The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.
You write a scene, and it works or it doesn't. It's immediate.
With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.
Now when I see something beautiful or funny or sweet, sometimes I reach for my camera, but other times I think, 'I need to let this moment exist. I don't have to capture everything. I just want to experience it.'
If I went to somewhere busy, I wouldn't last very long. I can't go to a museum - I'll last 10 or 15 minutes in a museum. The problem is that when one person asks for a photograph, then someone sees a flash goes off, then everyone else sort of... it's sort of like a domino effect.
With photography, you've captured a moment time - it's that moment only - and in painting, you play with it; you manipulate how time is presented. It's about fantasy and illusion and the creation of desire.
I'm trying to make perfect moments. And those generate meaning. If you go deep enough in how to make a moment, very quickly you come to how narrative works - to what we are as a species, how we've come up with telling stories in scenes and images.
I think that's the strength of photography - to decide the decisive moment, to click in the moment to come up with a picture that never comes back again.
Whether I'm acting or making it, at the end of the day it's telling the story; action, drama. You want the audience to feel it - the story, the action, the scene, or a particular shot. I just keep working on crafting my art, on how to make action movies.
That's what film can do in a way that TV and other long-form storytelling can't. It gives you this very immersive moment.
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