Heading home into the sunset. Sony Nex 6 with 50mm 1.8 OSS lens.
The last bit of color and light in the winter sky...
Some days I go out with the idea that I'm on a search for good images. Some days I go out with the idea that I need a walk. On the days on which I'm just walking I always bring along a camera, just in case. I never understood the holistic utility of a good walk until I recently started reading research about the way our addiction to two dimensional screens is changing our brain physiology and hampering our ability to visualize and function optimally in the real, three dimensional world.
Seems that sitting all day looking at a screen disrupts your ability to absorb three dimensional clues and information. It also reduces your physical system's micro-balance. The diminution of one's ability to operate optimally in three dimensional space also limits and bounds one's cognitive processes. Put another way, sitting around looking at screens all day makes you a dumb ass with balance issues. Not the way you really wanted to spend your adult life.
Fortunately the cure is painless and, for photographers, productive. After a spell at the crusty old monitor/internet connection you head outside in a pair of comfortable shoes and look at the world around you as you walk. An hour or two of walking can do much to mitigate the creeping mental lethargy brought on by excessive two dimensional visual activities. But you have to be diligent. There has to be a balance.
Our DNA pushes us to crave action and movement. It conditions us to crave the act of moving through space. When we're stationary and sedentary we're battling our own evolutionary imperatives.
Thank God we invented photography. It gives us a ready and reliable excuse to push away from our desks, easy chairs, dining room tables and couches in order to head outside and get some creative thinking and seeing done. A photography secret for living longer and happier lives.
Doesn't really matter if you come back with winning images. It really is a case of the journey being more valuable than the immediate results. I no longer rationalize the time I spend walking through the city. It's not about casting a temporal net in which to catch images. Now it's just an exercise I do to increase my ability to play well in three dimensions and to unfetter my mind from the stationary physical barriers that researchers agree hamper advanced problem solving and non-linear creative thought. Try it.
