Tag: detection

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india inspiration Photography street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~15/365

A woman in Varanasi, India with handprints around the door frame of her home.

Good Morning,

As part of my daily morning process, I have always started with observing the root number of the day. You arrive at this number by adding all the numbers of the day, month and year till you arrive at a single number between 1 and 9. Today is 15+12+2021=5.

5 days have to do with, yes, you guessed it, the nature of 5. If you start to observe the nature of days between 1 and 9, you gradually see a pattern. The best way to start this investigation is by researching the number itself, where have you seen in in nature, religion, culture, mathematical anomalies…etc.

5 is a prime number, we see it in many flower petals, in the number of fingers and toes, in our extremities (we look like stars), in starfish, the 5th Fibonacci number, 5 senses, the five elements in hinduism: earth, air, water, fire and space or ether, the 5 faces of Shiva, the 5 pillars of Islam, the 5 woundings of Christ, the 5 books of Judaism… and the list goes on.

The reason why my mind went more into 5 and numerology today is because of the image above. You see handprints in the world since the beginning of time, from cave paintings till today’s modern art. There is a huge discussion about these ancient hand prints to determine if they are art or not, as if that matters. But what is the real significance of creating a handprint? Where have we seen it before? I just love finding clues in history about things like this.

And what would the nature of a 5 day like today be? Balance comes to mind… What else? What is the root number of your birth date? What does it suggest? Mine is 5.

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architecture art inspiration life Photography Tuscany

Day 15~ September 15th~ Tuscany

the seen and the unseen

How often does it happen to you that you are in museum looking at art and you notice people going first to the little cards or papers that hold a description about the art and reading it before even looking at what it describes? By doing that, don’t we prejudge an artwork and fill ourselves with another person’s impression and facts that end up closing us to the natural way of being with something? Aren’t there two parts of us (at least) that can register new impressions? Don’t we register things consciously with our senses while another unseen part of us takes it in in a whole other manner that we cannot consciously comprehend? Wouldn’t it be better to give ourselves the chance first to detect art before filling our heads with information?

photo~ The beautiful Andrea in a long exposure on the bank of the Arno river in Pisa

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Boracay inspiration life parenting Photography street

Day 21~ August 21st~ Boracay

The rhythm of nature

It has been said that if you want to detect the nature of the day, you would do well to watch the nature of children on that day. Children react to triggers without inhibition; they laugh when something amuses them, they cry when they are hurt, they run around and jump when they feel hyperactive and they sleep when they feel drained. We adults on the other hand train ourselves to act according to social norms that are considered ‘acceptable’, thereby curbing our natural responses and forcing our human complexes to act out a theater of false reactions that include repression, sarcasm, exaggerated nervous laughter, enforced silence, shyness and the like. So yes, children, they mirror the frequencies around them and if allowed to be free, so much can be learned from their theater of reactive innocence.

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architecture Egypt history life Photography

Day 5~ March 5th~ Egypt


meeting Egypt with all of yourself ~ in the temple of Dendera complex~ Egypt

If you go to meet something for the first time and you take your prejudgment about it with you, how will you ever be able to connect with its truth?

There is so much that is written about ancient Egypt. The libraries are full, the internet is flooded, university texts, endless research material, theories ranging from the skeptical to the fantastic, and the fear of failure and of ignorance, might cause us to dive into all this information, to store it into our short term memory to then be able to wisely throw it left and right in our vain attempt at appearing intelligent.

But maybe the truth is there to be felt, to be detected, to be sensed with different parts of our incredible human machinery. Or is that too crazy a thought? Have you ever seen how children behave differently in museums than adults? They sense things with their hands, their eyes, their backs, their tongues, they shout at it, they sit and stare, the react to it with the whole of their being. Is there a lesson to be learned there?

The zodiac chart of Dendera

This chart from the Dendera temple (now in the Louvre museum in Paris), depicts the 12 signs of the zodiac, surrounded by the 36 spirits symbolizing the 360 days of the Egyptian year.

 

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Photography street

Day Three Hundred Sixty One, January 18, 2012

worn out~

Every city and every village in the world has it’s own ‘spirit’, it’s own ‘angel’ if you like. It is the essence of that place created by its people, its architecture, its frequencies and it is very clearly detectable if you tune yourself to it. With Shanghai, I feel that the spirit of this city moves around with its bicycles as strange as this might sound. The bicycles here have a life of their own and their unique stories and adventures to tell.

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life Photography

Day Three Hundred Thirty, December 18, 2011

in exploration

Three airports, two airplanes, 2 cars, 3 cafes and about 20 hours from door to door, Lea could not think of staying more than 2 minutes behind another closed door. Out to nature and straight into exploration she went. Her behavior reminded me of the time in New York when I adopted 2 cats and how the moment they entered my apartment, they were off to explore every corner and every object around them sniffing and rubbing against furniture and walls to get their bearings. Children are just as natural and they are drawn immediately into a state of detection and where better to detect than nature and trees.

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Photography

Day One Hundred Ninety Six, August 6, 2011

Where to next?

196 days ago I started this 365 journey with photography and it has been a very intense one. The commitment, the daily dedicated focus on photography, the self inspection, the writing, the editing, the extra weight of the camera on my shoulder, the long hours spent behind a computer screen…

And it has all been worth it. What a boot camp training of skill and what a wonderful detection tour of the world around me. But on some days like today, it begs the question : where to next?

photo: self portrait in a mirrored room, Southern Spain.