Very interesting stuff, thankyou for mentioning his work.

Ayrton Senna : "I was already on pole, [...] and I just kept going. Suddenly I was nearly two seconds faster than anybody else, including my team mate with the same car. And suddenly I realised that I was no longer driving the car consciously. I was driving it by a kind of instinct, only I was in a different dimension. It was like I was in a tunnel."


Eddie Felson (The Huslter) : It's a great feeling, boy, it's a real great feeling when you're right, and you know you're right. It's like all of a sudden I got oil in my arm. Pool cue's part of me. You know, it's a -- pool cue's got nerves in it. It's a piece of wood -- it's got nerves in it. You feel the roll of those balls.You don't have to look. You just know

Photography wise perhaps swapping eyes now and again is good thing. In pool you can try warming up by playing with your wrong hand in an attempt to switch on the other side of your brain and instigate the FLOW. Or another one I like is to relax a remember the feeling of an ordaniary routine task - e.g walking up to your front door and turning the knob, (importantly try to 'feel' in your mind the texture of door knob and the 'feel' of the strenght required to turn it)

Might be worth a try next time your shooting!

Have to agree about the 55-300, AF can be very annoying, especially if pointing skyward, I picked up the DAL version (no quick shift) and I usually have to go to MF, just to avoid scaring off natures creatures- it is still bargain of century though

Nice article, unbiased is an unusual bonus...

Still need another price drop on the K5, then I'm right there no probs!

Read all the reviews, fact is, IMHO it just looks cooler doesn't it?

What a interesting thread!

The eye is only the key to the ignition - creatively what we are talking about here is the switching the artistic side of your brain on, and dulling the rational side concerned with language etc

Pool/Snooker players call it 'the zone' or 'dead stroke'. Painters recognise it as a zen state, where they may have been painting for an hour having not uttered a word with little or no awareness of time.

For some this state is easy to achieve for others seemingly impossible, perhaps just depends on how your brain is wired and your experiences/training.

As an artist (and pool player!) - this zen state is something to be cultivated, and happens to be when I feel truly at one with myself and content. (I am not a Buddhist!)

It's why I love talking photos, walking in a silent search, hunting a stillness in time

I would argue that in photography which eye (or both) you use in the viewfinder is a not that relevant, at least not until the final milliseconds of judgement before you hit the shutter. You will have decided before hand what you are looking at and what you trying to capture, the framing being the final stage to the process - or not even if you like to go home and PP.
We walk around with both eyes open discovering scenes, not with the viewfinder stuck to you face.

Know one walks around an art gallery with one eye closed........

Cheers indeed.

BBC weather does not hold good news for me however! Damn!

Order of use
DFA 100mm Macro - (portraits as much as macro)
SMC A 50 1.7 - (freedom of days/nights out with no other lenses)
Sigma 8-16 -
DAL 55-300 - bargain lens of the century
DA 18-50 - excellent stopped down, really struggling as to why spend the money on something like a Tamron 17-50 or the *16-50, think I'll need to be really feeling flush

Certainly agree- I use Elements (+GX10) and the auto IR images are full of strange and annoying noise - I now avoid it and mess with the manual settings or even go with the pusedo-filters to get a cleaner image

+100

Picked this up off the BBC website might be of interest, apparently he spent a lot of time with a camera up there...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/sets/72157625509187786/

Never a fan of PP - but the worm has had to turn this year - to truly put out top notch shots from a GX10 you need to go RAW - that's why the button is so easy to hit I guess...
(Hoping the K5 will help the metering/under exposure for straight JPEGs...)
Always learning, always improving - but good weather is needed for my motivation - extreme snow/extreme sun are fine - its the grey rainy windy days that turn me off