An Absolute Sense of Awe

No this is not another experiment, this is my spontaneous artistic soul comes into play if you want the most nauseating description, and at the same time not entirely correct, because the words artistic soul is very-very not me. I’ve always interested in taking pictures of clouds and sky, whether its bright blue sky, grayish cloudy sky, or dusk and dawn. Their constantly changing shapes and colors are always intrigues me. And this is my first attempt.

Not quite impressive I suppose. That was the first time I realize that sky – no matter how beautiful and moving it is – is a very hard subject to photograph. It looks good in your eyes, but looks completely dull when captured casually. So a couple of day later, right after the rain stops, I tried to take some more pictures. But the only one that I thought quite worth showing is this.

But it is still embarrassing. Still looks – again – dull. And then comes the sunset.

A little bit of improvement, but still not quite there yet.

And then comes today’s evening. As I rode my motorbike home from Gold’s Gym, I noticed that it was sunset already. The sun wasn’t visible, because it was cloudy. But the clouds which reflect the sunlight were just beautiful, very beautiful. You know I usually photograph the sky from the ground, or from my window at the second floor. I had given a thought about climbing to my roof, but it just sounds crazy – A jobless man climbing his roof to take a picture of the sky, what is crazier than that? But this time it was different. Even as I rode home, the thought strongly cross into my mind “I have to go up there, I must”. So there I was, climbing the roof like Spiderman only with 3 extremities – my left hand was safeguarding the camera – and found myself a stable spot to sit at.

“It’s important to move beyond your comfort zone, even if that means venturing beyond the things you know and have photographed in the past.”

– Harold Davis.

And that was the moment I realize the beauty that has been taken for granted by humanity. I sat for a while, staring, contemplating. It was not like “Oh it’s so beautiful it makes me wanna cry” sort of thing. A “Twilight” reader might say that, but not me. So I’ll describe how I felt with only one phrase at the top of this article, and I’ll repeat it again.

“An absolute sense of awe”

Then I try to memorize a thing or two from what I had learned from Harold Davis’ articles at photo.net, and start to take some pictures.

These are the widest perspectives that I can get with my camera, just to get the feel of being up there.

And here are the main cookies.

Diagonal line

These are shapes that I accidentally captured. I only realized it after viewing it at my laptop

Phoenix

Dragon or Godzilla, you name it

An aeroplane passing by

If any of you couldn’t quite get the reason why I feel so intensely passionate about it, it is only because my extremely limited skills and resources.

This is the kind of sensation that keeps me from drifting away into a gadget collector. This is when I feel the stronger sense of why I want to learn about photography. It is not about technical ability (although it’s a prerequisite), or satisfaction of owning expensive priced goodies (which is still necessary at some point, like wonky said “Man behind the gun my ass!”), but it is about “to communicate the beauty of the world as I see it”.