Mingfong's photostream

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever" --John Keats (1795-1821)



Thanks for visiting my photo stream. I hope you find this place a delightful one no matter what leads you here.

If you love photography and believe that
(1) photography is an art that takes years to learn
(2) photography is not all about getting better cameras and better lenses though they are critical parts of the image production process and
(3) we learn a lot by reading others' style,

then we have a lot to share with each other.

Photo Licensing

All images here are copyrighted and I urge you not to distribute, reproduce or publish them without my written consent. Please sent me Flickr mail or email me to mingfongjan [at] gmail [dot] com if you are interested.


走走停停, 人生總有些不期而遇. 歡迎您在不期而遇的錯愕中參訪我的影像日誌

攝影比當初想像的難了許多. 這些年來, 逐步了解到自己對於光線與構圖的無知. 認識自己的無知成為創作的起點. 這個園地呈現的是我和影像對話過程的紀錄. 當然, 也希望您加入我的對話 讓它成為知識分享的空間

這裡所有影像均受著作權保護, 如果您有任何使用上的需求, 請聯絡作者.


A Different Page in Life
In many ways making photos is like making a cup of coffee. We have a taste, acquired or born with or perhaps a little of both, and we use that as criteria for judging the quality of coffee beans, coffee machines and grinders because they are all crucial for making the cup of coffee I like. I like a photo because I savor the photo like enjoying a cup of good coffee. The value or taste behind the photo/coffee decides what I like and eventually affects how I select tools and make photos.

What differentiates coffee from photos is that images are more public than coffee when it comes to taste. For example, photos I have seen from DCVIEW are all similar in some way. When the reviewers judge photos based on a similar taste, photos that meet that taste get selected, highlighted and become popular in the site. That is what many public photo sites do--coming up with a standard to judge the popularity of a photo. The standard rarely gets questioned though it is more critical than a lot of others in defining public taste. Since images can be transported much more easier than the flavor of coffee, it also indicates that it is easier to cultivate a public taste--which may not be what we like or "good."

I raise this issue because we, as photographers, face the issue of public taste on a daily bases and we need to interrogate what public tastes are and its relationship with our own tastes. However, when we interrogate the relationship between pubic taste and our own taste, we ask a question that is fundamentally wrong.

We enjoy photography not because of public taste or personal taste, but because we enjoy the making of images which certainly can not be defined by taste only.

I enjoy making photos because I can express some ideas that can not be captured or is hard to express by other tools, such as languages. I enjoy taking photos because I see a world that is so different from the world through my eyes. When DOF, shutter speed and other factors of making photos are integrated as a framework for seeing, it is a world of fun and can be a world of art. I enjoy making photos because I can explore my tools in a way that the ideas I wish to communicate can be realized by my mastery of these tools. For me, photography is more like a language when it comes to the communication of ideas. A photographer is a writer equipped with a different tool. The better we can use the tools, the better we can communicate. But, why we communicate?

How we communicate with images is more like a technical question. It has a lot to do with the lenses we choose and the post production skills we apply. It also has to do with the aesthetics behind each images we make. Cameras, lenses and darkroom skills are often the topics of discussion in most online forums. Aesthetics is a deeper HOW question that differentiates a good photographer from a mediocre photographer. What gets unnoticed when asking these HOW questions is a much deeper question that is more crucial to me--why we communicate with images. This question certainly can not be left alone because it is behind all images we make. Why we communicate with images is a philosophical question that eventually leads to the questions of who we are and why making images matters to us.

For me, the pleasure and fun comes first and the fun has a lot to do with seeing images I could not have made before when using different tools. The fun also comes from the discussions between me and photographers like you. The fun is intellectual, but is also deeply emotional. The joy of seeing a print I made is deeply emotional--a self realization and satisfaction. It is perhaps the ultimate driving force that makes taking and making photos worthwhile. I did not take photos recently because I don't find that driving force here yet. There is not a strong urge that persuades me to take photos of this place and its people, but it has to do with how I feel about this place instead of how I feel about photography.