A Face and the Sky
December 4th, 2006 by Benji Mast
Remember that post I did a while ago? In it I declared the sky to be the most beautiful thing in creation. A reader also quite boldly disagreed with me, postulating that the human race was the crowning work of creation and was therefore the most beautiful thing in the physical world.
I took a picture of a (quite) young man and and beautiful sunset and thought them both worthy of posting. It never occurred to me about the connection they would share with the aforementioned post. I am now going to back off of my bold claim. What does my readership think?
18 mm
300 mm
My arsenal has recently expanded to include the glorious 70-300 mm 4-5.6 IS. I sold my the Vivitar 70-210 mm 2.8. The above pictures are of the same sunset at the extreme ends of my range.
Now the person…
This one is an edit to make his eyes a bit bluer and pop more.
Okay, so here are some random philosophical ramblings about art…
IMO, any art is most beautiful when it represents something bigger than itself. Anything that is reduced to mere physical beauty is humanistic.
Photography captures only one dimension of beauty. Have you ever been caught up in the beauty of intercession, repentance, faith, prophecy, love, or relationship? Lens cannot capture the full depth of that beauty.
Show me a picture of a flawless fashion model and a picture of a girl or woman I love (yes, even one to whom I’m non-romantically attached). When asked which picture is more beautiful, others may immediately choose the former. But I will hesitate. In the first, I see but a body. But in the second, I see beyond the body to her spirit.
Given this, am I then denying the reality of physical beauty? By no means! But I refuse to reduce beauty to the reflection and perception of light.
Those are just some thoughts–you’re most welcome to disagree!
Beautiful! I love seeing the pics you take! Are you coming out west again anytime soon?
Well actually yes, I am going out west soon, the 9th actually. But a little to far west to just drop by. I’m going to Colorado for a splendiferous week of snowboarding with a bunch of Kansas and kids and miscellaneous misfits, like me.
Beyond that, I think we will be going out to Kansas sometime this summer.
Thanks, “anon coward”. I appreciated what you said. I struggled to find some point with which I disagree with you and I failed.
I think I have been trying to over-compress or limit beauty. Because it is not absolutely comprehensible, we (including me) only get frusterated trying to reduce it.
I like what G.K. Chesterson once said,
“Poetry is sane because it floats easily in an infinite sea; reason seeks to cross the infinite sea, and so make it finite. The result is mental exhaustion…To accept everything is an exercise, to understand everything a strain. The poet only desires exaltation and expansion, a world to stretch himself in. The poet only asks to get his head into the heavens. It is the logician who seeks to get the heavens into his head. And it is his head that splits.”
I want to be the poet, exploring but not trying to limit.
Hat tip for quote to Out of Hanwell.
http://www.outofhanwell.com/blog/
sniff
…just stumbled across your site and LOVE your pix!! awesomeness!! i knew you were into photography, but not this much!! good stuff.
Wahh! You missed a perfect shot! That cloud system above and to the right of the sun was an absolutely perfect study of texture from a low light source, and of backlighting, for that matter.
But nice work, anyway.
And to the Anon coward: A commercial photographer’s view point.
As a commercial photographer, my eyes vary from yours. You’ve got the better artistic mind, I’ve got the more scientific mind. On the images of the model and the close friend: My experience in my field of work has caused me to be drawn immediately to the higher technical quality of the workmanship, even above the artistic expression. If the flawless model is indeed flawless, my scientific mind goes to work scrutinizing the qualities of the image. In the same scenario, your mind goes to work analyzing the depth of artistic expression, and therefore, you come to a different conclusion.
Art is subjective.