Originally posted by Mikey Floyd Hi Everyone! I just checked in to see what was on the cards for November... and I discover many are going Mono! Yay to that.
So I will join in the fun. I'm going to put a few extra constraints on myself though in an attempt to rein in the time commitment, also because it is another great chance to push myself in the direction I want to go.
I'll shoot the A 50/2.8 Macro.
I'll take exactly three photo's with it each day.
All 3 will be monochrome.
All three will be 1:1 (square) aspect ratio.
I'll do minimal processing.
I'll post the choice image.
I'll post a little film strip that shows all three images small, perhaps tacked onto the bottom of the choice image.
I'll post my photo's every second day, probably being near to last poster in the thread for my yesterday and near to first in the thread for my today.
I'll be shooting with the Fuji X-pro3. (No alternative there until I can work out how to SIC with film.)
Does that all sound OK? Am I stepping over any guidelines?
Sounds a really great idea!
And hey all… I am still here, still breathing, still shooting.
Just not keeping up the posting. I dived full-on into a new book: Chasing Bushidō, by Richard Amos, and have just been too absorbed by that.
tl;dr the following: some karate training in Japan is foolishly brutal, and I think people probably develop character despite it rather than because of it - as much as I do respect them all for pushing through it.
It’s interesting: I do have respect for what Amos and others like him went through, and for their sticking with it, but I think honestly that he developed himself as a bushi not because of, but rather in spite of the treatment during his training in Japan, and the antics of his seniors (and OMG the politics!).
Interestingly, I learned that that large organisation (JKA, or the Kyoukai) hailed really from the more “lower-class” Universities, which tended to be rather more brutal in their attitudes and methods - like Takushoku, famous for killing its students…, whereas our style/school was founded by karateka who studied at Waseda University, a more upper-class University at which Funakoshi sensei himself taught.
While my teacher’s Japan experience was certainly hard (and he did even use the word brutal) it was not filled with the sort of behaviour that seems to be/have been rife in the JKA.
Again, I’m super fortunate that my mother stumbled me (without knowledge) in to Chidokan.
Anyway, forgive the divergence from photography. I get rather consumed at times…