Tag: process

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china contemplations morning coffee talk Photography shanghai street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 13/365

‘The morning process’, how the day starts, what sets the tone for the rest of the day, how do we arm ourselves to handle what is planning to meet us on that day? For me, this time just upon waking is the most important of all.

Do you ever feel that you travelled to unknown places in the night and that you have to meet yourself again in the morning? I scan through my faculties in the early morning to do a check-in and see what is there that wasn’t the day before and what is no longer there that was, what feelings need to be dealt with and relegated and what strengths do I need to call onto myself that day to have balance and well being.

That extra hour is priceless for me and so necessary for checks and balances. We are constantly changing every moment on a cellular level and so is everything around us. It’s mind boggling. So the morning becomes a ceremony to look forward to, and over time I have grown to feel a sense of awe and inspiration upon waking, wondering what the day will bring from challenges to giftings.

The images above were taken in Shanghai on the Bund. It was always inspiring to see the locals at sunrise practicing Tai Chi, meditations, kite flying, fan and sword dances and to witness the atmosphere of calm and concentration before the day sped into chaos as it does in a metropolis of 30 million.

Wishing you a balanced day and a great start into this week.

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art children CHINA contemplations inspiration Photography shanghai

Inside the Process of Music

in a world where only music can exist-2

Have you ever been lost in the process of your art? Have you ever visited that place where time stands still and you are transported on the wings of creativity? So much peace attends this state and it is a wonderful gift to be in the presence of its happening.

Isn’t that why we chase art from place to place and beg to be in its world? in a world where only music can existPhotos are of my daughter inside the state of her music earlier this evening.

4/365

 

Categories
art inspiration Iphone Photography

a process inside a process~ why do I edit my photos?

love is like oxygen
love is like oxygen

another year about to fly by
another year about to fly by

smiling at her future
smiling at her future

the big church
the big church

stepping into a story
stepping into a story

stretching the truth
stretching the truth

When I edit my photos, I set in motion a whole new process that allows me to see beyond the actual image. I begin to feel emotions and to imagine worlds that the image open doors to. So my initial photograph becomes a key, a starter and a catalyst to a brand new process. I leave myself open to what the moment suggests, what level of contrast it wants, what degree of clarity or blur, saturation or absence of color, and what lines to highlight, and inside of all this (which sometimes takes not longer than a few minutes), a new image is born, one that is layered with sketches of imagination and brush strokes of feeling. I attempt through that to marry the past with the now in anticipation of the art that might wish to join my future.

 

Wishing all my readers and subscribers a wonderful and inspired new year.

All above images were taken with an iPhone during my recent trip to New Zealand and edited with phone apps.

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Egypt inspiration life Photography

Day 30~ March 30th~ Egypt

a journey like no other~ boy on a camel in the desert~ Egypt

There are some places you travel to that remain alive in a very special place in your heart…

It really was a journey like no other, this adventure in Egypt. The pyramids, the sphinx, the desert, the camels, the ancient ruins, the mind boggling architecture, the friends, the strange carvings, the sense of being so different to the ancient culture that has been, the bedouins, the Nubians, and most of all the children of Egypt.

Our life experiences come together and culminate to make us who we are. This journey for me in this year to collect the salient bits of pieces of 12 of my life journeys, one a month, and to go through the process of examining them as one would a sand painting, with different colors, different essences and experiences and to then brush them away into the archives of my memories, hopefully learning a lesson in the process.

 

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architecture Egypt history Photography street

Day 18~ March 18th~ Egypt

avenue of the sphinxes~ Luxor

The most baffling thing about ancient history is the search for the real reasons as to why the ancients did what they did…

After being amazed, impressed and dazzled by a 7km avenue in Luxor lined perfectly with sphinxes, I had to ask myself the question: “why would they do that?” It seems far too precise to be a whim of an architect, or the egoistic wish of a king, too well planned to not have a greater purpose. I had a similar feeling walking in between the avenues of megalithic rocks in Carnac, France, where huge megalithic rocks were transported from far away places and placed in rows, tens of kilometers long at equal distances to form avenues across fields and valleys.

I am not really looking for answers as much as I am enjoying the search for them. The process of asking with all the awe and wonderment is what makes history so attractive, to mystery dream, to be lost in the search for truth…

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inspiration lebanon life Photography

Day 29~ February 29th~ Lebanon

Farewell to the ancient mountains

I am 2 days late in posting this because I am finding it so hard to leave my one month process with Lebanon, the most special place for me on this Earth. But life and this project must go on. On to the next journey in the next place which you will know about in the next post. It has been quite a journey the last month mentally traveling through my archives of photos, through my diaries and through the hieroglyphs of my mind. I hope you were able to get a small sense of how wonderful and extraordinary Lebanon was, is and can be. Thank you to all the wonderful people who have been following, commenting and encouraging along the way. Great thanks to the people at wordpress who added this blog to freshly pressed twice! And many thanks to those who have been nominating me for awards. I must admit, I have not figured out how the whole process works and what to do with them, but I will.

I am posting 2 self portraits from Lebanon, one with my beloved mountains and one gazing at the deep blue Mediterranean.

See you tomorrow elsewhere 🙂

farewell to the deep blue sea

Categories
architecture Photography street

Day Two Hundred Eighty One, October 30, 2011

Shanghai sky

Funny how certain events stay engraved in our minds forever and are triggered by visual means for the rest of our lives. I was living in New York at the time of 911 and had witnessed the whole disaster from the rooftop of my downtown Nolita office. It was horrific to say the least seeing that and experiencing it so closely. Since then, seeing a plane next to a high rise triggers a stream of unwelcome memories and emotions.

photo taken: from the Shangri La Hotel in Pudong, Shanghai looking up to the Jin Mao building and the Shanghai World Financial Center, aka bottle opener.

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Categories
Photography

Day Two Hundred Fourty Two, September 21, 2011

the state of the artist

When the world quiets down, when the mind expands, when time gains elasticity, when the hands buzz and tickle, when peripheral vision activates, when a strange kind of awareness attends you, when you become so focused on the task at hand, when you are transported to a dimension you can only call ‘other’, when you feel the process of being a vehicle for art, an instrument of art, when ‘you’ step out of the way for ‘it’ to do its work… then perhaps you are living the state of the artist.

photo taken: a man sketching in the very busy yu gradens in shanghai totally unaware of the chaos around him.