Photography, like alcohol, should only be allowed to those who can do without it.
- Walter Sickert, Germany
What is your secret obsession that you can't wait to disclose? Mine is composition.
I don't claim to miraculously come up with perfectly framed subjects for my research projects. As a matter of fact, I'm preoccupied, beset, consumed, dominated, engrossed, gripped, harassed, haunted, held, possessed, tormented by this obsession. Everywhere I look, whatever I come across, I keep thinking "how would I show this?".
It's such a rush to get a shy glimpse of an idea, like a quick hard shot of vodka into your system. Such as this morning's. I was pouring over sites and books to arm myself for an "unplanned" holiday in Ubud. I thought of "professions going on extinction" as a subject to compose. I was walking on clouds as the sun shone through a curtain parting.
I haven't had breakfast, I'm going on calling my lunch a brunch now. I don't know what to have, I don't care. It feels great to be obsessed with something like this. It's healthy. It brings me focus. The end gratification is to share what I will discover through my lens, the thrill of opening up a present of images that I could compose but know the end result is always a mind made up by the camera's own. Speaking of which, I had a spooky experience the other day when I tried to produce a composed idea of a deity's shrine in the local Indian cave temples. As much as I tried, the images came up shaky. I took it as a sign that at some point, professionalism has to give way to ethical, call it what you may, supernatural (?) intervention. Perhaps that composition was never meant to be.
I'm obsessed but at least I'm not stubborn.
