NikonGear'23

Images => Life, the Universe & Everything Else => Topic started by: Michael Erlewine on October 04, 2022, 01:00:20

Title: Skin in the Game
Post by: Michael Erlewine on October 04, 2022, 01:00:20
I am coming to understand that a lot of my skills are beyond words. You know from my blogs that I know how to work with words and I push them as far as I can. Yet, beyond the end of words there is a lot more, in my case it’s music and photography. I’m sure you have your own skills. I can say things with music (at least hear things) that I can’t put into words, and it is exactly the same as to vision, with art and for me particularly photography. I can articulate photography quite fluently, so to speak. I will give one example, using photography, where this is easy to see.

I have a lot of photo equipment acquired over decades. Some of it is essential (camera, lenses, etc.), and other equipment makes things easier or faster. Of course, I have tried them both a lot.

As for the equipment that makes things faster (and perhaps easier in one sense of that word), after some time savings, if I become dependent on it as a shortcut, it’s value wanes. I get lazy and a lazy-me does not take as good (IMO) photographs as an effortful me.

In other words, I have to have skin in the game to be at my best. I can’t delegate either interest or effort. I have to be there and be all in, in order to get my own approval. Or so it seems.

There is a distinct connection between my hands-on involvement and the finished results. For me, it has always been about the process, not the result. I’m not just saying that. It came about because I fell into the process of photography early on in my dharma ‘awakening’ experience and did not care about the results. It was the process of taking photographs (the seeing the Seeing itself) that brought me clarity and not the resulting photos, and I just let those photos fall where they might.

In fact, my attention to the process of photography eventually resulted in better final photos, yet I could have cared less in the beginning. So here, many years later I am having a bit of a Déjà vu, realizing the value of the process in how I work photography, and the fact that I have to have some skin in the game to satisfy myself. Is that not what Shakespeare meant when he wrote “To Be or Not to Be, That Is the Question,” some skin in the game.

Z NOCT 0.95
Title: Re: Skin in the Game
Post by: HCS on October 04, 2022, 11:02:01
Hear, hear, Michael!

While i don't possess the seniority, wisdom and general view on life as you have and demonstrate, i feel the same about the process and (not) the result. Not just for photography btw, e.g. i am a very average skier, but when i was even worse and had to work hard and learn more, i also enjoyed it more.

Great view and also very nice picture  ;)