Music of Photography: Variations on a Theme

Last Updated on August 1, 2016 by Patrick

In string theory, all particles are vibrations on a tiny rubber band; physics is the harmonies on the string; chemistry is the melodies we play on vibrating strings; the universe is a symphony of strings, and the ‘Mind of God’ is cosmic music resonating in 11-dimensional hyperspace.

Michio Kaku.

In my previous articles I followed the trail of true knowledge and false knowledge (if we can even call it knowledge), the latter bringing nothing but confusion, bits and incomplete pieces of truth and lies, most of them. But I thought about a way of continuing to talk about this and how I can raise some questions, some stimuli to continue searching furthermore the arcanes of what lies hidden right in front of our eyes. Again, I turned my attention to music and photography, to the music of photography but expecting nothing, really. I don’t know what to say. I only know what I want to show you.

The true seeker is the one that has imagination above all else. Without this, all experiences count for nothing.

In music there is the notion of variations on a theme by someone, a composer, or of a certain musical work and I’ve thought about this a long while. I wanted to understand it.

In music theory, of course, its definition tells us that it is a musical form repeated in an altered way. Repetition and alteration, in my opinion, tend to be opposite. When you alter something you change it, you deviate its nature entirely or partially, depending on how much you’ve altered. I cannot agree entirely with the musical dictionary definition and I must say that alterations can occur in Nature, actually, all the time. But the artificial alteration we provoke to ourselves and to others, or to Mother Nature, to the planet itself, is a form of inversing its true nature and unbalancing the scale of the universal harmony. This happens through blocking energies, resources, information in a certain area, in a certain part of the organism, both small and big, so to speak, a part which is actually a melody or a song of the Universe, or through abusing their consumption and fastening their processing speed. If this is too scientific or abstract for you, let me know! I will try to explain what I mean with a few examples.

I appeal now to photography to show my examples visually. I think you all know that everything changes in the world, nothing stays the same. In landscape photography, as well as in any other kind of photography, the photographer never exhausts the subject matter and the ways to photograph because of this I said above, that nothing stays the same even for a split second. There are frames which one can shoot all the time. There are many qualities of light bathing the scenery and one can assume that there’s always something to photograph. The possibilities are endless. One just needs time to practice and persevere.

Take a sunrise, or a sunset, for example. The light changes all the time. So, taking multiple shots is the key. One can make many compositions that work, just like Ansel Adams used to say “knowing where to stand”. :)

A variation of compositions brings out something essential: different ways of seeing. And then there is the freedom of seeing, experimenting and creating. But it starts with the vision one has before making the shots. You have the image in your head and then you cristalize it, you make it in the frame you shoot, you post-process, you polish, you finalize it and then you print it and hang it on a wall.

So, there are variations on a theme even in visual arts, such as photography, and some call them studies, others call them modes etc. It doesn’t matter how one calls them. In photographic projects a photographer can use this method of creating different images of the same subject matter, of the same subject scene, so to speak. It can be considered an alteration of the initial plan but not quite. It can mean the same thing only spoken with other words.

There is this expression called “in other words”, since photography is a language, a way of communication. There is nothing wrong, nor right in this, ’cause there are no such things, really. It’s just that we can use visual synonyms through this medium and showcase possibilities. I will detail this in a moment after this:

We can extrapolate it and give other examples. There are many languages in the world, of course, and all of them have many things in common and many other things that differentiate them. If someone would study them in depth one would even discover that they all come from the same source language, or mother language, so to speak. There are different ways of seeing, believing and speaking, not to mention singing. The causes for this could be found in the alienation between people all over the world at all levels of living, with both positive results and negative results. I won’t get into further details, because it doesn’t belong here.

But the cause doesn’t always have to be negative in its nature. There are positive causes for a different way of speaking. Of course, in this case the effects must be positive also. At its origin is the human yearning to improve oneself, at least.

I know we all have music to play in our lives. We all have something to say and this thing is very interesting because we can develop ourselves and work with our inner, core values as human beings, the values of our Soul, even if this sounds somewhat evangelistic. It doesn’t have to be interpreted as a bad thing.

Ever since childhood I knew I had something to say and to make a difference in this world. I knew I had somethings I needed to do and I came back to them, after being away from ’em quite a long time, and now I want to speak my mind and my heart, as I said previously. Now I want to do my thing. ;)

Communication is very important and is one of the keys to all human success. All the conflicts in the world turned to war, poverty, missery, despair, illnesses and death are due to us refusing to communicate with each other, blocking all negociations, all discussion because of fear and ill will, so to speak, that drove us to doing madnesses. The worst case is when parents refuse to communicate, in one way or another, with their children, for this is the beginning of all problems in the world. We witness every day the alienation of children all over the world. They are not given attention, love, affection of any kind and they are going astray because of this. We ignore the values of their childhood and the powers that they have, the potentialities. Not all parents do this, but I think most of them are doing it.

Let us not reduce them to silence or not give them a chance to prove themselves even if they are still children! Let’s not forget that the genius of childhood is the one sustaining the matters of the world.

Every child is different from the other and they all have their roles to play. Of course, every man and woman is different. But children are in their development as human beings and their growth must be healthy, strong and beautiful in every sense.

Unfortunately, not giving them the attention they need is like sowing seeds in your garden and not watering them, or watering them very little. You will not grow any crops and, not to mention, you won’t have anything to be proud of. Above all, this backfires at us and suddenly we see that we reap what we have sown. Treating our children eventually becomes treating ourselves. Do others good, help them grow and that is your work, that is your masterpiece. That originates in how you treat yourself.

Don’t be shy! ;) Dare, try again and strive to do things! You really can and things don’t have to be hard to do. In fact they are simple if you are simple. Don’t complicate yourself, you don’t have to! Things are really simple and easy.

I think it is time for us to be ourselves, who we were when we were children, natural, spontaneous, joyful and big dreamers. Just like Constantin Brâncusi used to say: “When we are children we dream, but when we are adults we create.” So, what kind of world do we want to create for ourselves? A world of plenty or a world of scarcity, especially on an ethical and moral level?

We should be as sure and confident in ourselves as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west! :)