Leaving the Town

“I am leaving the town tomorrow so why should I care if I have hurt anyone here? Why should I go to apologize to my neighbours that my dog chewed up their rug again?”

I am sure almost all of us have heard someone to say something like this.

Why do some people act like this? I think it is a short-term thinking because in long-term our neighbours can move too, even to the house next to our new house. And we could be surprised how things could get back to us. Or we could apply for a new job and our new boss could be our old neighbours' cousin or friend, ...

I know this is something everyone knows but not everyone act like he or she should. Everytime I leave from somewhere I try to say goodbye to everyone and if there are some misunderstandings I will smooth things over. Because: “We do not know when and where we will meet again.”


Ex Animo
Your Michal

Professional Feedback

Are you getting any feedback from professional photographers? Do you show them your work from time to time? It is very useful to get an advice from more experienced professional.

I like to get some pro-feedback. The pro photogs, I know, studied photography at college and they are pretty conservative. I think that it is a good thing at least for me. Why? I like to experiment and break some photo-rules, like any other photographer, but they give me a constructive criticism and they also always help me to stabilize and set my growth forward into the right direction so I do not deviate too much. Even though little deviations are great in photography and make our work interesting, TMD = Too Much Deviation may cause more trouble than benefits.

So if you do not already have a mentor, I highly recommend finding one.


Ex Animo
Your Michal

The King of the World

About 14 days ago, I have been studying some historical materials and I have found a very nice quotation: “Everyone should be the king of his own world and try to be the king of the world. And you can’t be a king of the world without being a king of your own world.”

I have been thinking about this saying and trying to apply it to our "modern society". I started with defining this “king”, because I do not want him to be only a leader of some kingdom, I want him to have more general meaning. Well:

-this king is a man or a woman,
-this king is self-confident,
-this king is wise,
-this king is kind,
-this king is noble-minded,
-this king is generous,
-etc.

After defining our king I would like to explain what I mean if I say that someone is “the king of his own world”. For example if you are self-confident, successful in your personal and also in your professional life, ... if you are kind and generous to others and also to yourself, etc. then I would be more than happy to say about you: “This man/woman is the king of his own life.”

And what I mean by “the king of the world”? At first like the quotation at the beginning of this post says: for being a king of the world you need to manage to be a king of your own life. If done, here is very pleasing part: “If you already are the king of your own life, becoming a king of the world is not so difficult, because you just simply expand your good qualities.” The next thing I am going to say may sound to you like nonsense, but believe me, it has a sense: “If you want to be a king of the world you will not become one but you will be getting nearer and nearer every day.” It is like being perfect: if you are perfect/flawless: "You cannot be more flawless once you are perfect/flawless", you would stop your personal growth which at least I would not want.

That all being said brings up a question: “I everyone were trying to be the king of the world wouldn’t the whole world be in war?“

No it won’t be, because if you are trying to be the king, who we defined, you have no intentions for leading a war or even a fight. Why? There can be a lot of these kings, actually everyone can be the king we described. There is no rivalry, so there is no reason to fight.

In the end I would like to say, that the goal is not being the king but the journey of becoming one.

BTW. Even though fight is from time to time necessary, life is not just one big fight and everybody can be the king. :)


Ex Animo
Your Michal

Sharing

Today I would like to share my favourite quotation about sharing by Norman MacEwan:

"Happiness is not so much in having as sharing. We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give."


Ex Animo
Your Michal

I Could Never Be That Good!

“I could never ever make that GREAT photograph!”, “I will never be that good.” ... these are the sentences a lot of beginning photographers use when they are comparing themselves with other great and experienced photographers. I suppose you all know, what is wrong with these sentences, right!?

Yes, you are right:

Firstly: anyone who says something like that is giving up the possibility of becoming a great photographer or making an awesome price-winning shot. How can we even say something like that? After all we do not know what the future will bring to us or what we will experience. So why to give up something, what we even have no idea about?

And secondly: Why we should not to try to be as great photographer as for example Henri Cartier-Bresson? Because we should try to be BETTER.
In my opinion there should be no frontier of our talent we are trying to develop.


Ex Animo
Your Michal

Why Do We Take Photographs

Today I have decided to share one tip about improving our photography. It is kinda essential thing which everyone knows about, but sometimes we forget. I also would like to make a premise: “Is not easy to master it”, but what is, right?! :)

Let me start with one kinda philosophic question: “Why do we ~ photographers take photographs?”

I am sure everyone has his unique reason and by the way I would be happy to read all your reasons in the comment section under this post, but I think there is one common denominator for all our reasons:

“We take photographs because we want to share our point of view with others, we want others to see what we have seen or how we see the world around us”.

But what to take from it? Among a lot of things, today I would like us to interpret it in this way: “If we want others to understand our work, our photographs should be readable for our audience – it does not have to be readable for everybody, but our audience should be able to understand it.

That was the tip. What do you think? Feel free to leave a comment.


Ex Animo
Your Michal

Sometimes Slower Is Better

We live in a pretty fast world, if I want to buy some music, I can buy it on iTunes and listen to it in several seconds. If I want to share my photographs with the whole world, I can upload it on Flickr and all of you can see my photo and make a comment about it immediately. I am really thankful for the internet and I am glad we can do these things very fast.

But this way of living fast is not perfect in all situations and all the time.

"Sometimes slower is better."

Why? Because if we do something slower we still can make it to “our destination” but we can also learn from the journey to that “destination”. From time to time, even though we do not have be aware of it, the journey is our “destination / aim”.

While writing this post I have remembered another reason why I like photography: “I can stop the time in a very precious moment and I can enjoy it for more than a second.”


Ex Animo
Your Michal