My visual perception in 2004-2005

Look at some photographs that I took in the past.

These photos are from Prague, year 2004. I picked these four pictures in July, 2005 for a blog in Russian that I was writing at the moment. Notice what kind of pictures I picked. I posted those pictures in my blog on the 21st of July, 2005.

Staromestska Square

View of Prague Castle

Railway station

Just a tree on a slope

Here are some picture I took in St.Petersburg, Russia, my hometown, in July, 2005. Again, I posted these six pictures in my blog at that time, on 25th of July, 2005.

Lomonosov bridge

Windows on an embankment

Anichkov bridge

Embankment of the Fontanka river - I

Embankment of the Fontanka river - II

Anichkov palace

Why do you think I picked these pictures, back then in 2005? Any ideas?

Lastly, here is what I wrote in my Russian blog on the 30th of July, 2005. I am translating from Russian. See if you find anything related to the photographs above and/or to binocular vision.

A photographer and a painter

 Imagine a photographer, not a very good one. Say, he is walking down the street and gets impressed by something. He takes a picture of this something and gets an ordinary photo. But next time he takes a picture of something very ordinary, yet gets an interesting photo. On the other hand, a painter finds something that is intrinsically interesting for him, something that impresses him imagination, and then, under this impression, depicts or represents this something. He is not trying to find, like a photographer, an object or a composition that is good for a photography, but possibly modest in ordinary life. A painter is using one step instead of two.

Perhaps, the thing is that the mentioned photographer is a bad photographer. Instead he should have taken picture of something that truly impressed him. He should have worked to find a good angle, to obtain a good photo from a technical point of view. There we find a new direction: a photographer is impressed by something, from which he can get a good photo. His emotional perception changes, he starts to see things, in a sense, like they will look in a photo. This is in agreement with the opposite statement that a painter (note: in Russian "a painter" also means "an artist") depicts his worldview. In childhood I used to be very surprised by this statement. I objected: "but he is not seeing the world in these kinds of colors, right? So blurred? This is because he has normal, clear vision."

Walking in various cities with a camera, I used to get tired from the feeling that I was not enjoying the view but trying to find something to take a picture of. It seemed to me that the aggressive view of a photographer seeing the environment as merely a material for a photo interferes with his ability to calmly enjoy his surroundings. However, after long walks in the city without a camera I started to wonder, why I was examining the buildings around me. It turned out that it was not always interesting, but sometimes boring and tiring. On the other head, if I am walking and looking for for an opportunity to make a good photo, the perception changes, becomes brighter and fuller. I get a lot of emotions from a view that previously did not impress me that much. Attention to details also makes a contribution: similar views turn out to be different after a careful examination, and this makes them more interesting...

There is some parallel between the mentioned duality "a painter - a photographer" and one problem related to poem composition. Let me explain: in a poem, its plot, text, content may be primary, but sometimes what is primary is the form, rhyme, rhythm, musical scale, musical imagery. Yet people always say that a true poet says what he or she wants to say, and simultaneously makes the poem successful from the rhyme and rhythm point of view. However, this point of view assumes that the text is primary. This is because one could also say that a true poet always creates a truly musical poem which, nevertheless, also has some idea, the words match each other grammatically, and so on...