Day 26

Yesterday I reached land’s end, LEA17. That, and, even if I hadn’t, my bones have grown weary of this 64°N latitude. It’s way time to head south. How I dream of slipping into non-frigid equatorial waters. And it is a dream. I am so far from that, that it might as well be another life.

Venturing south from LEA17 down into LEA18 I am struck by how the same, and how different it is. At the sim crossing little changes, Yooma Mayo’s installation at LEA17 segues effortlessly and seamlessly into the waters of ArtGyro at LEA18. I climb a steep rockface and find myself on this bridge with thundering waterfalls at my back.

And different?

Oh yes! A few degrees of warmer water, hahaha more like a few degrees “less frigid,” but anyway it feels like bathwater to me now.

LOCATION: 39.710902N, 31.112001W
NAME: Vila Do Corvo, Corvo, Azores, Portugal

CAMERA: Firestorma V330
FILM: 1080p
LENS: 14°

I’ve been tri-posting these pix on DailyBooth, Flickr, and 500px, but as I wrote yesterday, Flickr is, unexpectedly, feeling the best of the three, so in 2 days when I finish week 4 I’ll stop posting “365days” on DailyBooth & 500px. I love both of those sites a lot and will try to use them for other projects.

Meanwhile, Monerda Skute has joined me on 500px and I have sad news to report, they’ve taken down, or partially hidden / blocked her work. Here’s the message I got from her:
[01:56] Moni: ok so I am NOT wanted on 500px. Look at this response I received from my “support” ticket: “Your photos were hidden from the community and can be viewed in your portfolio (http://monerdaskute.500px.com) . We are a photographic community and usually discourage illustration in the community section. You are welcome to continue to use 500px and upload your illustrations to your portfolio. You can do this by going to 500px.com/upload and deselecting the “Post to: Community” option. 🙂 Thank you for your understanding.

Here’s what I wrote on Moni’s wall:
http://500px.com/MonerdaSkute/wall

What, what? So you have pix but they’re hidden? Uggh. Come on internets! We can do better!! This is like photography now perpetuating the chauvinism that photography itself received a century ago. At the dawn of photography they said it “wasn’t art,” and all these early peeps tried to “prove” that photo was art by doing all these “painterly effects” with it… but photo didn’t really become photo till dudes like Eddy Weston ‘n Andy Adams formed Group f64 and said of all those subservient “painterly effects” and painting hegemony, “FUCK THAT, WE DON’T WANT PHOTOGRAPHY TO BE PAINTING… WE WANT IT TO BE PHOTOGRAPHY!” that photo really became “art.”

So nobody complained when I switched from a Nikon F5 to a Nikon D300, that was still “real”… so now if I switch to a Firestorma V330, why is that any different? I’m still selecting lenses, composing scenes, controlling light and focus. What’s not photography about THAT???

We’re so smart in the 21st century and it has the desire to be such an empowered and enlightened time, but as long as those who shed their own shackles only moments ago are non-the-less eager to place them on someone else or on something new, then we will have achieved nothing, save for a minor variation in how we entertain ourselves.

Audio track by vo1k1 featuring voice by Snowflake:
http://ccmixter.org/files/vo1k1/35716