I was talking to my dear friend Sunder and the somehow the conversation drifted to doing things to be happy. He jokingly mentioned that the happiness has to come from within, no matter what we do. There was a hint of exasperation in the tone of that conversation. That lead me to ponder yet again.
I acknowledge we all (at least I do) go through an existential angst about our life time and again. I do things the same way since I am good at it (and why fix when it ain’t broke rationale). Even when I enjoy doing the same thing(s) over and over, at a certain point, fatigue builds up. is the panacea doing different things or do different things? Will either doing the former or doing the latter help me get out of my doldrums?
I found myself asking the same question as long as I can remember. Either this or that? I am now beginning to realize that it was along OK to chose both. Somehow, conditioned to think that life is full of hard choices one has to make and I did make some of them, now I have realized that not all choices in life HAVE to be either this or that, and some situations lend themselves better to BOTH. Take for instance the following photo taken at home in the night with a flash light.
It is a rather dull and boring image. The post processed image does not look much better either as you can see in the image below. May be slightly better. I have used my typical work flow to process the image below.
Then I decided to try something differently. I took the same dull image and used a feature in my HDR software (recently discovered, perhaps an example of doing different things) to create an HDR image from a single image. I was surprised how better the image came out in terms of the vibrancy of the flower. Composition may still be a blah, I admit.
The above image (at least to me) is a bit more visually pleasing, with more details and not over the top processing.
Doing different things has been easier said than done. I would always end up with analysis paralysis when it came to choosing what else I want to do to defeat the boredom. During my recent trip to Death Valley, California on a photography workshop to capture Milkyway, I did something that is completely different from usual photography style. Thanks to the workshop coordinator and fellow attendees, I forced myself to visualize a shot, at least some of the times, and compose accordingly. One of the suggestion made by the instructor was to face the sun as it is setting and shoot the landscape as sun was setting behind the hills. Landscape photography is completely different thing that I tried for the first time, at least in any meaningful way.
As you can see in the above image, setting sun is the point of interest and notices most everyone is doing the same. I decided take the shot differently. I felt this angle is not doing justice to the location. I am standing approximately in the middle of the death valley and this angle of view is not doing justice to the expansive landscape that defines Death Valley. So I shifted my camera slight to the right so that setting sun is to my left and my point of view is now the barren but rugged landscape as point of view with perspective leading to infinity. Or at least that is what I envisioned. The result is shown below.
You may argue that the above image does not match what I described as my vision and I would disagree with you but the point is I tried both doing different things and doing things differently.
This is another example of doing different things AND doing things differently. I never would have visualized this composition had it not been for “compelled” to look at photographic composition differently, outside of my comfort zone. Doing this kind of landscape/candid is certainly different from my past photography endeavors, and it certainly qualifies (in my book) as doing things differently.
The learning I have from this pondering is that I should switch how I view things. Instead of choosing “either/or” often, try doing “both” as much as I can, and relegate the former to extreme circumstances and compulsions.
