Departure iii

I'm leaving now. I'm leaving now. I love you all. Good bye.

Photography is Easy; Photography is Hard

Yesterday, Robin of Simply Robin posted an attack on my assertion that: 'photography is easy'. We've decided to agree to disagree, but I think an explanation on my end is in order, if merely in the interest of intellectual discourse. The truth about the matter is that I have been thinking a lot about the nature of the photographic medium, even before my dad bought a dSLR. Many of my friends are currently jumping onto the dSLR bandwagon; they are happy to shoot everything and anything that comes their way. I didn't like that. I wanted to be sure, that if I were to pick up a camera, and the skills that came with the photographic medium, I'd be doing it for a good reason. For a meaningful reason. I write because the act of writing soothes my mind, and helps me organize my ideas, and in an ideal scenario my writing is used to store feelings, and thoughts, and images attached to those thoughts that I want to remember. But what of photography? What can photography accomplish that writing cannot? I struggled for an answer, because I didn't want to shoot without a purpose. And I did find an answer, though I'll get back to that in a bit. Here, first of all, is my argument:

Photography is easy. It is. Let us consider the following scenario:

Kid takes camera. Kid shoots. Of those photos that he first shoots, it is likely that a handful would be good shots, though most would be bad.

Kid takes pen. Kid writes. Of those essays that he first writes, all would be lousy.

Kid takes paintbrush. Kid paints. Of those pictures that he first paints, all would be lousy.

Why?

The answer to that question lies in the limits of a medium, and the limits in photography are more solidly defined and more restricting than that in writing and painting, and film. Consider that writing and painting recreates what is obvious in front of us, in the sense that when you're drawing a bush you would have to recreate the leaves in that bush, the environment around it, and the way the light plays on the dappled shadows underneath the branches. But in photography you don't have to do all that: God has drawn the bush for you, God has given you light, you merely have to capture it. In writing, and in painting, you are the God of your work, and it is difficult to be a God, the same way it is difficult to be a 3D modeler of a virtual world than it is to be the gamer that screen-captures your work.

I struggled with this notion for some time, because after the control and the creative power of writing, photography seemed like a farce. Like riding a bike after touring Europe in a coupe. And it appears that I was not the only one with such views ... shortly before I wrote the original blog post, I chanced upon an interview with Henri Cartier Bresson on Google Video,
who said:

Teaching (photography) is how to use a little finger, that's all ... photography is just an instant drawing. BUT, for photography, you need one (finger) ... and in drawing you need three.

Henri Cartier Bresson, for those of you who don't know, was the greatest photographer of the 21st century, the inventor of modern photojournalism, the founder of the prestigious Magnum agency. Slightly more contemporary, however, is photographer Paul Graham's take on the medium, written for Yale University's MFA photography graduation book:

It’s so easy it's ridiculous. It’s so easy that I can’t even begin – I just don’t know where to start. After all, it’s just looking at things. We all do that. It’s simply a way of recording what you see – point the camera at it, and press a button. How hard is that? And what's more, in this digital age, its free - doesn't even cost you the price of film. It’s so simple and basic, it's ridiculous.

Robin points out in his post that his shots of water droplets on a pair of dragonfly eyes were impossibly difficult to achieve. But let us put that in perspective: if you were to give me one year's worth of practice, some macro gear, an umbrella, an insect and rain I would probably be able to capture something near Robin's level of quality, after maybe 10,000 shots or so. But give me a pencil, some paper, and paint ... and even after 5 years of constant practice I cannot guarantee you an image like that. The thing about photography is that you can capture multiple shots and pick the best; in art, and in writing: this is impossible. There is no 'pick the best'. The real reality of writer and the painter is this: 4 hours worth of work, and I throw it away because the anecdotal lede I used to introduce my article is bloated; 4 hours of work, and I throw it away because the nose on my portrait isn't just right.

It is an accepted truth of all these mediums - writing, photography, painting - that nobody sees the work that goes into the final product. A 15 page essay in the New Yorker is the result of 6 months worth of research, 3 discarded drafts and 1 week's worth of editing and fact-checking; nobody sees this. Michelangelo's murals on the churches of Rome take a year, at least, upside down and draped in sheets; nobody sees this. And there are more writers and painters who commit suicide and inflict self-damage in the pursuit of their chosen art - bereft of the commercial options available to photographers - nobody, too, sees this.

Robin is right: nobody sees the work that leads up to a taking of a photograph. But he is mistaken in the assumption that it is true only of photography - it is true of writing, and painting; and drawing, and film. He attempts to prove that photography is incessantly difficult, but he does so without the context of the other creative mediums available to man. Photography, writing, and art: do they not overlap in the expression of the human condition?

So ... what's so great about photography? Or - to put a twist on an aforementioned question: what's so difficult about it? One good answer would be to refer - again - to Paul Graham:

It’s so difficult because it’s everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now. It's the view of this pen in my hand as I write this, it's an image of your hands holding this book, Drift your consciousness up and out of this text and see: it's right there, across the room - there... and there. Then it’s gone. You didn’t photograph it, because you didn’t think it was worth it. And now it’s too late, that moment has evaporated. But another one has arrived, instantly. Now. Because life is flowing through and around us, rushing onwards and onwards, in every direction.

And also:

But if it's everywhere and all the time, and so easy to make, then what’s of value? which pictures matter? Is it the hard won photograph, knowing, controlled, previsualised? Yes. Or are those contrived, dry and belabored? Sometimes. Is it the offhand snapshot made on a whim. For sure. Or is that just a lucky observation, some random moment caught by chance? Maybe. Is it an intuitive expression of liquid intelligence? Exactly. Or the distillation of years of looking seeing thinking photography. Definitely.

Photography is valuable because it is a freeze frame of a moment in time, untouched by human hands and unvarnished by human opinion. No other medium can do this. Writing can capture a moment, yes, and in more depth - yes. But it cannot freeze that moment and leave it ambiguous, neutral, it cannot allow the viewer and the reader to impose their meaning on it, to give their own interpretations of the image the photographer so chooses to capture.

And in that ambiguity lies the real challenge in photography: not composition, not light, not subject - though all of those things do matter to the learning photographer. Those are merely the technicalities. The real challenge in photography is to capture the ambiguity of the real world, and to make that obvious to the people who are lucky enough to view your photographs. To capture what is real, and to also imply what is unreal, at all the places that are important to you. And that is not easy, nor is it quick; but most importantly it is not possible in any medium but this one.

Photography is easy; photography is hard. And in that sentence you have one of the truths of all the arts, and one of the great joys of life. Now let us stop bickering and go out, with our cameras - into the rain perhaps - to take more photographs.

Endnotes:
1, I owe a very special friend for the argument about painting, and the argument about the value of photography. I owe her many things, actually, and this endnote is just one way of thanking her.

2, N.B.: Various photographers have tried to work around the limitations of the medium, for instance: noted fashion photographer Rankin sees film-making as telling a story; photography as telling a joke.

Photolog: I See But I Don't See

This was shot last Friday, across the river and in the nooks and alleys of Carpenter Street. The full set can be found here; this photolog's just the black and whites - the street photographs, the captured stories.

Boat rides crossing the Sarawak River begin early and end late, and they never let up - we saw a woman hurrying down the jetty during lunch-time to give a boatman a pack of rice. 50 cents per ride and don't ask for the price - or the boatmen'll charge you 1 ringgit.

Shot just outside the Bishop's Gate. It's amazing, sometimes, what you can find in the deep pockets of the Waterfront.

Carpenter street. Back from lunch, and in from the heat of the afternoon.

A gardener over at the Old Courthouse is watering the plants as our group walks on by. I ask him to raise his hose and he obliges. "Terima kasih encik," I say, and he smiles back.

You are allowed a certain degree of fantasy when you're young, especially so if you live in a Kampung that's haphazardly built in the shadow of the new DUN complex - paths spindly and uneven, and running up and down and into unexpected places. Home is but one heartbeat away.

This group is a friendly bunch. I comment - later on and on the way back to the city - that it would be nice living here, growing up in such an environment. Then I see their siblings, the secondary school students: the ones who smoke and preen and hang out on motorbikes.
I stand corrected: will these kids turn out like that?

Here is the pilot and here is the sun.

One heartbeat. Away.

Hello there, welcome to the Malaysian education system.

Note the bunch of youths to her right - they're talking about motorbikes and decals and are tossing cigarette butts on the grass, without stamping on them.
And the girl ... the girl just waits.

I was never aware of this life, despite being Thomian for 6, 7 years: the boys who cross the river everyday for school, and who cross back again afterwards. How does it feel attending St Thom like this? Studying like this? And what does your father do, to be able to hold your hand and bring you back home, every afternoon, everyday? I see, but I don't see: I know that now.

Departure ii

It's become frightening, now that it's about a week away.

My Problem With Photography

My problem with photography is that it is a limited medium. In writing you are not constrained by what is in front of you; you can slow time, speed it up; you can give the gift of sight and sound; you're able to take a person into the zeitgeist - the mood of a moment, pointing to him the interesting, the beautiful - quickly skipping past the ugly and the mundane. You can grow whole forests at the speed of thought, feed your travellers exotic insects, send them on a tour of the royal gardens on the back of a bee. Writing is unrestricted, plugged directly into the imagination, and it changes the way you think simply because you can now capture thoughts - pluck them right out of the air, even, and store them in a format far more versatile than the printed image. Photography, however, is superficial. It is beautiful only in what you capture. Your style is the kind of things you shoot, as opposed to the kind of things you do to your subject. It is subtle, light. And it is inherently limited: even Henri Cartier-Bresson admits this - though he was talking about painting as a comparison, for he was himself a failed painter.

And yet ... photography is fun. It is a social activity, and it is a commercial one - you don't have such silly things as group outings in writing, for instance, because group writing produces some of the most horrible end-products known to man (i.e.: the Transformers 2 dialogue). Writing is also not commercial, for you do not see people arguing about the best brand of pen to use for their next novel; but it is lonely, and retentive, and often frustrating, and it is all those things in exchange for the creative control and power a writer wields over his work.

I'm going out for a photography outing tomorrow, and we're set to have a hell of a time (half of which would be commercial, materialistic comparison of gear). And the truth is that I am decidedly confused about photography, because for all the frustration I have with the limits of this medium ... photography is fun, and I have shot some pretty damned cool things in the short time I've been doing it. Like this, for instance:

... which is probably the one photograph I am most pleased with. And because I am a writer, I am a street photographer, because my storytelling habits have followed me off the page and onto the road, behind the lens and the mirror box. Photography is fun: it is accessible, easy. Sexy, even. And if photography has a place for me - the cynical, storytelling writer - then it has a place for everyone with the resources to get themselves a dSLR (and lens, and flash, and camera-bag, you get the idea ...)

If there is a art for the masses of the 21st century - mark my words, photography is it.

Photolog: Old Kuching

This was a photo-gathering taken a few weeks back - they've been 3 since, but I've only completed post-processing for this one. The idea for shooting in Old Kuching came about because I figured that I was going to be leaving soon (and yes, that I am) but at the same time I realized Kuching may be fundamentally different when I return. I have had friends who leave and come back to gross capitalism (i.e.: The Spring); what is to say that the Old Kuching I know and love will stay the same? The sampan rides, the uncomfortable coexistence of decay and tourism, smack side-by-side in crowded streets and wide boulevards, would they remain?

I am interested in stories, and in stories of my hometown; this photolog is my first attempt at keeping them.

That's us right there: Garrick, Joash, and Samantha. They were waiting for me to finish with a bunch of dumpsters clumped in an India Street back-alley. Those shot didn't make it past the post-processing stage.

This was taken in Elektra House, which was once the shopping mall in Kuching. I stood by the stairs and imagined a busier, happier time, one where couples sitting on steps actually mattered to the flow of traffic.

He was bored. This particular KFC outlet is from the old core of Kuching, and it stays mostly empty. The ceilings are mushy and aged, the seats tacky pink and green. And there are a lot of them. It isn't hard to imagine the store in better times.

"Uncle, smile!" I say, but he just looks at me, and then at my camera. He sits in that corner for hours - when we stop by for a drink at the open air market, at dusk, still he sits there, immutable, old. What were his dreams, when he was younger? Did he have any? How did he find this corner? These crates? I snap the picture, voice my thanks, but he only nods back at me.

Found in India street. What was it like for our parents, our grandparents? they had no labels, or brands, or ad campaigns to tell them what to buy.

Macaroni and chillis on Gambier Street. Ah, the sweet smell of globalization!

The old market smells of rats, and the ghost of crowds, and memories.

These two men started a conversation as soon as they pulled up to the Old Market jetty. Between them, the girl was texting someone else.

"Don't give it to them" Garrick told me.
"Why not?"
"They can find work on their own."
I looked at them, and then back at him. "They're BLIND, Garrick."

The crest at the top of the Old Post Office bears the legend Dum Spiro Spero: While I Live, I Hope. I was telling my aunt about it, and my grandfather overheard: "You know what it means?!" he interrupted.
"Yes." I said. "How do you know?"
My grandfather pauses, and smiles. "When I was in Primary 2, in St Thomas, they taught us what it meant."
Dammit, the colonialists had taste.

These men were kicking a ball and a bottle, amongst other things, outside this convenience shop. They looked happy enough.

This photolog was shot on Gawai, and the men you see here were longboating upriver. Twenty minutes later they left where they came from, but not after cleaning their boat and cooling themselves with the river water. Sam was horrified.

Kuching is a beautiful city. I will miss it.

The Bob Review

Folks, meet ... Bob:

Yes, Bob is a 13-inch unibody Macbook, and no, I didn't choose the name. As I remember it, I didn't even have a say in the matter ... and now the Bob's Bob regardless of what I do say. But anyway. I've been fiddling with the Macbook for a couple of weeks now, doing the expected new-laptop things like installing fancy unneeded programs, changing the desktop background once every two days, and fiddling with the folder structure to figure out where to my torrents documents go; plus et all, etc etc. But if you own a laptop, and you are a geek (as I am) then it's very likely that you've already gone through such a phase ... and so in which case you can now nod along with me in mutual understanding and ignore the confused looks of everyone else who haven't yet gotten to the heartwarming and ultimately grown-up stage of owning your own computer. Which I now have. Grown up. 3 weeks ago. Yes.

The Macbook looks great, both from above, with the screen closed, and in use, with the lid up and the laptop in front of you. The body's solid aluminium, finished in this wonderful metallic sheen, and there are almost no ridges or grooves anywhere on the notebook apart from the battery-compartment release, which is below the body, and the thumbscoop at the very front of the Macbook. There's also this acrylic Apple logo up top that lights up when the Macbook's in use, and smudges over when it's not; I particular enjoy rubbing it to see my fingerprints warp over the plastic and then wipe it clean, and then rub it again to wipe it clean to rub it again, and so on so forth. Not so much when that happens on the glass screen, but that's getting ahead of myself.

The 'unibody' designation means that this Macbook was build from one solid block of aluminium, which was lasered out and washed, and then fitted with electronics directly mounted onto the unibody itself. Apple claims that the unibody allows them to make lighter and tougher Macbooks, and thus far they seem to right on one count: this laptop's the lightest I've ever carried, even when compared to the other polycarbonate Macbooks my friends own; and it feels rock solid. But tough it isn't, not really: based on anecdotal evidence the unibody Macbook cannot survive a forceful drop on gravel, and where a polycarbonate body would - at worse - be cracked, the danger in this case would be for the Macbook to dent, damaging the mounted Logicboard in the process. (There's also been a lot of complaints that the unibody dents easily, so I'm now hunting for a good sleeve/laptop bag.)

Another minor complaint is the display itself. The Macbook's screen is covered with a sheet of glass, and the LED-backlit display is absolutely fantastic for watching movies or doing photograpy-related post-processing. Apple promises the best colour reproduction money can buy ... and on that front, at least, the Macbook does not disappoint. Colours practically pop off screen and onto your lap, and it's pretty hard for photographs to look bad on the Macbook display - it's just too bright, too polished, and too beautiful for anything to look particularly ugly. But the downside to this fidelity is that the Macbook's screen is also very glossy. And when I say glossy, I don't just mean glare - glare's something you get from, say, iPod screens. When I say glossy I mean that the whole Macbook display is a mirror in itself, and whenever you turn the backlight down your face practically pops onscreen the exact same way the colours did a couple minutes before. In this way, at least, you get to preen right before and after you use the Macbook, making this computer possibly the most narcissistic thing I have ever owned.

A review about a Macbook is also - essentially - a review about Apple's software, and this review won't be complete without talking a little about how it feels to live, and work, with OSX. If there ever is a reason for you to get a Macintosh computer, OSX is it. It's hard to describe the joy of the platform to a Windows user, or how OSX gently changes the way you think about computers, but here's my best shot: the Mac is fun. It's fast, for starters, meaning anything and everything you throw at it would still run faster than on a Windows machine; it's stable - meaning it almost never crashes; it's easy to use - printers, mice and internet connections are all basically plug and play, and then drag and drop; and then there's Expose ... which is God's gift to the OCD multitasker. There are a hundred and one things that work together to make the Mac environment more fun to use than a Windows machine, but the space here is limited ... so allow me to toss you just one example of how a Mac is better than Windows: program installation.

In Windows, installing a program feels like planting a tree, where the program puts down roots into the depths of your system. When you uninstall that program, you uproot the tree ... and you leave behind bits of root and bark, stuck in dark places like your program files folder and the system registry. Mac's program installation is drag and drop, and it feels less like planting a tree than it does like inviting a guest to stay in your home. The guest comes with his briefcases all packed, and he's happy to do what he does because everything he needs is in the briefcases he brings along with him. And the best thing about it? You can shift the guest anyhow you like within your house, or even kick him out ... and he works just as fine, whichever way you like it. Uninstallation on Mac? Drag the program icon to your bin and click empty. And within seconds, your program is gone.

On to writing, that activity that consumes about 70% of my computer time: typing on the Macbook is wonderful. The unibody Macbook's keys are black against the aluminium indent that holds them, and they're tactile and wonderful to the fingers ... at once familiar and foreign, and unlike any other keyboard I've touched before. Two years ago, while working on The Square with a Macbook, I complained about the keyboard spacing to Tay, who has one. He scoffed and told me that I didn't know what I was talking about. And I didn't. This keyboard - black plastic and curved corners and rounded tops - is the pinnacle of keyboard engineering, and I now love it to bits.

Note the edges: they're really sharp.

Two other things I must point out: the unibody Macbook's palm rest is 90 degrees of sharp aluminium, and it cuts into your wrists as you type. This is probably the worst design element of the product, and it isn't noticeable when you're trying it out in stores because you're standing while you're typing and the angle of your fingers are such that your wrists don't actually come in contact with the edges. But if you write a lot, like I do, you'll find that the Macbook's palm rest is as unforgiving as a bed of nettles to a naked ass, and probably just as painful.

Secondly, OSX doesn't treat mice and cursors the same way Windows does, and I found the cursor movement with my Logitech Laser mouse to be less consistent and somewhat jerky as compared to the built-in glass trackpad. The problem turns out to be Apple's handling of the mouse acceleration curve in OSX - things that are supposed to be smooth are not, and the speed from which I can jerk the mouse is rather inconsistent with the way I know mice are supposed to behave. The answer? Third party, firmware-level software, and my mouse now gives me the performance I expect of it.

Conclusion? I love my Macbook, and I think it's a good buy regardless of the few flaws I've shown you above. Would I recommend it to you? Absolutely not. Six days after I ordered my Macbook Apple announced a new line of Macbook Pros, the cheapest of which effectively became the replacement to my Macbook - only faster, cheaper, and with a cutting-edge 7-hour battery attached. So go get that one, instead.

And as for me? I'm happy with Bob, and I'm happy with the way Bob's been treating me lately. It's hard not to be happy when you've got a sexy, curvy little thing sitting by your bed for the past 3 weeks. And if this can be described a relationship, then I suppose you'd say that I'm still trying to get her to sleep with me ... but rest assured that Bob and I currently sleep on two different beds - me in mine and her on my table. And in the dark, when I'm about to turn in for the night and there's a splinter of moonlight across the room, I see the warm, silver glow of her curves ... and I tell myself, hell, I'm one lucky guy.

Trust me on this one: I think I'm in love.

Warning: Do Not Visit UGS/Novelr (Resolved)

If you visit either UGS or Novelr, you'll see a splash page telling you that both sites have exceeded bandwidth usage, and that you'll be granted access if you download a small 'web accelerator app'. Do NOT download - it's probably malicious software. My bandwidth has NOT expired, and right now I'm suspecting that my server has been compromised. Will update this space live over the next few hours.

Update 1: Here's a screenie:



Update 2: Seems the whole of ASO is affected, not just Novelr and UGS. Hacked, probably.

Update 3: Tweeted Tim Dorr, founder of ASO. Tim confirms something is up.

Update 4: Tim tweets back, saying the issue's resolved. ASO forums now has a thread about the DNS attack.

Hacker attack's averted, though I'm not sure how he got into ASO in the first place. I'm just glad it wasn't an account-specific hack (like, I dunno ... mine); anyway UGS and Novelr are safe places to go again.

On a side note: this is exactly why I recommend ASO to all my friends who're looking for a webhost. They're (relatively) cheap, they're fast, and when disaster strikes at 2 A.M. they make sure everything turns out ok in as little time as possible. This crisis was resolved in 3 hours. Most of their customers - and by extension most of Novelr's readers - probably won't even notice. These people are fantastic.

Departure

I am leaving in 18 days. It doesn't seem real yet, to tell you the truth - the fact that I am trading this town for another. I will no longer be with the people I love, to share in our communion of laksa and teh tarik; nor will I have the safe guarantee of their voices one phone-call away. And more importantly: I will not be able to check up on them - or be checked up upon - with the miracle that is the Digi satu-sen-sms. The thought of all that emptiness, where before I had known only the overflowing safety of communication - that thought: singular, new - is scary. As it is for many other college students, I'm sure.

You might have noticed that I've not updated for some time now. There's a reason for that. I've been working, and when you're at work you're exposed to all the benefits attributed to that horrible life-sucker only adults complain about - that thing called a job. Yes, a job. With the italics and all. I work from 8 to 5 (or sometimes 6, 7 - these days are the last ones, at the tail-end of the research project, and the tests in the lab are tiring beyond belief) and when I come home I collapse on bed and wake up at 8 and eat and then proceed to pig out at the most ghastly of times in front of the computer.

Unhealthy. I know. Tell me about it.

But it's also starting to be really annoying. I've only 18 days left in the land of kolo mee, and my time is better spent with the people I love then it is with the test tubes and the plant samples and the sexy hum of the UV machine. (In fact, the only loved one I'm spending huge amounts of time with is my aunt, because she's my boss - and so after this project you betcha we're going to need a break from each other). My job is tiring. To be fair, most jobs are.

Some of you may also have noticed that I deleted my last (very long) blog post, and there's a reason for that too. I didn't like it. I thought my writing sucked. I think I'm starting to become less like a blogger and more like an essayist, and the truth about such a change is that I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad one. To me, a blogger deals with experiences, and an essayist deals with ideas. I dabble in both - and my friends accuse me of being too impersonal because lately I've been writing only essays, not posts. In response: nothing much has been happening to me that's worth writing here, in so public a platform as Mochaspot has become. And also: let's just say that I'm going through a tough patch in my writing-life - it's called a block, if you're wondering - and leave it at that.

But I've got plenty to say now, 18 days from departure. I need to talk about UGS (the redux post that was my last), about the 3 photo-shoots that I did with a group of awesome people last month; and also about this incredibly curvy, unbelievably sexy thing to have walked into my life called (waitforit) Bob. Yes, you heard right - Bob. Don't ask, be nice, and I'll be back soon ... hopefully. See you in a bit.