Eye to eye
Photography calls for a keen eye. One even says that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I’ve also heard it rumoured that painters weren’t really painting with their hands but with their eyes. And I must admit that as a watercolourist this is exactly what I’m doing. To a large extent, what I do with my photography is very much along those lines. As I stated a couple of times already, I’m pretty much of a painter with a camera in his hands rather than the other way round.
Coming back to the beauty and beholder business, when that beholder is a mule, is this phrase still valid? Probably so.
Eye to eye
Eye to eye at the Jardin Extraordinaire – Ariège – 2020
I don’t know about you but I love that donkey. It really looks friendly. When I saw that little cabin painted many colours I just grabbed my camera and took a snapshot in a split second. The little boy in front of the animal is also very cute. I’m not really sure about the framing of the picture but, you know, this was some sort of a reflex shot and nobody had any time to pose. When these things happen, you just press the shutter button and make a payer that everything will be fine. As a matter of fact it probably isn’t fine, but it doesn’t really matter either. We’ve already asked this question about the perfect photo and in fact, it’s not even a valid question.
Isn’t there a saying which states that “done is better than perfect”?
Random access memory
I’m always flabbergasted when photographers, be they amateurs or professionals are able to quote their EXIF data by heart. For a start, I’m not able to learn anything by heart. When I was a young boy, my mother used to make me rehearse my theory of music and as she didn’t know the first word about it, she was very intent on me using the exact same words as those that were printed in the book. The problem is, I was very seldom able to find them and sometimes I was using synonyms which were, in my eyes, perfectly acceptable.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t buy into this and she had to make me repeat over and over again the same sentences until I was using the exact same words. I never managed. Of course not only did I bear a grudge against the theory of music — pretty boring stuff by the way — I also ended up not being able to learn anything by heart at all. This was very detrimental to my ability to learn my lessons at school.
But the good side of this, however, is that it commanded me to think rather than rely on my recollections of things learnt. To an extent, that was a very good move. AI, in this day and age, is probably the epitome of memory. It remembers everything and it’s able to spit out anything about anything in a matter of seconds. I’m not, and I never will be, and it’s a good thing. It honed my critical eye and forced me to rely on my brains rather than my memory.
EXIF data, for what it’s worth…
Nonetheless, when thinking about the EXIF data of this picture, I had to get back to my Flickr library and have a look at it. It told me that I was using my Nikon Z7, which is probably a good thing, equipped with my standard lightweight 24–85 mm lens. A pretty standard and unspectacular lens by the way but because of its weight and compactness, it’s a very handy companion when I’m travelling around so that I’m gonna have to lug my enormous 24 x 17 mm. In broad daylight, it doesn’t matter that much that the aperture isn’t that big.
Anyway, I didn’t have much time to think about this picture, so it’s probably not perfect as I said above. Nonetheless, there is something about this donkey. I love its eyes and its smug smile and its right-angled ears, and the way it looks at you rather than the boy. I can even imagine him saying something like…
“Donkeys are not very much used any more by farmers, you know, and this is very sad. They are being replaced with these heavyweight diesel-powered machines which are very noisy and bloody inefficient. They are not respectful of the environment and if anything, you should think of bringing back the donkeys to the fields.”
I’m not sure this is what this kind and benevolent creature has in the back of its mind, but I can well imagine something along those lines. And you know what, I even agree with him to a large extent.
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Je suis photographe et aquarelliste. Je pratique la photographie depuis l'enfance et la photographie numérique depuis 1995. J'en ai fait mon activité principale en 2021. Je possède un studio photo dans le 15e arrondissement de Paris
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