April, 2010

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Steps

Saturday, April 24th, 2010

After a lot of research, reading all the reviews, forums and blogs on the Internet I decided which macro lens would be my first one.

In the city I am currently based in there was absolutely no chance of trying that particular lens let alone buying it so after some more research it was arranged that the lens will be sent to one photo shop here and I could try it out and hopefully buy it.

A few days leading towards trying the lens it was difficult to focus on anything else since photography IS my biggest passion. I kept imagining the scenes I would capture, perfect dof, lovely bokeh…

The Day finally arrived. I’ve got all dressed up, thoroughly excited to meet my potential new companion. Everything but the road towards that shop was blurred.

And there it was! Perfect size, so light… First gut feeling when seeing it face to face was weird but I thought that was because it is the first non Nikon lens that is to be mounted on my Joy.

I left Mojmir and the lens that was with me that day in custody of the shop and went out wandering.

The first thing I didn’t like even though I was prepared for that were loud extensions of the lens while focusing but I thought I could easily live with that if everything else was up to my expectations yet…

It wasn’t.

It just wasn’t right without much reasoning and explanations, it simply wasn’t right for me. I gave it some more time, explored the quality of the capture, played with it but to no avail – we weren’t meant to be together.

The quality of the picture was good, in many situations better (yummi dof and bokeh in close-ups, of course) than what the other two non macro lenses I already had could provide me with, but not as much better as I expected them to be and not better enough to justify the cost and extra lens in my bag.

So,  this experience served as a good reminder for the future if at any point I was to feel hooked up on opinions and experiences of others and my mind gets blurred due to the current position of the Moon or unsatisfying weather conditions or just a simple, natural yearning for growth and making a step forward:

It’s not worth purchasing unless that step is of an effect: „Wow! How could I have ever lived without this lens?!“

So at that moment I was to stick with what I already had and make new steps in breaking the limits of my “old” lenses which was quite an amusing  (read: challenging ) and a creative process of  passing through the imaginary limits of imagination.

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Monday, April 19th, 2010

Sometimes I feel really grateful for the internet.

In some parts of one documentary I’m translating at the moment there are bits in which the audio isn’t good and I couldn’t figure out what one Egyptologist was saying. The dialogue list I was given with the video didn’t make sense so I googled the Egyptologist’s name (luckily, the spelling of the name was correct in the script!), found her e-mail and asked for help. She replied within a couple of hours.

Now, imagine having the same challenge decades ago.

Would I have to make a long distance call (she lives in Cairo!) and explain what it’s about, which parts exactly are the problem etc…? Apart from the time and the cost, what if she’s not in the office/at home/by the phone for days? Today, many people check e-mails daily wherever they are.

How did translators manage to deal with similar situations in times before the internet?

Maybe the dialogue lists and scripts were more helpful (read: accurate)? Maybe they had more time to do the job and used to send letters across the globe and wait for the reply?

Maybe they used carrier pigeons?

Telepathy?

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The Choice To Feel

Saturday, April 17th, 2010

If I was to choose the most precious, the most useful and the most liberating lessons I had in life so far it would be the ones about the possibility of choice: especially in relation to feelings about certain matters.

Until then I thought feelings were sort of a given, sort of a “I was born this way!”

How amazing it was to find out we create feelings via many patterns and filters we adopted or/and (again) created ourselves. We actually learn to feel certain emotions towards certain matters and we develop „appropriate“  strategy for reacting on various triggers.

Recently I had a very good opportunity to fall into the familiar pattern of sadness combined with anger that would end up in a dungeon of depression because it looked like an injustice has been done to me but I used all my resources to get another angle on this matter and to let go of nourishing the idea of a victim. I gave those people my view on the entire matter, did what I could do and simply walked towards other happenings in life. I couldn’t change them and their perspective yet I could and did change mine, I chose to view it as an episode which taught me what I might change next time in similar situations to prevent getting into such challenges and instead of feeling hurt I felt enriched by an opportunity to learn, instead of feeling resentful I actually ended up feeling grateful and right now while writing this I smile, even laugh: in the past a situation like this would seem like end of the world and now it is just a part of a playful stage we are all sharing.

As some wise men said: whatever is learned can be unlearned, so we also have a choice to choose different strategies that will improve the quality of our lives and to open ourselves to exploring the world of possibilities. We have a choice to change our attitude of mind which defines our feelings. We have a choice, isn’t that wonderful?

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