It goes without saying that negative thoughts are not helpful.via The Winning Mind (*) by Sebastian Coe (*).
Questions and feedback are constructive, but negativity needs to be batted away.
That is when the vision (*) that drives the daily effort is so important in crowding out those moments of doubt.
Everyone should do this. When you play you need a vision of something. It can be human, it can be a tree, it can be abstract, it can be happiness ...via Giovanni Sollima breaks rules with the ACO by Nick Galvin.
"It is the beauty of nature that I try to represent by photography. What this expression means to most people, I am quite sure, is such features as flowers of spring, autumn foliage, mountain landscapes, and many other similar aspects about aesthetic qualities of which no one would care to offer contradiction. That they are beautiful is indisputable, but they are not all that is beautiful about nature; in fact they are only the obvious and superficial aspects of nature - which anyone may observe with half and eye. They are the peaks and summits of nature's greatest displays. There is no doubt about their importance; they could not be dispensed with. Underlying and supporting these brillant displays are slow, quiet processes that pass almost unnoticed from season to season, unnoticed by those that think that beauty in natures is all its gaudy displays.A fairly long quote, but for me was definitely something worth remembering.
Much is missed if we have eyes only for the bright colors. Nature should be viewed without distinction. All her processes and evolutions are beautiful or ugly to the unbiased and indiscriminating observer. She makes no choice herself; everything that happens has equal significance. Nothing can dispensed with. This is a common mistake that many people make; they think that half of nature can be destroyed - the uncomfortable half - while still retaining the acceptable and the pleasing side; their idea is a paradise where nature stands still. Withering flowers blooming, death follows growth, decay follows death, and life follows decay - in a wonderful, complicated, endless web the beauties of which are manifest to a point of view attached to vulgar restricting concepts of what constitutes beauty in nature. Thoreau, who observerd all aspects of nature throughout his life, repeatedly remarked on the beauty of the unaccepted. 'How much beauty in decay!' he exclaimed on examining a worm-eaten leaf. To him the sere, brown leaves of winter were as beautiful as the fresh green of spring. This was a principle that has remained important for me throughout my career."
"Sensitivity cannot be faked by trickor devise; it has no substitute, and any attempt to replace it with mechancial contrivances is certain to be apparent to the more discerning critics. Not all photographs have to be inspired to be worth making, but the best, rare photographs are the result of a a force at least very close to inspiration. Formulized work becomes impersonal, an all the individuality of authorship tends to disappear. It unquestionably has its uses, but it is not art."The book itself echoes Porter's ability to redact nature's chaos into a single harmonious image, and is a well-deserved tribute to this pioneer of color nature photography.
Spencer Lum on Vision, Dreams, Hopes and Purpose::
the moment we give up our vision in favor of the common and the accepted is the moment we lose touch with our dreams, hopes, and even our purpose. The things that make us the most human and the most powerful.
via What I learned from living my desperate life by Spencer Lum.
The pursuit of real vision. That is what inspires (*) me. The eyes (*) do not see, and the ears (*) do not hear. My photography is predicated on the heart (*), which is the real organ of vision (*).via Who inspires you? (*) by Khalik Allah (*).
As you pursue your goals in life, that is to say your future, pursue your past. Let it be your guide. Insist on having a past and then you will have a future.Vern Gambetta wisely adds:
Ken Burns - 2004 Commencement Yale Class Day Speech (as pdf)
Be careful that you are not living in the past, learn from the past, use it as a reference point.And finally, LottieP warns:
"nostalgia is the enemy of the future"With the past in mind I thought I would dig into archive.org and drag out something from my past (it might explain the where eljeiffel came from). Here it is:
elj.com (Eiffel Liberty): Two Years On .. by Geoff Eldridge (04 Jul 1999)Funny to read this after all these years. Shows how strongly I felt about the Eiffel programming language and method (and still do, but not just as visible). I even chose to start this blog with some posts on Eiffel - not the language, but it's inspiration, the Eiffel Tower and it's creator, Gustave Eiffel.
Today is Indepedence Day in the USA which celebrates the 223rd birthday, being founded on 4 Jul 1776, with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This also represents a time of reflection for myself with elj.com (Eiffel Liberty).
It is two years ago since I registered elj.com. The name Eiffel Liberty was easy to come up with. It represented a vision and a hope for Eiffel that somehow it might be liberated from its miserable place in the language landscape (I thought how could such a great contribution, be so categorically and overwhelmingly dismissed by the programming community). Also, Emma Lazarus's words struck a chord with me, particularlyJust as America provided opportunity for many from other lands, I thought Eiffel could provide the same kind of opportunities for the syntactically and semantically battered from the other language landscapes :-)
Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost, to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
Also, the name Eiffel Liberty made what a I thought was a nice connection between two famous landmarks that Gustave Eiffel had contributed to, being the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty "Eiffel undertook the challenge of creating the steel structure because of the enormous challenge it afforded him".
The 4 Jul 1997 was to be the launch date for the Eiffel Liberty Journal. However, I came down with a very bad cold (too many late nights preparing for the initial launch) and I decided to publish the launch issue of the Eiffel Liberty Journal, not from my newly acquired elj.com but from my progsoc web pages (this would remain the case for another six months).
It was fun putting together the first issue as I received cooperation from all I contacted. These included:Also Bertrand Meyer's classic newsgroup posting from early May 97, Avoiding the second historic mistake (I remember Bertrand once referring to this as collective hypnosis :-) gave the opportunity to publish a few articles from the newsgroup thread that ensued - eg Jeffrey Stulin's If Eiffel is so great, why isn't it popular? and Thomas Beale's Eiffel: An Industry Experience.
- Bertrand Meyer who allowed to me publish some small extracts from OOSC2.
- John Potter (my Software Engineering Lecturer who introduced me to Eiffel in the spring of 1993) who specially wrote an article on
Project Bruce: Translating from Eiffel to Java- Victor Putz who wrote a great article titled Toymakers and tools: Why one game developer is switching to Eiffel. Victor is a game programmer by night and a helicopter pilot/instructor by day. I remember Victor making a special trip (about 30 km each way) to send me the article because of flooding in his area which made his normal internet access impossible. BTW, I have found that Victor shares and
articulates (much better than I ever could) my own vision for Eiffel.
I was delighted when Bjarne Stroustrup allowed me to publish Why C++ is not just an Object-Oriented Programming Language and Melier Page Jones allowed me to publish Object Orientation: Making the Transition
Two years on, elj.com has changed from a random journal to a daily random news update covering the Eiffel and related worlds. In many ways elj.com is really just a log of the links and resources I have stumbled across and that I might learn from (or even get a laugh from).
Eiffel certainly enjoys a wider exposure than it did back in 1997. I hope elj.com has helped in a small way. It is hard tell what impact elj.com has had as there is little feedback. However, occasionally I do get a note saying that elj.com helped someone get started with Eiffel, which seems to make it all worthwhile. I guess elj.com could have been much more effective but there is only so much time.
For a number of reasons I renamed Eiffel Liberty to elj.com Extraordinarily Large Jumble in Feb 99 (some of the reasoning behind this was that elj.com was and still is, an Extraordinarily Large Jumble of seemingly random links and more significantly there was little or no Eiffel news). Fortunately, there now appears to be more Eiffel news than I can handle/report manually and I am making efforts to address this through a more automated Eiffel news feed at elj-daily.
elj.com has amassed an incredible amount of links, quotes and resources relating to Eiffel and related worlds. The time has come for elj.com to be able to extract the information from this mass. A keyword/search facility is on the way.
I believe that for [open source] projects to thrive, information needs to readily at hand. I hope the new elj.com that you will see over the coming weeks/months (depends on how much time I get to work on this) will reflect the ability to provide this information efficiently and effectively.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge the support that Jenny has given me over the last few years. She has had to cope (in more ways than one) with more than anyone should reasonably have to tolerate.
we need to be observant of our vision and our feelings. The photos are out there if you are open to them. People are out there too and we need to be open to them more then anything else.via Rest Easy Post by Streetshooter.
Not sure why I made a photo of this, but for some reason I could not pass it without taking a few moments to see the beauty in this banal scene.
The Street Warrior moves forward thru time but sees the world as a passing journey.via The Ricoh GR … Defining Your Vision Part 2 (*) .
The street warrior is in tune with himself and seeks the next image not because it’s the elusive butterfly but because he counts back in time.
Knowing that each and every image recorded may be the last or even close to the last, he is prepared to make the next image the one that marks his place in time.
I can pretty much do whatever I want, because I’ve always understood what light and photography do togethervia An inconvenient vision by Anne Marie Burke.
just because you have looked at something doesn’t mean that you have seen it. Just because something is available instantly to vision (*) does not mean that it is available instantly to consciousness. Or, in slightly more general terms: access is not synonymous with learning. What turns access into learning is time and strategic patience (*).via A lesson in strategic patience (*) by Nicholas Carr' (*).
People who pursue their passions inevitably create beacons that attract others who share their visionvia 3-Minute Entrepreneurship Course by Peter Diamandis.
It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, don’t waste it.via The moment of highest leverage (*) by Seth Godin (*).
You’ve already won (or you’ve already lost). Right now, you can choose to do what’s in your heart, you can bring your real work to the world, instead of a lesser version, a version you think the market wants. After all, what do you have to lose?
When it feels like it’s hopeless or when it appears to be a lock, why not?
So you bring your true self to the work, your unadulterated effort, without negative self-talk and the sanding off of the interesting edges. Instead of compromise, you bring us vision.
Of course, when we see that reality, the kamiwaza of what you’re able to do when you’re not second guessing or giving up, the odds of transformation go way up. In fact, you haven't already lost, because your magical, vulnerable work changes everything.
You won’t get this chance again soon (unless you choose to). So go.
Wilson Street Swingers (Cropped) - Wilson Street/Newtown - Sat 01 Feb 2003 (picasa)
Wilson Street Swingers (Full Image) - Wilson Street/Newtown - Sat 01 Feb 2003 (picasa)
To do what you like in your work, separate from the buzz. [..]From A few ways to increase your connection to your photography (*) by Kirk Tuck (*) - Thu 23 Feb 2012.Having a project will move you to take chances. [..] You'll need to discipline yourself to do the [..] And you'll need to learn how to finish.
- slow down [..] If you slow down and concentrate on the kinds of images that bring you real joy you'll find a tighter bond with your own work.
- Stop looking at all the sharing sites - When you turn off the outside influences and sit quietly with your own thoughts about art and photography you begin to understand the way you like to see and share art. That's valuable. Everything else is unconscious imitation.
- Do a project - Consistency of vision and subject are worthwhile goals for all artists. Set yourself to the task of creating a body of consistent work. Choose a subject that you love and explore it in depth. Ignore everything else.
- When you choose to do a project have a a goal - Wouldn't it be great if it changed some lives? But no matter where it ends up I will have met interesting people who've taken charge of their own lives and excelled. What fun role models. And the art will be my souvenir of my time spent with them. The prints will be part of the sharing.
- Start thinking beyond the screen - [..] When you slow down and do your art try to go through the whole process of bringing an image to life before you rush out the door to fill up more memory cards and hard drives.
- Really explore the images in front of you. Edit them down. Make them perfect and then print them large [..] Print them till you love them. And learn from the process of presentation. Learn what you like to see, big. The art becomes both portable and present when you pull it off the screen and onto paper. Be sure to go through the whole process so you understand in your gut what you've really created. It will slow you down [..] and focus it on doing work that makes you smile. You are the first audience.
- Finally, forget the online critiques - Find people in your own town, city, region whose work you admire and approach them about forming a sharing circle. Just like a writer's group.
Having a goal for your work gives it extra meaning.
Sharing the work with live people standing in front of you builds real confidence in the work. Having real critiques is painful but helps engender real growth. Helping real, human, non-virtual friends succeed with their own art is part of a rewarding virtuous circle. Embrace it.
And he [Brooks Jensen (*)] writes about their constant artistic growth (*). The very act of looking (*) at something through different frames may unleash a wonderful new way of seeing (*) and sharing (*). And the very act of casting your vision (*) onto a totally new subject (*) matter can change (*) everything.via Does your insistence on using the same camera for years at a time hamper your artistic growth? How do you know? (*) by Kirk Tuck (*).
Shoot (*) for the fun (*) of it. Shoot for your own self-discovery (*). Shoot for the glory (*) of having seen something unique (*) and having savored it well. [..]via Celebration Post. Landmark. Milestone. Crazy accomplishment. A "Thank You" to the readers who have stuck around over the years. And more. (*) by Kirk Tuck (*).
Let the images you take be your enduring guides (*) to your own vision (*) and your own past (*) and leave it at that.
