I do not know when to start, for me obsessed with capturing, encounter beauty became a not easy thing. As long as you take your mobile phone, you can’t ignore the rainbow that suddenly appears in the sky after the rain. It is impossible not to raise your mobile phone when you meet a little cat with cute eyes. It was impossible even to ignore a clear, airy evening, the golden sharpness of the setting sun on the wall… Many times, I chased the mottled walls, broken doors, fences on the “inch of time”, racing against the clock to take pictures, captured the last set sun dissipated, photographed cell phone battery, as if I can retain anything.
When it comes to a particularly stunning view, the most difficult choice is whether to reach for your phone or just watch it. After all, light is the shelf life of all beauty. The same landscape becomes a glimpse of splendor in the evening glow, and a snooze in the midday white light. Those fleeting scenes, a second look is earned. Even if it is taken in the moment, will feel regretful, less look, between this glance, there are a lot of beauty gone. So inevitably will be ready to move, just look also can’t ah, stay on the phone, not always can take out to see it? A one-click lock. Why not?
Unfortunately, usually you can’t capture one tenth of such a magnificent scene, not to mention the loss of light sense when the light and shadow cast into the camera, just the sense of atmosphere, temperature, emptiness, grandeur, loneliness… You can’t photograph all of these feelings that you can’t necessarily touch visually. The more ambitious you are, the greater the sense of loss. Instead of letting myself get depressed, I just stared, waiting for the beauty to fade until the surprise subsided and the splendor returned to ordinary. Like the most thrilling feelings are not retained, left, are smoothed out the relationship.
“Photography became a inventory of reality that suddenly existed,” Sontag says. People love to photograph things that are about to disappear, and use photography to accelerate their disappearance.” It is as if reality is only real when viewed as an object. Before eating, it’s almost a must to “light up” the food, and upload it to moments because it disappears immediately. All the tourist attractions are filled with people taking pictures with their mobile phones, because they are just taking a quick look, rather than looking at it with their eyes, taking a slow look at it — although they may not have time to look at it when they get home.
Johnberg said in The Way of Seeing that the “way” of seeing brought about by those magnificent pictures, which is flashy, without thinking, and reaches its climax quickly, damages the mind, and the most serious consequence is that people’s ability to think and search for truth is completely destroyed. This kind of viewing is just as pervasive as when we’re holding up our phones and punching cards, and the confusing thing is that the more serious we are, the less conscious we are of these realities. Therefore, how to get a “blind way” has become an alternative aesthetic in the mobile phone era.
