Pavel P.

I still have this disturbing thought about “street photography” in my head. The thought is: the street photography is a cliche. But it depends…on answering one question. Hodonovice, June 2016 The question is: why did I take this photo? This is where I understand the difference between making photo and taking photo…. When I make the photo, I did answered the question why…. When I take the photo, I didn’t answered the question why…. So why? Why did I photograph that? Why did I press the shutter button? Many times I realize that only reason of capturing something is… …because I can…. To prove myself that I can make this photo To prove that I can take a photo of people on the street This is the problem of mine. Because, I am taking photos of people on the streets…. I am only adding with just another cliche photo to the “word wide street photo database”. There is this interesting article   Street Photography Cliches That Are Impossible To Resist with list of cliches of wha...

About bubbles. Metaphorically, of course. We all live in our own bubble. Don’t we? Bubble is a little place were I can live and be praise, accepted and where I feel good. Friends on social media is a bubble. You hang out with people with similar interests, opinions and likes. You are in opinion bubble. You probably will be praised and hardly ever criticized. Sometimes, when I feel to fight, I go ahead into the discomfort. I would post photos to other photo communities, where I know the opinion will not be pleasing. Sometimes I do that. Brno, July 2016 Brno, July 2016 Brno, July 2016 P.

I sometimes let my daughter (6) or my son (4) use my phone camera. Their mind is clean. They see something and they make a snapshot. No problem. I like their imperfect photos. My mind is not clean. There are tons of Dos and Don’ts. Styles. Ideas. Photos I saw… This all makes an effect on a resulting photo. It is not only my camera and my eyes, but also my head in between, that sends the signal to my finger which presses the shutter button. I am aware of what I am affected by. I learned what my head contains. I know why I do and what I do. I am not trying to get rid of if. I am going with it. And I  build on it. Photos were made in Brno, June 2016. P.

I am more and more worrying about lack of time for processing and making my photos public. I have too many photos in the archive and too little time. Too many photos that I like. Too many to be absorbed by the public. Problem. Or not? Possible solutions: shoot less – but that would not make me happy and  it would lead to more frustration, no way be more critical when selecting photos – but I already love all my photos and I want to show them, even those technically imperfect, I don’t want to cut them out. choose themes that matters and organize photos into logical categories – and make those public, the rest  keep unpublished. I was thinking about this point for a week or two. I read an article about it and I referred about it in my older blog post .  I thought I discovered answer I needed. I am afraid this kind of thinking would change the way I shoot. It would take a freedom away. Freedom of shooting whatever I feel like. Whatever is happening around ...

About my hiatus from the Internet. I was on vacation with my family. Just for a week. Not even a whole week, only about five days… Brno, July 2016 They said the accommodation will be with WiFi. In reality, Internet connection was available only in front of the building next to our apartment. Therefore I was offline for five days. Most of the time. I got chance to connect on 5 minutes a day. I enough time to check E-mails, weather forecast and my favorite blog. I wasn’t able to look at hundreds of other people’s photos a day. I didn’t have time to comment on them. I didn’t scroll through never ending Facebook or Twitter feeds. Brno, July 2016 I was frustrated for the first day. But I quickly got used to it and I gained something in exchange. I had plenty of time to finish reading a book. I even had time to watch some Olympics. I had lot’s of time to think. About my photography. I wasn’t distracted by news, other people’s photos, blogs. I realized I don’t necessar...

I was reading and thinking. Which is what I do besides photographing and writing. And sleeping. I stumbled upon a blog of  R. Jokelova. Here is a link , but it’s only in Czech. This lady wrote about her journey and realizing what she wants to do as a photographer. What grabbed my attention were conclusions she made and how she made them. She wrote: Until recently I didn’t care what I was photographing. Basically I just enjoyed the fact that I am photographing and that I am liking it. I’ve never thought about the choice of the topic … because I didn’t think I should. And than she had visited a photography course which included a portfolio critique of participants works. She had a photo album to show ….and to be criticized. She says… I had a wonderful album full of the best of my photos. And that was the problem! I never show and I don’t want to show “The best of my portfolio.” I tell the stories that are not in the album. They didn’t fit in there. And that’s how she desc...

I wrote this on my FB and Twitter and also on Tumblr last week: What is Tumblr? A place for blogging or a social media platform? Hybrid of both? Or none? And what do you expect from Tumblr? Any answers? Need to mention that questions above started bordering me after reading the text The Slow Death of Tumblr (and Medium) written by C.J. Chilvers.  CJ wrote about reasons why he moved his blog from Tumblr to WordPress. So what is my answer to the questions above? Brno, July 2016 I personally think it is a hybrid. It is very simple to share, but it is confusing to find relevant content. Tumblr feed (called dashboard) is never ending flow of content, where it is impossible to filter the content I want to see. And than you get “notes” and “reblogs”, which is same as Facabook “likes” and “shares”. I feel Tumblr is rather for content consumption. To me it look like one big bowl of various content. I first didn’t know what Tumblr is for. I started to post there in Apri...