Training

Samsung NX 100 †

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Haarlem, today. A camera [ is a camera ]

Min/max temperature: 13°C/22°C; humidity: 72%; precipitation: 0 mm; sea level pressure: 1023 hPa; wind: North 3.1 km/h. ; Moon: Waxing Crescent, 48% illuminated

Camera's come and go, with the speed of light. You practically can not unpack the box or a 'newer, faster, cheaper, mega-pixel promising, super latitude ' model is shouting for attention -- and if you hate photography -- but like showing off with the newest stuff, the biggest lenses, that really is all that matters. Advertising people give you the reason to feel good about your new investment ("If you do not buy it, people will not like you anymore!") -- so you buy and feel good, at least for a couple of hours -- and it drives the market. Everybody with a bit more sensible-sense knows that is nonsense. It is not in the latest marketing craze, it is in stuff that you trust, know how to handle, feel comfortably-uncomfortable to work with. The more it breaks down -- over the course of a productive life -- the more it is held by 'wires', the more you are able to establish a 'relationship' with your gear, repair it, keep using it, have it function as an extention of your-self, making it your own, the better of you are, the more you learn, the better you get. "In der Beschränkung zeigt sich erst der Meister, Und das Gesetz nur kann uns Freiheit geben." This proces keeps repeating itself until it becomes a 'piece of cake' -- to start all over again! "Transcend and include..." That is not to say that the market of products and services is bad and corrupt -- on the contrary, it is not good nor bad per sé. Everybody knows that. The amazing thing is, a whole lot of excellent, useful stuff is designed, produced, marketed and sold. Equipment that actually is made to function, and last a little longer than the time required to walk out the store or being delivered to your door -- that has durability, sometimes even a lifetime. The art is in knowing what you need, knowing where to find it and learn to work with it, get the best out of it. Do you want to feel free to create or be a puppet of the market? It is not productive to denounce the market (it creates angry people). It is better, more healthy, to learn to recognise and use the few good things that are available, in the achievement of the goals that you have set for your self. To feel free to create! To feel free to create! As opposed to be a slave and work for stuff you really do not need and that sure as hell does not need you. This is the 'art of separating people from their money' game. Some people really need an airplane. But some people for sure do not need another new phone. Don't judge, be conscientious.

The Samsung NX 100. The lens broke a few months ago, but -- miraculously -- with scotch tape it kept functioning with an intact back-focus. More or less. With the first generation battery and delivering an impressive organic-look -- I have always loved Samsung camera's (from the Samsung NV-8 onwards) -- even their phones make better pictures than others around. The NX-100 is/was a beautiful camera with a mechanic shutter, trusty, simple and robust. Been 'everywhere' with it, under extreme circumstances: hot, cold, wet, dry, indoor and outdoor. Last week the shutter failed and since Samsung discontinued the production of this camera -- and all other of its camera's in general -- time had arrived to move on to another model, even brand (a used digital camera by a classic manufacturer, which does not start with an "S" for sure!) Here is my final salute to a marvellous modest piece of equipment.... All images on this website -- and many more -- are made with the camera pictured above -- with the exception of this image ofcourse.

Contingencies

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Foredune, today. Path [ "Just passing through" ]

Min/max temperature: 5°C/7°C; humidity: 91%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1026 hPa; wind from W 20.9 km/h; Clouds: overcast 60 m.; visibility: < 2.0 kilometres

"It is not so much the subjects one depict that create beauty; rather it is the need one has felt to represent them, and it is this need itself that gives one the strength to carry them off…. One might say that anything is beautiful, provided it is at the right place at the right time, and, conversely, that nothing is beautiful if it comes at the wrong time… Beauty is what is apt. […] What we call "composition" is the art of communicating our thoughts to others. […] A work should be all of a piece […] and people and things should be there for an end. I wish to say what is necessary plainly and strongly… and I confess to the greatest horror of superfluities (however brilliant) and of filling up. […] In my pictures of fields I see only two things: the sky and the ground, the two separated by the horizon, and imaginary lines, rising and falling, I built on that and the rest is either accidental or incidental. [ I intend ] to give man the principal role and landscape the status of a creation, showing it all in its significance, grandeur and truth as it is actually created. […] In the cultivated places, although at times in regions hardly at all tillable, you see figures spading or hoeing; you see one, from time to time, straighten up his back… and wipe his forehead with the back of his hands. You will eat your bread by the sweat of your brows. […] 'Cursed is the earth in thy work; with labour and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life. Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herbs of the earth. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return of the earth.' […] Nature yields herself to those who trouble to explore her."

Jean-François Millet in 'Drawn into the Light', edited by Alexandra I. Murphy, page 5, 22, 28, first published in 1999 by Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute

"Money, food, grades, and honours must be husbanded carefully, but the automatic reinforcements of being right and moving forward are inexhaustible."

B.F. Skinner in 'The Technology of Teaching', page 158, first published in 1968 by Prentice-Hall, Inc., USA

Land your brand™

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Kennemer Dunes, today (1/3). Break it [ make it ]

Min/max temperature: 4°C/7°C; humidity: 99%; precipitation: 0 mm, sea level pressure: 1026 hPa; wind from SSE 8.0 km/h; Clouds: Few 152 m, Scattered Clouds 213 m, Mostly Cloudy 274 m; visibility: 5.0 kilometres

"The point in which content leaves off and technique begins is blurred, and yet they are so interdependent that one is impossible without the other. Above all, then, the filmmaker must not only be fully aware of both art and technique, but of technology as well. Film-making is a twentieth-centrury art born of science. [...] Consider ultra sensitive high-speed [ film ] that allows picture-taking under seemingly impossible light conditions, or transistors that make feasible vest-pocket synchronous units that record actual sound and speech anywhere. Such developments, which make possible so much more, may at times be an obstacle, because the temptation is so great, and so subtle, to concentrate on mastery of the technique. In the heady excitement of achieving effect or of bringing off a difficult tour de force, it is easy to find a pseudo artistic satisfaction that blinds one to the demands of a fully artistic piece of work. [...] Discipline is what is sorely needed. Often, the so-called depth and insight are in reality lots of smoke and little fire, emotionalism without substance. The […] filmmaker must clarify his substance by analysis and structure development, with close scrutiny of the causal relationships. […] In the making of a film, aside from creative effort, much is required of the film-maker in the way of technical knowledge and organisational know-how. Unfortunately, his mastery of these areas can lead to such sense of accomplishment and satisfaction that he may be trapped into forgetting why he initially set out to make a film. It is not unusual, for example, for him to become so absorbed in the technical aspects [ of lip synchronisation ] he overlooks what is being said. […] The film-maker needs, therefore, in addition to a solid technical foundation, an insight into those things involving ideas and values. He needs to know where his talents shape up best, whith what kind of material he functions most effectively, in what way he can set up a frame of reference within which to explore his material, and how to clarify his point of view. How he wants to say anything, let alone decide the most effective way to say it? To seek conscious and direct answers to these problems is next to impossible because they cannot be arrived at in the manner of mathematical equation. Rather, the answers will emerge to one degree or another, trough the actual making of the films. [...] The filmmaker has to constantly make films. The questions should be left to the critics, the scholars, and the analysts."

Haig P. Manoogian in 'The Film-makers Art', page 1, 2, 159, 247, first published in 1966 by Basic Books, Inc. New York, London

"Art comes out of craft. That's where the art comes from. Movies are craft, they're not art. Art comes out of craft. [You] may have a great idea for a painting. But can you paint? If you say "No," than your idea isn't worth a shit. […] Pretty photography is easy; it really is the easiest thing in the world. But photography that rounds a picture off, top to bottom, and holds the content together, is really the most beautiful. […] You try not to put the photography in front of the story; you try to make it part of the story."

Gordon Willis in 'Masters of Light', page 294, 302, by Dennis Scheafer and Larry Salvato, first published in 1984 by University of California Press, USA

"I want to always be free to not have to do something. I want to not have to take a picture for any other reason than because I want to […] I don't want to take a picture because I have to. That's how despair begins; when you don't have the freedom to say no to something that you don't want to do. Suddenly you get locked into not being free."

Conrad Hall in 'Masters of Light' , page 173 by Dennis Scheafer and Larry Salvato, first published in 1984 by University of California Press, USA

"Despair is the only unforgivable sin, and it's always reaching for us."

Sam Peckinpah in 'Peckinpah, the Western Films, A Reconsideration', introduction, by Paul Seydor, first published in 1980 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois, USA

"Aesthetic and ethical decisions are seldom made from a position of cool intellectual neutrality; more often they are forged in discomfort and anxiety over conflicting moral obligations -- to actual people who know and trust you, on the one hand, or to truths whose importance may transcend any individual's passing discomfort, on the other. [...] Only with maturity can you identify the surrogates to your own values and temperament, and allow them to achieve a life of their own in a film. The discipline of such a process has its own rewards. Your work alters the way you see the fundamentals of your own life -- the very source from which your documentary process sprang. In this way, each film lays the foundations for the next."

Michael Rabiger in 'Directing the documentary (third edition)', page 364, published in 1998 by Butterworth-Heinemann, USA

"The best people know more."

David Ogilvy in 'Ogilvy on Advertising', page 21, first published in 1983 by Multimedia Publications (UK) Ltd.