Slow Photography

FLOW "Is there anything you do regularly that makes you forget what time it is?" Flow is the pure absorption of a jazz musician playing 'in the groove or a rapper in freestyle. Time is forgotten. The psychologist Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi first popularizeds this process called "Flow." Musicians get in to flow quite often. But what about us photographers...we click, but can we Flow? Yes, we can. Takes practice. Flow came to me after a few years of photographing dolphins. After many failed attempts, I photographed a dolphin tossing a mullet in Florida. When I made the photograph, my body receded. My sens of 'I' disappeared. Time flowed as my thoughts became one with my actions. Flow is hard to describe, so with a little simplification, let's take a closer look at what "flow" feels like. 7 PARTS OF FLOW for PHOTOGRAPHERS: 1. You’re completely involved in what you’re doing: you’re completely focused and concentrated. The camera...

"Endurance trapped in pack ice" by Frank Hurley (1885–1962) - Public Domain,  Digital Collections of the National Library of Australia — nla.pic-an23478504.    First published on the page 156 of Hurley's Argonauts of the South (1925),  London and New York: Putnam & Sons.  ENDURANCE. .  The ship. A single frame. ERNEST SHACKLETON . Its captain. A single frame from a Kodak Vest Pocket camera. Ross Sea Party on Elephant Island, Frank Hurley photograph. The crew. A single frame? No. Although the image above was labeled as a single frame of the ship's crew on Elephant Island cheering Shackleton on his return , t h e clouds were added later from second image that Frank Hurley took. There is also no do ubt that the original image was not taken on Ernest Shackleton's return to the s tranded men, but on his departure from the Ross Sea Party.   But there is do ub t about whet...

" Gotta Go", Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, 2015. Ektar 100 Film, Nikon n90s. " A good photograph is a happy accident— if you qualify the statement by saying that the greater the artist, the oftener the accident happens." ( after Charles Hawthorne) A fire hydrant and a dog. In the middle ground, a carriage rolls and hoofs its way to Lincoln street. People are sitting outside the Shop on The Corner , under a marine mural with its wide-eyes octopus, friendly skin diver and cavorting whale. Making the picture involved four kinds of luck. A LUCKY SHOT When we say "that's a lucky shot", we rarely mean to praise a photograph.   We really mean that blind luck made the picture happen. This underestimates the photographer. As photographers, we can create other kinds of luck than BLIND LUCK 1.These happen when we have removed the blinders, and have practiced and honed our craft.   Calling a photograph a lucky shot suggests it is only ...

How can I possibly sleep this moonlit evening?  Come, my friends,  Let’s sing and dance     All night long.     ~ Basho. *   Lunar eclipse super moon and heron, Copyright Jim Austin Jimages 2015. A SLEEPLESS, POINTLESS PURSUIT Silent moonlight found me one night. I was clicking away at the moon. Eclipsed by the earth, its pumpkin hues of orange and red perplexed the senses.  It was late September ( 9/27) . S hining through my film and digital cameras, t he bright sphere kept me awake through the night, as I tried to photograph its delicacy.  T rying to get the essence of the moonlight, and failing, was like pointing a finger at the moon, to borrow a phrase from Zen. Full moon behind goose feather and reed, Oriental North Carolina. Copyright Jim Austin Jimages 2015. Lands End Lighthouse with full moon, Provincetown,Massachusetts. Copyright Jim Austin Jimages Summer 2015. Captain J...

Kenneth Lonergan, Provincetown Crier, 2010. William (Bill) Maynard , Provincetown Painter, at 93. David Mazochi 's post-apocalyptic carnival parade float called "Viva Las Vegas". Watching the parade: Lizard & Lick and Provincetown Police Officer, Commercial St. Sunday afternoon in the Provincetown Library. Stop And Shop Security staff with a customer in a July rainstorm. I have a passion for Provincetown and I love the people here. Part of this passion is an appreciation for the simple pleasures offered by this Cape Cod town. Then, there are the experiences I've had here. We were married in Provincetown on August 30, 2013. The week after our small ceremony, I met two old friends from my Denver childhood. Arriving by ferry, they brought their 13-year-old son to Commercial Street, and stayed near Commercial for a day. After swapping memories of past times in Colorado, they said they disliked Provincetown and told me they'd n...