michaellinder Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 <p>I realize that other threads possibly may have dealt with similar subject matter, so I decided on a title that, perhaps n a sarcastic sense, psychologizes what I want to address.</p><p>On Sunday, my wife and I flew to my home town (Buffalo, N.Y.) for a cherished aunt's funeral, which occurred on Monday. I deliberately did not bring my camera, given the reason for the trip. While in Buffalo, we were treated to two glorious Indian Summer days. The high temperature was in the low 60s, with lows in the low 50s. There was an amazing, abundant display of fall foliage - incredibly vivid browns, oranges, reds, and yellows. Although I realized that having my camera would have been well timed, I nonetheless did my best to burn the scenery into my memory.</p><p>Thus did I transform the moment from one of sadness and self-criticism to one constituting a peak experience. My memory of that scenery became juxtaposed with memories of my aunt so that, whenever I think of her in the future, I will remember her face amidst the glory of nature. Not having the camera with me faded into oblivion.</p><p>Your thoughts, please . . . ?</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vrankin Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 All through those years of their growing up, my kids knew that my getting the shots with the camera was more important to me than what was actually going on. It took a long time before I finally heard about it last summer at a reunion. My kids are now in their thirties. I hope to end this obsessive compulsive stuff now, while I have time to enjoy everything just for what it is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
william l. palminteri Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 <blockquote> <p><strong>Do photographers suffer from OCD<em>?</em></strong><br /><a href="../photodb/user?user_id=4164596"><em>Michael Linder</em></a><em> </em><a href="../member-status-icons"><em><img title="Subscriber" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub2.gif" alt="" /><img title="Frequent poster" src="http://static.photo.net/v3graphics/member-status-icons/3rolls.gif" alt="" /></em></a><em>, Oct 29, 2009; 01:52 p.m.</em><br /><em>I realize that other threads possibly may have dealt with similar subject matter, so I decided on a title that, perhaps n a sarcastic sense, psychologizes what I want to address.</em></p> </blockquote> <p><em>Do photographers suffer from OCD?</em><br /><em></em><br />Of course, by sheer weight of numbers, there are photographers who suffer from OCD.<br />From the NIMH.....<br /><a href="http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml">http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/obsessive-compulsive-disorder-ocd/index.shtml</a><br /><em></em><br /><em>"Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, OCD, is an anxiety disorder and is characterized by recurrent, unwanted thoughts (obsessions) and/or repetitive behaviors (compulsions). Repetitive behaviors such as handwashing, counting, checking, or cleaning are often performed with the hope of preventing obsessive thoughts or making them go away. Performing these so-called "rituals," however, provides only temporary relief, and not performing them markedly increases anxiety."</em></p> <p>Since I have OCD in my family, and have seen first hand the suffering, I find it distasteful that you would use the term in a "sarcastic" sense to explain away why you chose to remember a nice time with your family. Based on your description of a wonderful weekend, believe me, you don't have OCD, and trust me, you can be thankful.</p> <p>Bill P.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack_fisher1 Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 <p>Thank you for your thoughts, Michael. I understand fully.<br> It took me a long time, since my youth to realize I was missing some important relationship moments by seeing all family events through the viewfinder. I learned to discipline myself - even with the camera - to limit the photography in order to enjoy each moment. However, as a senior citizen, I am glad I had the camera along to record with a few shots those memorable family occasions. Time passes on, and many family members are gone now. We are now the older generation; and I am glad to have the snapshots to remember those events. I still have a camera (most of the time a small, point-and-shoot one) along; and take a few pictures at the increasingly dimishing family gatherings. But limit photographic activity in order to enjoy those special moments.<br> Jack</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jack_fisher1 Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 <p>Deleted duplicate post</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thomas_sullivan Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 <p>I am never without a camera. NEVER. I use to do it for reasons like you stated, but like you, the rest of the time I wanted my camera. So, I have two point and shoots that I tend to have with me at all times. Ricoh GRD and Canon SD940 IS. The Ricoh cause I just love the way it handles in my hands, and the pics from it are especially great looking when converted to B&W in Lightroom. And the Canon 940 for when I need the telephoto reach or the video (the video in the Ricoh sucks.....the video in the 940 is surprisingly good)</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iliafarniev Posted October 29, 2009 Share Posted October 29, 2009 <p>Uh. How could they not? Damn thing is everywhere.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaellinder Posted October 29, 2009 Author Share Posted October 29, 2009 <p>William:</p> <p>Please accept my sincere apology. I did not intend to offend anyone. And I am well aware, since my brother-in-law has OCD, how debilitating this may be. The reference in my title was to folks who are attached to their cameras to the extent that the cameras become additional appendages.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sd_woods Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 <p>OCD is such a vague and all-encompassing term that everyone has it to a certain degree</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gia_hillenbrand Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 <p>I check my email and my phone constantly - knowing I have not recieved a call - yet I still do it.(stems from being one of the first kids in my HS to have a cell phone, and a car phone, just stuck with me to always look...)</p> <p>I buy items for my camera not knowing what to do with it - but since it was on sale...lol</p> <p>We all have something.</p> <p>I think what you said about your Aunts memoey is very precious. Very heart warming. I stopped taking AS MANY pics of my kids for almost a year for the same reason. But now I hear "Mom, why dont you ever take pics of us anymore..." So I picked up the camera again. lol</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Norma Desmond Posted October 30, 2009 Share Posted October 30, 2009 <p>Actually, Michael, I think the significance of what you talk about is in how events and "mental pictures" can be transformed. </p> <p>Some of my most horrible memories are imbued with a strange kind of beauty that accompanies them. There can be much peace in sadness, much love in hurt, much awe in death.</p> <p>I'd say you didn't miss out on anything by not having your camera with you. These transformations are significant to photography, and experiencing them and taking them with you when you eventually do have your camera back will impact your vision and your photographs. We realize, after experiences like this, that scenes and subjects can be imbued with a transformational quality by photographing them just like they can through memory, circumstances, smells, the weather you experienced, etc. </p> <p>Maybe you didn't bring your camera, but you brought your eye and your heart. That's just as important to your life and to your next photograph.</p> We didn't need dialogue. We had faces! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike51664877339 Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 <p>In "The Man Who Walked Through Time," (1967) Colin Fletcher described his two-month hike through the Grand Canyon. Along the way, his camera tumbled over a cliff, and Fletcher could not retrieve it. Of course he wrote about the immediate regret. But he described a silver lining that sounds a lot like what you observed, Michael: he looked at things differently and deeper when he was preserving what he saw in his memory instead of in his camera.</p> <p>Families know what a fun-wrecker a camera can be. My teenage daughter loves roller coasters, and agreed to a day trip to Coney Island's Cyclone only if it was going to be a roller-coaster trip and not a photography day. I brought a camera anyway, and took some shots, but made sure that we kept her agenda and her pace.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaellinder Posted October 31, 2009 Author Share Posted October 31, 2009 <p>I appreciate Thomas' point of view, but I don't share it. The occasion that prompted this thread is the first time I have made what a noted phlosopher has called a "resolute decision" to leave my camera at home. I wasn't at all worried about how pissed off people would be if they saw me shooting photographs before or after the funeral. And, had the camera been with me, I knew that my wife wouldn't feel like this was just another occasion on which she would have to take the back seat (not that I've ever deliberately treated her that way). I just knew I would have to experience the event differently. As Fred stated, I had to rely solely on my eye and my heart. And, indeed, as Michael pointed out above, this allowed me to capture the occasion in a way that will last way beyond the time at which all photographic images will disappear. And I have my Aunt Rose to thank for that.</p> <p> </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mark_drutz Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 <p>My kids used to call me "Just One More" because I always wanted just one more picture. Later I realized that life is a balancing act. Photography is part of the act. I still take pictures of my granddaughter, but not enough to get in the way of enjoying whatever the family is doing.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fate_faith_change_chains Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 <blockquote> <p>Maybe you didn't bring your camera, but you brought your eye and your heart. That's just as important to your life and to your next photograph</p> </blockquote> <p>Nicely put Fred, it illuminates ( together with the OP ) that the minds eye and ones own impression, and which is always with you, is as equally important as the camera's factual recording eye, whether you have a camera with you or not. I once wanted, <em>needed</em>, to photograph a landscape that I was driving through. There was a certain light. I stopped and took out the G10 that was in the car only to realize that the camera's batteries were dead. I felt annoyed for my photographers instinct being abruptly put to a halt by this but then I realised that I was blessed for seeing, for sensing, and for being aware of this landscape surrounding me and that I wasn't just numbly driving through it untouched, even though it wasn't a spectacular landscape per se, just "ordinary" reality. But I took the landscape in and knew in that moment, while being a photographer, that it was not about the camera, nor about the photograph. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaellinder Posted October 31, 2009 Author Share Posted October 31, 2009 <p>Phylo:</p> <p>" t was not about the camera, nor about the photograph. " Absolutely right - it was about the moment.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fate_faith_change_chains Posted October 31, 2009 Share Posted October 31, 2009 <p>Michael, Yes ! It was about the moment, about <em>being in the moment</em>. As photographers, often compulsive in capturing a record, we can only be enriched when not loosing sight of this. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaellinder Posted November 1, 2009 Author Share Posted November 1, 2009 <p>Phylo, I think of the phrase as "being-in-the-moment". This phrase is appropriate for addressing ontological issues - under the heading of "human reality" (Sartre). Now, how much space is there on this thread?!?</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katherinemichael Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 <p>I have found that by leaving the camera behind sometimes and consciously immersing myself in all facets of life through my vision, touch and emotion, I make better photos whenever I do pick up the camera again. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaellinder Posted November 2, 2009 Author Share Posted November 2, 2009 <p>Katherine: Good point. Every once in a while it's a good idea to recharge one's batteries.</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adambacker Posted November 3, 2009 Share Posted November 3, 2009 <p>Well, the feeling of missing a shot because of not carrying ur equipment is too hurting.... but well, in such occasions I see to it that I get back to location for capture another day..no matter what.<br> This experience I had while travelling many places in south india, in the link below i have posted pictures of places where i went second time just for photography.m<br> <a href="http://www.adambacker.co">www.adambacker.co</a>m<br> <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/adambacker2009">http://www.flickr.com/photos/adambacker2009</a></p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lauren_macintosh Posted November 4, 2009 Share Posted November 4, 2009 <p>Being alone has made me aware of what a difference there is now with out the family getting mad because I brought the camera along ! I can enjoy it more and not worry about others feelings: Enjoy what you have for you know not when you will not have it :</p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
michaellinder Posted November 4, 2009 Author Share Posted November 4, 2009 <p>Adam: Feedback to photos I've taken have led me to believe that I need to return to the same spot, but under different lighting conditions. Maybe the question put in my original post can be considered from this perspective. I will have the opportunity, or make the opportunity, to experience fall again. And the photographs will come.</p> <p>Lauren: Indeed, I love just wandering about by myself shooting. Even if the shots are terrible, it's the activity I enjoy. </p> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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