten.
They look like they just poured out of Sunday brunch and are headed to the subway stop.
There is so much information here - in the event!
Or maybe!
It’s just a bad photo.
Peace, Love, Cactus.