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What Is There To Fear?

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Do you ever notice that people who have near death experiences seem to have a new lease on life? It makes me think that the fear around death is misguided. We shouldn’t fear death nearly as much as we should fear not living. Death is inevitable. And while I personally hope it is still quite distant, it really isn’t avoidable. What is avoidable is not really living. 

Not really living can be quite cliche. It’s living to work, not working to live; It’s counting the days to the weekend, your next vacation, or retirement; It’s eating for sustenance without enjoyment; It’s counting the minutes rather than spending them; It’s fearing to chase your dream; Wishing, but not doing; watching rather than participating; Wondering where the time went and lamenting; Hoping for different results, but not doing anything to get them. 

What is there to fear? It’s not death, it’s just not really living… which is something you always have control over. And if you take control, well then there really isn’t much to fear, is there? 

 

Know the rules to break them

On Friday afternoon one of my teachers invited me in to talk a bit about portrait photography. I had told him that I did a lot of photography and that I’d be happy to pop in at some point, but I hadn’t planned a lesson. And so I shared a few key concepts like the rule of thirds, and moving subjects away from the background to eliminate the look of a mug shot, and gave a few more suggestions.

As I did so, I surprised myself with how much I knew as a result of years of doing wedding photography. Except that when I did weddings, I did them on film. I didn’t have the instant feedback of seeing a photo right after I took it. I wasn’t sure that I got the shot that I wanted. It was a lot more challenging to photograph a wedding 25 years ago.

The students had an assignment to replicate a few photos from well known photographers, and so after explaining some key composition rules, I told the that they will probably notice that a number of the photographs they were emulating broke the rules I was sharing. I told them that the reason good photographers could break the rules is because they understand them extremely well. “You need to know the rules in order to break them and still get a good shot.”

To explain this further, I shared some artwork rather than a photograph. I showed the Picasso’s bull.

I described how Picasso truly understood art, and that for him to draw a bull and give the full essence of it with just a handful of lines, he had to understand and appreciate what else he saw and understood about the essence of his subject. And he had to know his craft well, to be able to see what was needed to represent the minimalist view.

Most new photographers are better off sticking to the rules and paying attention to them until they really understand them. Only then can the break the rules well and still take a good photo. I also talked a bit about the uncanny valley in photography. For example, if you are taking a photo and the horizon is off of horizontal by 3-4 degrees, then the photo looks awful. We know it’s crooked. But take that same photo and tilt it over 30 degrees to focus on something in the foreground and the photo can work.

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but when it comes to photography, and the composition of a good shot, there are certain rules that make a shot aesthetically pleasing. Unless you really understand these rules it’s not easy to break them and still pull off a great shot.

I think this rule about breaking rules applies to a lot more than just photography.

A fun ‘how to’ video

One of our teachers at Inquiry Hub Secondary, Ms. Yu, posted a video challenge on our all-school Microsoft Teams:

I whipped this video up yesterday. It was fun to do, and didn’t take that long to make.

Imagine trying to make this video 20 years ago. What equipment would you have needed? How many hours of editing would it have taken? Now, anyone can create a simple ‘How to’ video in a matter of minutes, or a couple hours if you want to edit it and add captions/music etc.

We live in a time when producing and sharing creative ideas is easier than ever. I’m connected to a lot of educators online that create and share amazing things with me. I’m also connected to educators that have so much to share, and they don’t. If you are the former, thank you for your contributions to my learning. If you are the later, what are you waiting for?