On Deciding . . . Better 3.0

The pleasures of the world can’t be an end in themselves. They are here to permit a settled mind and calm spirit. This is how the material world can free the heart.

[R’ Chaim Luzzatto, Mesillas Yesharim]

During my explorations here at ODB, I shifted focus from the act of deciding to perception. I believe that most decisions are made without involvement of deliberative, conscious level thought. Mental models that shape the perception of the state of the world or desired goals are more important than methods to make better choices. I now call this mistaken focus on conscious thought the Cartesian Fallacy, in recognition of the power we give to the subjective “I” that seems somehow separate from the body. The brain is a complex processing and behavioral system that has an executive level supervision with limited access to the brain mechanisms that shape what we perceive, what we feel and what we do.

Unfortunately, it makes the work of deciding better much more difficult. The work of shifting mental models from within is challenging, a task the world’s wisdom literature has taken on for thousands of years.

Let photography symbolize the quest to perceive what is not always readily apparent at least in the visual world and its mental constructs.

It’s almost 15 years ago that I looked at a web page that challenged me to “Edit This Page”. It was Dave Winer’s open web logging experiment that gave me a voice on the internet. I called it “On Deciding . . . Better” in recognition of my interest at the time in Decision Theory.

I now call the project ODB in my personal notes. It’s a project that has moved through areas of philosophy, through photography and most recently to neuroscience. It’s a big project that simply extends my lifelong project to understand brain and mind, perception and thought, knowledge and belief.

As this continues to be a journey, ODB remains some record of the path, a personal journal.

It’s the seeing that is all. These maps are metaphors that remind me of seeing.

One of the drawbacks of the Sigma Foveon is the lack of support for RAW conversion by the usual tools. Files get processed by the Sigma software prior to being brought into Aperture.

Sigma has added a monochrome conversion to the newest version of Sigma Photo Pro. In keeping with Vincent Versace’s dictum to do RAW conversion for Nikon “the Nikon way”, I’m trying monochrome conversion for the DP2 “the Sigma way”.

I think it’s an impressive result, providing a level of image quality that can’t be reproduced by any other camera this size. The Leica ME has a different way of rendering as a system but also requires a good bit more of me as a photographer for image capture.

With the price reductions of the new Merrill versions of the SIgma compacts, I finally upgraded from my original version of the DP1. I found that the Sigma was not only the camera I’ve been carrying with me lately, but it’s also been the instrument used to capture some of my best images over the years.

With a single day of ownership, so far I’m impressed with the improvements in the labeling and operations of the camera. It’s a bit bigger and a bit heavier, but it’s faster and more convenient to control.

At this point I have too many tool choices to have a capture workflow that lets me work without the fumbling that can ruin seeing. I’m hoping that daily capture with the Sigma will start to get me there.

Cracked Earth
Negev, Israel

Overall, not a very productive year for me as photographer. On my extended trip to Israel in Febuary, I was unimpressed with the images I captured. Some nice travel landscape shots for personal memories, but nothing that spoke to me. Overall, only 24 images from 2012 posted to Flickr, most in the last 3 months.

With my new position, the drive to create visual art is back. The limitations of my current visual world seems to be part of the inspiration as I face the fact that I am a photographer of walls, parking lots and rocks.

I’m drawing much of my inspiration from the medium itself. Cameras and software provide a rich visual world that needs just to be fed with color, form, composition and gesture.

Here’s a little different take on practicing in public from worldwide street photographers via Alex Coghe. The issues raised by having instant access to captured images and easy publication to the world seem to run counter to traditional concepts of artistry. I’ve argued that these old concepts are largely an illusion- artists have always tended to form communities for support and inspiration. Our means are different being instant and distributed. Same world, different methods.

Was working slowly in the film world of benefit? I doubt it. One just tended to do more editing in process because of the cost in time and money of film, processing and printing. But I still ended up with a hundred or so candidate images to chose two or three to spend an afternoon or a few days with in the darkroom. They went into a folder then, maybe to be submitted to a show or shown to my circle of friends and fellows.That was the recognition such as it was. And most of the comments were no different from the Flickr page- nice capture.

Can one complain about working without recognition? I see my work as inconsistent and occasional. I’m an amateur in the traditional sense, since I don’t depend on photography for income. I have a goal of bringing my work into local spaces because I think the process of printing and getting my work shown somewhere would be rewarding.

This image was for myself primarily and happily shared with my small audience. This is the 10th image in this series and I think I’m honing in on the idea of black and white or desaturated images that emphasize light and formal structure of my usual style. I’m practicing in public, hoping to return to the best of these images after I’ve explored the ideas a bit.

It seems that my writing yesterday must also have been in response to Mike Johnston’s distinction between artist and photographer. This is a little different take on the idea of the artist working in isolation, burying the mistakes and emerging into the world with a fully conceived body of work.

Again, I don’t think it’s ever been like this for artists. Our online world is public in a way that the world has never known before, but just because my acquaintances now can be found around the world rather than just around my city, I maintain that my peer group gives my support and feedback in the process of developing art.

Perhaps what is missing is the editing process of creating a portfolio or hanging a show. We tend to work continuously with the flow marked by occasional important images. I’ve tried a few times to go back through the few hundred images I’ve created, but the result is a personal collection.

I’m paid well at my job. I get pleasure from making the images and motivated by working through problems. Obviously now I’m taken by black and white images where structure creates gesture. These urban and suburban fragments are what are in front of me and the camera, the light and form have always been of visual interest.

So photographers, if you want to be artists, simply work on the problems that are attractive. Once it gets too easy or boring to create a particular kind of image, move on. Ask the next question. The old answer is now personal history.