Intention - Seth Godin (Fri 30 Dec 2016)

shadow / bike - Glebe (Wed 10 Aug 2016)

Seth Godin on Intention:

Intention opens the door to forward motion.

via Moving a conversation forward by Seth Godin.

Perception - Colin Pantall (Tue 10 May 2016)

trees / water / reflection - Wilpena (Tue 12 Apr 2016)

Colin Pantall on Perception:

To open the doors of perception we need to go beyond this world. Which is not easy because it is familiar to us and provides a foundation for us. But if you really want to step beyond this world, all you have to do is step – and you are out.

via Photography Always Shows What We Already Think We Know by Colin Pantall.

On Creating a Moment - Drew Ginn (Fri 17 Aug 2012)

Car Park - Black and Yellow - Jongno-gu/ Seoul (Tue 11 Sep 2012)

Drew Ginn on Creating a Moment:

we all start out simply focusing on what we do. Then we either become inspired or imagine and things begin to progress. The days add up along with the months and years. Our focus improves along with our capacities and skills . We advance and things become interestingly possible. Then one day or over a period of days it becomes real. I mean it all starts to hit you that you are living your dream and aspiration has become action. This is a flexion point and a phase of confidently growing and shifting into a belief. Some times it faintly begins to unfold before the big moment and yet no one wants to let themselves get caught up in getting ahead of themselves. So then it's often not until its either to late or almost beyond the moment. The door is welcoming and somehow we can still hesitate. No moment stays open forever and some times they pass with out being taken.

via RUDDERFISH: Dreaming, Reality, Being Home & Moving Forward by Drew Ginn.

On Meaning - Emily Esfahani-Smith / Shooting Wide Open (Thu 13 Nov 2014)

Stairway to ..? - Venice (Tue 09 Sep 2014)
Emily Esfahani-Smith (*) writes on Meaning (*) [and Happiness (*)]:

Meaning is not only about transcending the self, but also about transcending the present moment. [..]

Meaning is enduring. It connects the past to the present to the future. [..]

Having negative events happen to you decreases your happiness but increases the amount of meaning you have in life.

via There's More to Life Than Being Happy (*) by Emily Esfahani-Smith (*) via happiness and meaning (*) by Shooting Wide Open (*).

On Understanding and Expectation - Elvis Costello / Spectrum (Sat 31 Aug 2013)

A Door (*), A Window (*) - Red and Blue - Paddington / London (Sat 17 Aug 2013)
Elvis Costello (*) talks about musical creation (*):

We were somewhat free from expectations (*) because we didn't tell anybody we were doing it, because we didn't know (*) we were doing it ourselves at first.''

via Pump it up: How hip-hop seduced Elvis Costello (*) by Nick Miller (*).

Back home now. A fantastic trip (*) with many great moments and experiences. Not a natural traveller, but this trip I seemed to handle it all better than I ever have and was fully engaged in the moment, not feeling homesick and not wanting myself to be somewhere else.

Hardly gave my work, paddling or situation in life (my usual preoccupations) a thought. A usual thought was to try and understand a place, event or thing, not to judge or to wish it to be something I am familiar with. It is there for a reason, and if I could just understand it a little, then I might learn something about it, life, or even myself.

I also thought how lucky I was to able to do this, to have these experiences and this outlook on life.

Took over 10,000 photos and have much to look at and ponder over the next few months, in particular, and no doubt, for the rest of my life.

Some photos have been taken so I can remember a place, a moment, or a transientary thing - to give it a life beyond its time.

Some have been taken because something caught my eye - a colour, a combination of colours, lines, shadows or maybe just the quality of the light.

Others I think have been captured for reasons beyond my comprehension, just as Elvis explains above. Most of these photos will never be seen by another person and in some ways this relieves me of any expectation or what others might think, as the above quote so nicely demonstrates.

So if you think some of the photos that appear here are a little beyond comprehension, maybe you should be thankful that you don't see some of the others that will never seen by anyone other than me.

Thanks Elvis and Nick, a great interview which allowed me to learn something about myself, which is what great writing and its sharing is about.

Door - Atocha / Madrid (Fri 09 Aug 2013)

Door Detail - Atocha / Madrid (Fri 09 Aug 2013)
Door - Atocha / Madrid (Fri 09 Aug 2013)
So many great doorways. I always wonder where they go and who has passed through them. For some reason I am always drawn to those doors that are in disrepair and have seen better days. So much detail and stories in this door.

Door - Barcelona (Tue 06 Aug 2013)

Door - Barcelona (Tue 06 Aug 2013)
Like a bowerbird (*), bits of colour catch my eye.

On Doorways - Pisa / Italy (Wed 11 Aug 2005) / Seoul / South Korea (Wed 12 Sep 2012)

Doorway - Pisa / Italy (Wed 10 Aug 2005)
Doorway - Seoul / South Korea (Wed 12 Sep 2012)

I love the dark spaces in between the doors.

On Photography - Joel Meyerowitz / Vice Beta (Nov 2012)

Weathered Door - Mitchell Road / Alexandria (Wed 21 Nov 2012)
Joel Meyerowitz (*) reveals in The Young Gun Meets the Living Legend (*):

Every time you take a picture, you’re saying yes to what you see.

There should be a degree of consciousness about who you are in the world at that moment, a kind of integrated consciousness.

It’s not blind luck, so if one can find what it is that makes you conscious, what gives you the pleasure of being alive at that moment, I feel that is what leads you to your own identity.

Because in the long run, your individual identity will be revealed by the strength of the photographs you make in one year, ten years, 15 years—there’s a string.

They’re like little jewels on the string and they carry all the messages that you were excited by when the world spoke to you.

From an Interview (*) with Olivia Bee (*).

Door - Castle / Seoul (Wed 12 Sep 2012)

Door - Castle / Seoul (Wed 12 Sep 2012)

The Eye Is a Door - Anne Whiston Spirn (Fri 29 Jun 2012)

The Eye Is a Door (*) - vimeo (*) - Anne Whiston Spirn (*) (Fri 29 Jun 2012)
Well worth watching. Look forward to the release of the book. I have a copy of her book Language of Landscape (*)

The Eye Is a Door: Photography and the Art of Visual Thinking is about seeing as a way of knowing and photography as a medium of thought and a mode of discovery. To photograph mindfully is to look and think, to open a door between what can be seen directly and what is hidden and can only be imagined.

I like her photographs.

Doors - Levanto / Italy (Fri 12 Aug 2005) / Boston / USA (Sat 20 Aug 2011)

Door - Levento / Cinque Terre / Italy (Fri 12 Aug 2005)

Door - Navy Yard / Charlestown / Boston (Sat 20 Aug 2011)
Like to photograph doors and windows. Here is a couple of doors photographed six years apart.

Photo: Wilson Street Lock - Newtown (Sun 14 Apr 2002)

Wilson Street Lock - Newtown - Sun 14 Apr 2002 (photo.net)
The above photo was taken at the entrance door of an Anitque Factory called Original Finish (thanks Charlotte) on Wilson Street in Newtown.

I drive past here on days I do outrigger training. Often walk past here on weekends, as the area has unlimited parking and is convenient to the Cafes and Shops of King Street Newtown.

I had seen quite a few photos of this type on photo.net, and for some reason I noticed the lock and decided to photograph it up close using macro mode. It seemed to be more interesting cropped to a square format.

Surprisingly, a few days after uploading it to photo.net, I noticed that it seemed to be getting more views than my typical photo uploads. Normally, I would get the occasional viewer and would be lucky to get 20 to 30 views in the first week and hopefully a couple of comments. Somehow this photo found itself rotating on and off photo.net's home page and this explained the surge in views.

When I looked at this photo tonight after many years [1], I was surprised to see that it had reached almost 63,000 views. This has to be my most viewed photo on photo.net. Not a lot by popular photo.net photographers standards, but good for some one like me.

Some memories follow. I bought a small digital camera in Decmeber 2000 just before we went to the Cook Islands for a Holiday (see picasa). It was an original Canon IXUS. It cost $1,600 duty free and was all of 2 Mega Pixels (1,600 by 1,200 pixels). A small, cheap and out of date mobile phone camera would easily surpase this IXUS's pixel capabilities.

It was a great little camera and I used it to capture our memories.

I did not know anything about photography. When I overheard someone at Lunch talking about a web site called photo.net, I quickly found it and after I had figured out how the site worked, I joined up as member on Fri 16 Mar 2001. The site was a community that allowed the uploading of photos for comments, rating, and written critiques. There were also forums to discuss all things about photography, cameras, accessories and technique. It was the original photo sharing community. I can recall even the founders of flickr being ordinary members of photo.net just like me. They created flickr to develop a community that photo.net struggled to move to.

I met some great people. Also learnt a lot there and had just as much fun.

[1] I have not been really active on photo.net since late 2004 - ran out of quota to upload photos, but still lurk there.