On Finding Stories from Streets and Understanding Self.

Hold it [camera] well; always make sure that the strap is well place in your arm or neck; will this index finger get tired from clicking and pressing that shutter button?—I guess it will not.

From old 14-16 megapixel digicams, to Nokia C3’s film-ish cam, and at the moment a semi-pro Nikon D5200 and Nikon Coolpix Aw110, most of the good memories of the last 5 years were well captured and preserved; some of it was digitally saved and some are now on a good family album ready to be revisited again and again.

I just want to tell some small playrush of my mind recently as I was trying to look back on my old photo archives from 2013 and 2014. I asked myself, besides these huge archive, what I've learned from the past 5 years?........Here it is..

1. There’s a good magic about self-reflection and seeing the essentials even on the smallest things you are doing. The last 5 years were pretty long to see yourself grow, but stupidly fast that sometimes it feels like you can’t catch up on every single thing you need to do—to which then will fall on asking yourself of ‘when will I get a fine rest?’. That’s what I see on streets, things are fast, unpredictable, everyone is moving, you might not know what will happen next, so you keep yourself prepared, halfly pressed on that shutter button while your eye is roaming around and trying to check on interesting things and snippets of unscripted stories.

Those preparations will payoff, the results will be okay and good; but it will not end there because even the prepared ones can have bad results too. But remember, finding the beauty from those bad results can be another step on your growth and lessons learned. It's not a learning that comes from regrets, but the learning on seeing beyond—the uniqueness of flaws. Well, ugliness is an instilled belief crap after all.

2. When you appreciate it first and keep it personal—to yourself only, it makes you more special. Sitting on a brink category of ages where publicity, reliant on others’ appreciation before valuing self, and you-feel-pressured-to-let-others-know-what-you-are-eating, sometimes it’s hard to make things just on a personal/self level. I feel it too, because there are times that I am the one doing it. Maybe it’s a mix of revolutionary, tragedy, but has some beauty too.

Sometimes walking around the busy streets gives you this odd realization: that even though it is populated by human, everyone (or some) of them doesn’t really want you to know their stories. You are all passersby, going from point A to B, and knowing other passersby story/ies might not be your goal at the moment. But it doesn’t mean you can’t sit for a while, have a good pause on your life that seems like a rush, and observe everything, not searching for something; maybe have that thought of sonder—a realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own; populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and even craziness. Being drowned on those wonderings, on the unheard and untold stories, on the fictional thoughts you create because that might be the real story. Do it as if you are all invisible and they are still not minding that you are observing them or if you are existing; until you watch the subject or story fade.

In my case, it felt addictive. Just looking, observing, and not doing anything. Appreciating it, until I get satisfied. Why I feel special?—because I am the only one fascinated for seeing that unique stories in front of me. Bring out my camera, point it to the story without looking on the viewfinder, and capture the story. What gives it more value is when I look at it later that day, diving into it more, and keeping it as my personal collections. 

You know the feeling when someone said a secret to you, and added a complimentary threat, saying ‘you are the only one who knows it’, and all of a sudden you feel valuable; but in this situation I’m sharing a secret to myself, and I feel valuable because I have a lot of secrets—lot of drowned wonderings, captured stories that exists or maybe not.

3. You know you are inlove to it when you develop love and hate situations towards it but still you’ll not quit and give it up—this works for her too (lol, got none). Some find it through painting, some are on cooking, reading, some are listening/playing music, and more. All of us have it, we do it because it gives us certain feelings, it gives us a sense of understanding, and challenges us to be better.

I can't expand it better than quoting Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s Little Prince kind words:

“..It is very simple: it is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

I think painters, fotographers, film-makers, visual storytellers, or even just plain observers didn’t violate on keeping the stories secret to themselves—it's their choice. They just use their eyes as one of the mediums, but the heart and the mind still does the work—the continuous search for the essentials, the purpose, the reasons—and transferring it into their own way of art to let others know what the story is.