phreakhead's photostream  

Directions to Directionlessness

Every picture carries with it a sliver of subjectivity amongst a sturdy trunk of objective reality - a unique presence that differentiates one moment from all other moments by recording the act of perception. When you look at a photograph, you are not only witnessing the reflection of light off the objects in the photographer's environment, you are witnessing the convergence of all that light into a single point in the photographer's consciousness - giving you a glimpse of a person's experience of existence.

In each of these photos I have tried to capture not only the mood and presence of the subjects, but my own mood and presence as well, to coax the image out of cold objectivity into the warmth of perceptual bliss.

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"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know." - Diane Arbus

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On Digital Manipulation

Although I would like to claim that most of these photos were not digitally manipulated, I have to acknowledge the fact that as soon as you put the print in a scanner, the picture ceases to be an entity of the real world and exists in purely digital form: a 'digitally manipulated' real-world object converted into nothing but a stream of numbers. Just by clicking "Save" or "Upload" means I am digitally manipulating these numbers by converting, transferring, translating, and displaying them in a form that leaves your monitor resembling the original photo, but never replicating it. Your eyes, through years of cultural and technological conditioning, believe the picture to be 'real', but the fact is that it is nothing but a unique number, dressed up to pass as something that can actually be seen and held physically.

If we loosen/tighten the definition somewhat, then digital manipulation becomes a purposeful, subjective recalculation of this number to better match the image on the screen to the real-world object. This includes adjusting color balance, constrast, levels, etc., and is pretty much necessary to make an accurate on-screen representation.

In addition, there is the act of changing the image in a destructive way: purposefully manipulating the number so it no longer represents the real-world object. This is probably what most people think of as 'digital manipulation', even though it is a very limited and inaccurate view. I have made this distinction by tagging all 'destructively digitally manipulated' images that no longer represent their source object with the word "photoshop". I hope you appreciate the distinction and ponder it accordingly.

All pictures were taken on 35mm film with a Pentax ME Super unless otherwise noted. Photos with a "powershot" tag were taken with a Canon Powershot SD700IS.

If you would like to use my photos, please contact me and I can arrange high-resolution versions.