I’m Amazingly Humbled! Not. (Morning Musing 9/17/14)

September 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 8 Comments

OK, this “morning musing” post is a) not really being posted in the “morning” (though I was musing about it then), and b) about as totally unrelated to photography as possible. Hey, its my (humble) blog!

Recently recipients of high honors or acclamations have been responding to these honors by saying, “I’m humbled.”

Probably not.

I just grabbed one definition of the word “humbled” off the web — from the Free Dictionary:

tr.v. hum·bled, hum·bling, hum·bles

To curtail or destroy the pride of; humiliate.
To cause to be meek or modest in spirit.
To give a lower condition or station to; abase. See Synonyms at degrade.

Imagine that the recipient of high honors and acclaim stood in front of those conferring the honor or award and announced:

“Your award humiliates me and destroys my pride. You have reduced me to a lower condition and station, and I am abased. You have degraded me. You make me meek. Your award demotes and dishonors me and devalues me.”

Actually, you don’t have to imagine. That is essentially what it means when a person claims to be “humbled” by an honor!

If you want to have even more fun with this, see some of the synonyms and related words listed in one of the comments following this post. Using them, our recipient might add:

Thank you for demeaning and discrediting me, humiliating me, and bringing me shame. It is wonderful to be taken down and dishonored by a group such as yours. I am embarrassed and grateful that you have castigated and diminished me in this way. I thank you for your ridicule and bad-mouthing disparagement and for presenting me with such a slanderous public affront.

I think that the people misusing the word “humbled” in this context actually mean well. They are trying to express gratitude and to not seem fat-headed or egotistical — and those are good things. However, there are better words to convey what they likely want to say. How about: “I’m grateful. Thank you. You have honored me. I never thought that this would happen. I deeply appreciate this. I want to thank all of the people who have supported me. I hope I can live up to your expectations. This means a lot to me.”

And thus ends my humble rant. ;-)

Morning Musings are somewhat irregular posts in which I write about whatever is on my mind at the moment.

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Shoreline Boulder and Meadow, Subalpine Lake

September 17, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Boulders, grasses, and trees along the shoreline of a subalpine lake, Yosemite National Park

Some aspects of landscape photography remind me, perhaps in a strange way, of spring skiing. In the spring there is still often plenty of snow, but the temperature swings between sub-freezing nights and warm days have some big effects on the snow. In the morning the re-frozen snow can be so hard that it is almost like trying to ski on a tilting ice rink, and you can easily find yourself skittering across the surface out of control. By late afternoon the warm temperatures melt the snow and can turn it into a slippery slush, and it can be like skiing on oatmeal. But at just the right moment, as the surface of the snow begins to soften but the lower layers are still firm, some of the best skiing possible can occur for a short period each day.

When photography in early or late light, I encounter something very similar — though with a bit of creativity it is possible to stretch things just a bit. Let’s take the afternoon, the time of day when I made this photograph of a simple scene near the outlet stream of a subalpine lake. I began my work a couple of hours before sunset, when the light was still clearly “daytime light.” The sun’s angle is higher, the shadows are more start, the light has a blue quality. As the evening approaches, there is a point at which the light seems to mellow and warm, the shadows lengthen and fill with a bit of reflected light… and almost everything begins to look beautiful. But at this point things change very quickly. I might find myself spotting a bit of light on a branch or a rock, and by the time I’m set up it has moved. While this time seems conducive to looking and contemplating, it is actually a time when I often have to work quickly before the “good light” is gone. This little scene, which is nothing all that special in objective term, was such a scene — a brief moment of warm light slanting through shoreline trees and across meadow grasses, and a few moments later the day ended.

Ethics, Ideas, Morning Musings

“Secrets of Photography.” Not. (Morning Musings 9/16/14)

September 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell 9 Comments

Earlier today I saw the notion of “photography secrets” come up in an online discussion. There is, I think, a lot to say about this concept — too much, in fact, for me to fully deal with in this little “morning musings” blog post. But I do want to consider a few aspects of the concept of secrets relative to photography.

The word “secret” can be used in several ways — a bit to my surprise, since I began this morning with more or less a single idea of what the word implies in mind. (A look at a dictionary often sets me straight about such simplistic assumptions!) My original definition was, more or less: important information that is kept from others. Or, as one source states, “Kept hidden from knowledge or view; concealed.”

This implies that the existence of secrets is the result of intention — “people in the know” possess special knowledge and they act to control and conceal that knowledge so that others will not obtain it, thus giving themselves an advantage over others. It is not just that most people don’t know the secret, but that it is “kept hidden” intentionally by those who do. A related description is: Known or shared only by the initiated. This takes the concept just a bit farther — not only is the information “kept” secret, but it is also shared among a special, select group.

In photography, the mystery of secrets takes several forms. Continue reading “Secrets of Photography.” Not. (Morning Musings 9/16/14) →

Photographs: Nature, Photographs: Northern California, Photographs: Sierra Nevada, Photographs: Yosemite

Lake, Ridges, Evening Light

September 16, 2014 G Dan Mitchell Leave a comment

Mountaintop trees stand above a sub-alpine lake, dome, and ridge in evening light, Yosemite National Park

In early September — before the big fire not far from here — I was among a group of photographers who spent a bit more than a week in the Yosemite back-country chasing late summer subjects in the Range of Light. The rough outline of the adventure was that the group packed in to a remote lake with expansive views, stayed there for about five days, then adjourned to a nearby area at a lower elevation for a few more days before heading back out. The “Meadow Fire” between Clouds Rest and Mount Starr King started late in our trip, but this photograph was made a few days earlier when skies were still beautifully clear.

Days on this kind of trip revolve almost completely around photographic opportunities. By staying on one place for a few days we are able to explore our surroundings more extensively and get a better idea of the prospects for photographs and the best times to make them. A typical day begins very early in the morning, when we arise quietly before sunrise and head out in various directions, goals in mind. After a few hours of photography the light becomes a bit less interesting and we reassemble in camp for breakfast. After that we have a few hours of mostly non-photographic time — for lunch, for camp chores, reading, and even a nap. Dinner comes early, with preparations starting around 3:00, and a few hours before sunset we head out once again. On this evening I chose to climb a nearby ridge of granite slabs and glacial erratics where stubborn trees find a living in cracks in the rock overlooking a nearby lake and one of the main ridges of the Yosemite back-country.

G Dan Mitchell Photography

I’m Amazingly Humbled! Not. (Morning Musing 9/17/14)

Shoreline Boulder and Meadow, Subalpine Lake

“Secrets of Photography.” Not. (Morning Musings 9/16/14)

Lake, Ridges, Evening Light

Photographer and visual opportunist. Daily photos since 2005, plus articles, reviews, news, and ideas.