Shooting my Leica M10 (in color!) + philosophizing about photography

[@KarinMajoka]

Thank you for watching! I would be interested to hear your perspectives: Do you follow a specific philosophy in your photography?

[@mister_yog]

Nice video, Karin! I once read that for painting, you have to decide what you want to include in the picture, for photography you decide what to leave out. And I think this point also shows why photography is so subjective: You don't show reality as such, but you decide which part of a scene you want to present your viewer. I saw once a photography book that took this a step further. The photographer showed (mostly) a nice scene and then in a second photo what is directly behind him and mostly this revealed that the scene was quite different from what the first picture suggested.

[@northsonny]

A very well produced video. I did not take up photography until my retirement at 60 yrs. old and setting out to obtain a journalism degree at the university. Then taking other courses offered in both film & digital photography as I began to collect vintage and antique German made film cameras. I understand your philosophies as a photographer and will give them thought as I progress on my journey.

[@ShirazChanawala]

You have nailed the art of storytelling. I very much look forward to your videos and I can appreciate the time and effort that you put into creating a perfect package.

[@KarinMajoka]

Thanks so much, this really means a lot! 🤍

[@JessHobbs]

I loved this video, Karin! I agree with you on the point of every photo actually being a self-portrait, and that's what makes it so important to photograph the things you love, rather than for likes or algorithms. Those photos have so much more meaning afterwards as well. Keep up the awesome work, I always love watching your videos! ❤

[@KarinMajoka]

Hi Jess, thanks so much for your comment! That was very well said and brings it to the point: Shooting for external reasons will ultimately never make you happy, because it's no true expression of self. Thanks so much for tuning in ♥️

[@krolldavid]

I agree with you that photography can never faithfully represent reality. However, it is still somehow related to it. And that means it is related to what happened. So it is still relevant how the photograph reflects what happened.

[@okyeabuddyguy]

@17:33 excellent shot! Nice philosophizing. If you haven't you should check out the writing of Diane Arbus at the beginning of her Aperture Monograph and also Susan Sontag on photography. Interesting stuff from both of them but I personally found Diane Arbus's thoughts very insightful.

[@derrenleepoole]

The trick is simple with photography, don’t over think it :)

[@EdwardIglesias]

Of course if two people see the same white chair, but, see a different color that is a white balance problem. Okay, I'm leaving.

[@KarinMajoka]

Totally, let's forget all this philosophy stuff, white balance is always the answer 😂 Best comment so far!

[@Bonsees]

Photography to me (like drawing/painting) is how I doodle my vision~ is it real? To me it’s real enough, doesn’t have to be for others 😆 I guess this boils down to those who subscribe to the absolute Truth and those who think more in terms of Phenomenology (me lol) 🤓 love the video! And welcome back to colour land 🌈😆

[@davidcampbell1963]

A thought-provoking item, thank you. It resonates with Wittgenstein's ideas that there is an unbridgeable gap between what can be expressed in language and what can only be expressed in non-verbal ways. Accordingly statements are meaningful if, and only if, they can be defined or pictured in the real world.

[@davidwoods80]

Ah, this explains your tattoo! "The Treachery of Images" -- This is not a pipe!

[@KarinMajoka]

Yes, well observed! I am a firm believer in the theory that everything we see is just an interpretation but never a true image of reality.

[@tundrusphoto4312]

Hello. Karin - your videos are wonderful. Thank you.

[@KarinMajoka]

Hi, thanks for your comment, I appreciate it. :)

[@philipmode]

I always took a lot from Roland Barthes as a student, the idea that portraits hint at the death of their subject, that “every photograph is this catastrophe”. I guess that’s why the parents complained and I’m not allowed to take the school portraits anymore

[@KarinMajoka]

I remember reading some fragments from Barthes in uni as well, definitely some provoking perspectives he postulated

[@svenyss]

That's why I changed my way of photography back to the routes; I started in the 90s with analogue film and my Canon AE1 - three weeks before I just started to use this camera again. And then I decided to buy the Fuji x-T5 because there I can influence the filmsimulation a bit and then when the shot has been made it's done and I don't need to something in post production. Es hat mir einfach dieses Gefühl und den Spaß wieder zurück gegeben. Und dennoch eben die Option dies digital zu haben. Aber: Ich checke meine Fotos nie an dem Tag, schon gar nicht nachdem ich sie machte oder noch schlimmer während ich im Fotografie Prozess bin, einfach weil ich sonst etwas auf der Straße verpassen könnte und um mir dieses Gefühl, diese Überraschung und die Freude zu geben und ich mache keine RAWs mehr. Die große Sony steht jetzt erstmal herum. Sie wird sicher auch wieder benutzt und dann evtl. auch wieder in RAW. Aber für die Street habe ich jetzt die Fuji und das 23mm f 2 also ein 35mm Objektiv. Und da ich beruflich viel am PC sitze und für meine YT- Videos und Filmprojekte auch, ist es schön die JPEGS out of cam zu nutzen und selbst wenn mal etwas missglückt ist, dann ist das für mich schön und Teil des Prozesses und ich habe keine Lust mehr darauf da ein Netz oder doppelten Boden zu nutzen!

[@Francois_L_7933]

I know Garry Winogrand once said: "Putting four edges around a set of facts changes those facts." So yeah, just the fact of looking at something changes the reality of this thing. It's a bit like Schrodinger's cat in a sense, just in a more down to earth way.

[@BerndtOtto]

Tolles Video, Karin !!! Ich stimme in allen Punkten zu. Ich finde auch, dass Dein Video selbst das beste Beispiel für Deine Ideen zur Realität darstellt. Ich meine damit das Video, dass Deine Filmerin aufgenommen hat im Kontrast zu den Fotos, die Du in der selben Umgebung gemacht hast. Das Video selbst kommt der Realität dabei am nächsten. Es zeigt Bewegung und ist mit einem Weitwinkelobjektiv aufgenommen, so dass das Auge des Zuschauers im Bild umherwandern kann wie man es auch in der Realität machen würde. Im Gegensatz dazu dann Deine Fotos, in denen Du als Fotografin bereits den Ausschnitt festlegst, den Du in den Fokus rücken möchtest. Quasi Deine persönliche Perspektive der Realität. So erhält man in Deinem Video beides … einen Eindruck, WAS Du dort gesehen hast ( durch die Filmerin ) und durch Deine Fotos einen Eindruck, WIE Du es gesehen hast.

[@AlejandroGonzalez-AGS]

Nice video and filosofía class…well done. I love when out of the blue you say something in German @ 100 Km an hour and you loose me completely! Be safe, Cheers..

[@danijel3227]

Can not compile...error...error..too much words... 🙃 How ever, you are good and nice lady. And, I agree with your points.

[@ankerwiedemann]

I like and share your thoughts on photography. Reality is highly overrated, and I agree it should be such a big topic in photography. You speak about perception, and your psychologist background certainly shows ;-) I agree with you and would just twist the discussion in the direction of interpretation and ultimately how you convey your interpretation, if you show your work to others. It is an artform comparable to painting. Someone compared photography to painting with light - hey wait or whas that Goethe?! Anyway, photography sure is painting with light. Love your work Karin. It is very inspiring and refreshing!

[@pdk]

There is another level of reflection as well. Photographers shoot and select their portfolio with an element of how they want to be perceived. As with a direct self portrait where the artist is directly aware that what they create is a representation of themselves, also a photographer creating and sharing photos is conscious of "what will they think of me when they see this?" and this affects the entire photography process.

[@johngonzales7130]

i love feeding and taking care of my models! 😊

[@lightkeepsmecompany]

I love your videos 🎉

[@LaFuenteOnFilm]

Yes! Gaining inspiration from other forms of art helps big time! It can spark ideas that normally wouldn’t come from looking at other photography/videography.

[@KarinMajoka]

Great to hear your perspective on this take, thanks for sharing. :) Before actually starting with photography I was primarily interesting in painting, so to this day I feel like this inspires my photography a lot.

[@TheMPhotography]

Some might argue that reality is defined by the way we feel the world around us and not by perception of color or not. If one is that camp than black and white is capturing or portraying reality. I fully agree though that it is more subtle, abstract and (maybe) artistic than color photography. Highly debatable 😉

[@KarinMajoka]

Interesting perspective, I totally get what you are pointing to. :) But no matter what direction to look at it: even if it's not about perception but capturing how a scene feels instead of looks - it's still subjective and within the boarders of one's own reality.

[@Balea-film]

👏👏👏👏

[@TheAbennett72]

I really enjoyed this episode!

[@christopherbgriffith]

I love philosophical discussions around photography. I like your observation about us collectively losing perspective on how remarkable making a photograph actually is, because it is so taken for granted in the way technology always does. We're no longer impressed with being able to fly through the air and travel to other continents in less than a day because it's been normalized. We don't pause and consider how many trillions of bits of data have to circumnavigate the globe every single second because the Internet has been a fixture for so long. People can, pardon the crude wording, crap out photos and share them around the world on their phone at a faster rate than has ever been possible. But arguably the photos all mean a lot less because of their ubiquity and the sheer amount of noise all that content generation makes. I think it's a major reason behind the resurgence in film photography and the desire of people to print books and other physical representations of photos. We want to feel like photography *matters* again and has substance.

[@KarinMajoka]

Thanks for your comment and for sharing your thoughts! It's really interesting to read your thoughts on this take, I also think we often take technology for granted and by that sometimes loose the specialness and significance of it. Photography is the base for pretty much all visual media that are connected to it like movie, TV, VR, etc. So appreciating the roots and getting a grip on how this rippled fundamental changes on our world are really important in my opinion.

[@thomaschamberlin2485]

Very timely. I just ordered On Photography by Susan Sontag so I can re-read it. As I recall it is a book along these philosophical lines. Of course Susan was the partner of Annie Liebovitz. Some of the book was a bit unkind to photographers, as in the idea that we take images, as in steal them. Maybe she was jealous of photography.

[@die_schlechtere_Milch]

concerning the point that you made about the white chair, I would like to share some thoughts from the mathematician Gottlob Frege. He argued against various forms of what he and others at his time were calling "psychologism", which were fashionable theories back in the day that claimed that the study of logic should be undertaken as a part of the study of human psychology. Frege had many issues with that but one in particular was his thought that sentences express propositions or "thoughts", as he called them ("Gedanke"), which are non-private, non-mental entities (different sentences can express the same thought: "Die Katze sitzt auf der Matratze" and "The cat sits on the mat" etc.) and that these entities are the primary bearers of truth and falsehood, wheras the sentences expressing them are only true or false derivatively by expressing true of false thoughts. What ever your impression of whiteness is, will be necesarily different from mine impression of that same whiteness, at least numerically different, because the impression which you are having necessarily belongs to you, just as my impression necessarily belongs to me (although Frege speculated about a shared qualitative likeness concerning these numerically different entities). Frege called these impressions "Vorstellungen". If communication through language is possible, it will be necessary that we do not communicate through something that is so private that only one of the partners of communications could have access to it (some sort of sematical externalism), so for this and many other reasons, Frege thought that Gedanken cannot consist of Vorstellungen. If facts are true propositions and if propositions never change their truth value (It is either true or false that on Sunday the 4th of August 2024 A.D. Donald Trump will eat at least one beef steak. And if it is true, then that thought never was false and it will also never be false. The same goes vice versa) and your impressions are ontologically dependent on you, then there can be facts about your impressions, but your impressions cannot be facts. Impressions and facts belong to two different ontological categories. At the end, what he is saying is, that although our perceptions of reality might be subjective and in some sense private, reality itself need not be - although there are of course parts of reality which are, as for example the private regions of our minds do also form part of the map of the world. Truth cannot consist in private impressions, because truth is a property of propositions and propositions are, unlike sense impressions, non-mental entities. I think that it is a bit too quick to conclude that reality is subjective, only because you cannot know how I experience a particular shade of colour. Don't subscribe to relativism so easily.

[@acmdv]

Photography portrays "A" reality, I say this as our own individual "Human" realities make up many realities all of which co-exist this also includes those of all living things.

[@KarinMajoka]

Wonderful string of thoughts, I agree on your perspective, very well put!

[@marcelinedewitt1257]

Achja wir lieben doch alle Walter Benjamin :D schönes Video!

[@garypentecost833]

So many VW T3 😃

[@dr.seltsam1975]

Wie immer ein tolles Video zum Thema Fotografie allerdings anders als die anderen, wo immer auf Kameraspecs rumgeritten wird ! Sehr schöne, philosophische Ansichten hast Du, die ich teile Unterschiedliche Brennweiten, Verschlusszeiten etc. interpretieren die Realität auf andere Art und Weise. Sehr schön ausgedrückt. I like ! Und ja, Fotografie ist eine Sprache, genauso wie es Musik, Malerei oder Tanz ist. Wo ist eigentlich diese Location ? Das ist ja echt ein "Abenteuerspielplatz" für Street oder Stilleben ! Das Bild @ 08:40 ist der Hammer !

[@KarinMajoka]

Vielen Dank für den Kommentar, freut mich sehr, dass du etwas mit dem Video anfangen konntest. :) Für mich ist es fast egal welche "Sprache" ich mache, Hauptsache ich habe eine Art mich ausdrücken zu können. Die Location ist in Münster auf der B-Seite der Hafens und Ecke Hawerkamp. Mit Street ist da leider nicht viel zu holen aver Stillleben und urbane Fragmente findet man dort echt zu genüge. ☺️

[@Uwe_Ludolf]

Wasn't this video called different before? Saw you uploaded something when I was about to cook. Now dinner is done, I wanted to watch the newest upload while scanning a few rolls film.

[@KarinMajoka]

Yes, I experiment with different titles from time to time and rename the video :)

[@donjagoe]

Great stuff…

[@Uwe_Ludolf]

The philosophy of "talk less, shoot more" -sorry I'm not much of a philosopher. I do what I do - I prefer doing that more than analysing why I do like that. The same with pictures of others, I don't care about your message or whatever, I do like a picture, or I don't. Sorry if I sound harsh. I watched it till the end tho, saw some nice pictures and that place like cool. In the last part I saw the sign of a night club. The name of the gimble sounds like the Dutch "wiebel" - to wobble 😅

[@KarinMajoka]

Honestly, I love this approach. Simple and to the point. Sometimes it's the best to not overthink but just do! I like both sides, simply shooting without too much thinking when it comes to my own photography on an individual level. But I also love to philosophise about things and let my mind wander into all the nooks and crannies of my brain when it comes to topic on a more global, less individual level.

[@samos-de]

"A photo is merely a flat image, a visual lapse that abuses our imagination and fools our perception." Guy Meyer

[@KarinMajoka]

What a wise quote!

[@izustun9851]

Great content, therotically you are right. But I'm gonna be honest, in the real life more talks about the philosophy of the photography ended up with less quality of the pictures or stories. I don't think each photograph is unique in this way. Most of them are poor and has lack of authenticity. Authenticity is something shouldn't be missing in art.

[@KarinMajoka]

Thanks for your comment, I appreciate it! Yeah, I agree these are not my strongest images. But to be honest: This was clear to me from the beginning, because multi-tasking is really hard and usually one of the tasks will always turn out weaker. This is why I introduce the video as a philosophical walk where I also take photos. But talking is clearly the main focus of the video. :)

[@ebreevephoto]

I should of taken my meds first before watching...

[@Pyrahna241]

When it comes to reality, it all depends on what reality you mean. The physical reality, the emotional reality or even political? For example, if you mean physical reality, a photo of a burning building is reality completely regardless of whether you see the flames a little brighter when you stand in front of it or a little darker when you look at the photograph, regardless of whether you perceive the smells , which you cannot perceive when looking at a photo. It is and remains the depicted reality of a burning building. This fire took place and is therefore a reality that was captured in a photo.