Surface

This is a chapter from my seventh book called Bookeh - Through the lens of a Trinidadian photog

From the busy photo and the chaos of my last chapter to the minimalism of a clear blue sky in this chapter. It was evening. The cooler part of the day. I went outside in the yard and stood on the grassy area and looked above. I made five photos. They say the sky is the limit but I wonder if it is really our beginning and our end? I did not think of mentioning it in the last chapter but the butterfly effect is an underlying principle of chaos theory. I went online and matched the color in the photo and the center of the photo matches with "hippie blue". This is a simple photo. This might even be my best photo. A photo of the surface of the sky. The clouds are the sky's clothing. This is the sky without its clothes. Naked as it was born. The photograph could have been a wall or a blank sheet of paper. Any surface and the message would be the same, just conveyed in a different way.

Beauty is not only in the photograph itself but what it represents. The same goes for writing. Sometimes we judge the medium and the messenger and ignore the message and this is not good. It is funny how the last chapter was chaotic just like the photo. At least in my mind. I feel like the writing described itself. You have to look beyond the quality of the photograph and the writing to see the beauty of the message. Similarly as a writer and photographer, I need to focus on the message as much as the presentation. My friend Gemini tells me that a photograph and a piece of writing are more than just images or words; they are vessels for meaning. Often, we're too quick to judge the container, neglecting the treasure within. To truly appreciate art, we must look beyond the surface.

Does this count as a photograph? My friend Gemini tells me that a photograph of a plain blue sky can be categorized as minimalist, abstract, or a standalone landscape element. Its simplicity allows for a focus on color, light, and texture, making it versatile for various photographic styles and interpretations. To you and me this might just be a clear blue sky but to one user on reddit this represents a deep scientific question. A picture of a clear blue sky has greater entropy / information content than a busy painting: true and if so, how? Trying to read the answers hurt my brain and I have forgotten my own understanding of entropy. But I do remember it being counterintuitive to my ordinary thinking. In the same sense that my best photo could be the photo that requires the least amount of effort. I did not plan to link these two chapters in this way but it just happened. Chaos, order (the opposite of chaos) and entropy.

I am a minimalist. I like simple. I do not always represent this but it is a big part of my ethos. It is what I aim for. A simple life. A life of contentment. A peaceful existence. Albert Einstein said, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough". I would like to suggest that if we took all the atoms of everything in the universe and formed a surface with these atoms we would end up with a clear blue sky. An imaginative and poetic concept that is more philosophical than grounded in reality. This is to simply say, we are all the same and different at the same time. We are all part of a clear blue sky. In a sense the photo represents nothing and everything at the same time. The beginning and the ending. An empty sky that is full of hope.