Tag: photography

Film paintings photos, Original videos photos music-slides

Visual metaphors (Road series by Myra Lambino-Ramos)

Visual metaphors (there’s a road series in the blog – who knew)   

My gosh……. there’s a road series in the blog. i didn’t know – who knew…? somebody tell me.

was going to post photos i shot yesterday; i already resized and tagged them in order. they’re scenery.  There are  also lines in Carole King’s song that’s been running thru my head they were coming out of my ears, since last week — i had to write about them (someday, i’ll tell you why.)

[By the way, my students don’t know who Carole King is; some of them also don’t know whether or not John Lennon is dead (in media law, to illustrate the term of a copyright, i use dead artists; you’d be surprised, many have not seen a Lino Brocka film. To explain who a songwriter is, i have to analogize: “so…you know Alanis Morissette, right. She derived from/ was inspired by Carole King; so…Alanis Morissette today comes close to Carole King,” and they say “Aaaah”. Anyway, for all its highly commercialized flaws, the show “American Idol” at least tries to educate the Bieber generation that there is more to writing than “baby, baby, baby” and “Friday, Friday, Friday” by featuring Paul Simon one week, the Beatles one week, Stevie Wonder, and then, by sheer coincidence,  Carole King next).

    The photos didn’t go with the lyrics, so i said i’ll post them some other time.

then i heard a line in Carole King’s song, she almost strains her vocal chords singing it:

                 “i sure hope….the road…don’t come to….own me….”

 (the lyrics take literary license with the grammar.). To make a long story short, that was when i discovered there was a road series in the blog.

And the riveting shots of roads and pathways were made by…..Myra…. (Myra Lambino-Ramos). Who knew. I bet she herself didn’t know she had a road series…

Some people like taking photos of … long benches…(just benches, no people on them) or of bridges… or of children… or of veins… or of birds in flight…. or of churches. Van Gogh has companion paintings of a  solitary chair; and  people wondered about it. In a glossy reference book that Teng sent me on the Van Gogh paintings (there’s also a Van Gogh series in the blog; and a Gauguin), some scholars said that  Van Gogh painted his father’s favorite chair, over and over, after his father  abandoned them in childhood. Gauguin, as everyone knows has a Tahitian series, and his biographers wrote that he painted them at around the time he was having dalliances with the Tahitian women of the islands….

          ….why is there  a road series in the blog…? (or, why does Myra have a road and pathway series, and of people walking on roads and pathways). i don’t know. I’ll tag them in one group some other time. ang dami, eh (there are many of them), ang dami kalsada sa blog na ito.  

i’m guessing…(   just guessing; at those times i shot them i wasn’t thinking) i’m guessing they’re supposed to be… visual metaphors. If you don’t know what that means, ask my favorite blogger-photographer Connie Veneracion, her stillife-photos are poetry. I’m not going to explain. To illustrate the reverse:  if you’re taking and publishing photos of yourself and friends while partying or in a get-together and you’re seated or lined-up like a year book photo or a Manila Bulletin photo,  or just posing, that’s not what we mean.

     So… what did Carole King mean with the line…? Literary critics tell you that it’s  never a valid form of art appreciation to ask the writer or photographer or painter to explain to you their work or to explain themselves to you. You have to derive your own sense of it. i’m not a literary critic, i just discovered i had a road series in the blog  today…

     Anyway, in the context of the other lyrics about moving along here and there,  i think what she meant by:

          “i sure hope….the road….don’t come to ….own me”

        —- she was afraid she might never find her way

           (or might never find herself)… well, that’s Carole King for you.

(in my road series,  i even have a photo of a motor bike pinned under a truck in a mishap, driver alive; well that’s probably not a road series, it’s not a metaphor, it’s literal, it’s a TV Patrol photo).

       I’m using Myra’s road and pathway photos – the pathway photos are….well, take a look-see yourself….are poignant.

 

 

Original videos photos music-slides

lighting confessions

This is the original of the background photo, shot by Myra Lambino-Ramos, Crystal Cave in Sequoia Park. i lit it up a little. oops, inverted it a little too.  confession time. forgive me. i sometimes light up some of the photos and videos here, photojournalists say it’s okay to light up or crop a photo as long as your tweaking doesn’t change the content but makes the visual easier to see…but you can’t invert them, in photojourn, that is (that probably also applies to nature photography i guess, unless you did your shot hanging upside down by a rig); you can’t brush or erase, etc., either, in photojourn (as well as in nature photography), it changes the reality you’re trying to document and bring to the viewers. Why do i invert some of the photos? it changes the “feel” or “mood” or “emotional content” (if you can find emotional content in stillife or landscape). The stalactites look like daggers in the original ; inverted, they look like growing stone plants. (i think). you also can’t alter a work without permission of the creator, under the Intellectual Property Code. But the photographer is my loving and lovable sister, i thought she would forgive me when i tweak just a teeny-weeny tiny bit to suit the background of the blog…. :), and i’ve made confessions… (leave enough alone kasi!)