Now that I’ve finally got all of the pictures up from Paris and Spain, I feel I’ve come to somewhat of a crossroads in photography. The basic problem is that I take too many pictures to put up, and I can’t continue being so haphazard about posting them. For one thing, I simply don’t have the time to devote to it.

So raise your standards! You say. Well, duh. But which standards? Some of my shots are technically proficient but lack emotion, and vice-versa, all to varying degrees. Many shots I love are ignored by others, while people rave and gush over shots I don’t particularly care for.

I’ve also become a bit of a pack rat with pictures and struggle to be more objective in judging my own shots. It’s frighteningly easy to judge and criticize other people’s work, but it’s just as difficult to really describe just what it is that we like or dislike about works in such a subjective, emotional medium. Just look at the online critique groups, where people seem to think that a keyboard makes them an expert. Anyone can rub their chin in a knowing fashion and say, “It just doesn’t do it for me,” or “I don’t like the tilt/angle/composition/bicycle/figure.” Which of course is utterly useless. But we always see more in our own photos; we remember how we felt when we took it; we see in our mind’s eye what we were going for. And of course we want to believe that our vision is somehow more special than that of other people, simply because it’s ours.

Photography encompasses so much that finding advice on this particular subject isn’t as easy as you might think. A lot of the advice seems to be about choosing the best shot out of 67 exposures of the same thing, but I don’t use the “shotgun” method of some photographers who take dozens of the same shot in the hope that one will be good; I choose my shots, maybe taking two or three at the same scene from different angles. At the risk of sounding like a snob (which has never stopped me before), I don’t particularly relate to stock photographers, wedding photographers, concert photographers, people who take photos to sell to businesses and corporations, or even photojournalists, though the latter group comes closer than any other to my ideal. I used to think street was Da Shit, but the vast majority of “street photography” I’ve come across is boring, repetitive tripe, the result of retired dentists or bored executives hearing about Henri Cartier-bresson, blowing what to anyone else would be a small fortune on a Leica M8, and then standing on a street corner taking shots of every single person that passes by, and then posting it all on Flickr or Smugmug, hoping to get famous.

As with other pursuits, once you’re famous, you can almost do no wrong. Mediocre shots by a famous photographer somehow have more “meaning” than the same shot by an unknown. Which makes me glad that I’m not famous; otherwise I’d never get any honest input and I would never improve. Perhaps that is why Gary Winogrand shot so many thousands of photos in his later years; people had convinced him that he could not take a bad shot. Cartier-bresson gave up photographer later on, pursuing painting instead, and declining most interviews and photographs of himself throughout his career. I’ve come across so many glowing reviews of photographers online and in bookstores, only to find that their work left me cold, that I’ve begun to wonder just what the hell I’m aiming at. These people got books published? Entire threads devoted to praise? Has the world completely surrendered to the mediocre, exclamation-point-ridden saccharine gloss that is the current state of Flickr’s once-great Explore?

I suppose that it’s really up to me to determine just what it is that I’m going for, what it is that I like in my own photography, beyond such vague concepts as “emotion” and “composition.” Rule of thirds, balance, vanishing points…yeah, I know, I learned how to follow and break those rules, but to me, they’re like the four tones of Mandarin Chinese; more of a rough guide to pronunciation than hard and fast rules. As my friend Brian Q. Webb, one of the best street photographers in Taiwan today, says: “Photography is jazz for the eye.” Emotion expressed via technique, spaces between notes. Perhaps if I am just a little more discriminating, a little harder on myself and my works, I’ll be able to navigate my way through all of my own duds and find just where the path lies.

I had to catch a bullet train down to Chiayi on Saturday afternoon for a gig with the Muddy Basin Ramblers that night. I was the first person on the platform at Taipei Main Station, even though the train was leaving in 15 minutes, leading me to wonder if I’d have to run through a wall or something to reach the real platform, but soon enough other passengers began to appear, the other Ramblers among them. Chenble, who was along for the ride, got sandwiches for the trip, which was quick and smooth as always. With the exception of Taipei, the stations are all nice, modern, gleaning examples of what I love about airports, though they are just glorified train stations. They’re simply swank where no swankiness was expected, which in my opinion is the best kind of swank.

Some people from the music festival were waiting for us at Chiayi Station, and we crammed all our stuff into a new VW van (It’s amazing that VWs still smell the same; every Volkswagen I’ve encountered since the 1970’s has had that same distinctive smell). We drove out to the coastal village of Budai, followed closely by dark clouds though the sun was still shining, and dropped our stuff off at the wharf where we were going to be playing later. After the careful consumption of some very fresh sushi, it was time to explore the surroundings, which consisted mainly of a fish market and a 7-Eleven.

Thumper and I happened upon a go-kart track and decided to give it a go. An employee dragged out what looked like a prototype for a miniature version of Mad Max for Thumper’s larger frame, while I managed to fit in one of the regular cars, and we were off. For a while we traded places, but every time Thumper pulled ahead of me I was choking on the cloud of smoke and bits of rubber his car was emitting, so I gave up all pretenses of sportsmanlike behavior and stayed ahead of him for the rest of the 10 minutes. I found that I really didn’t have to touch the brake pedal, which was wrapped about my ankle due to bad planning; all I had to do to slow down was turn the wheel enough that the front wheels began sliding.

Lightning was flashing on the horizon as the time for our show approached. The organizer, a woman whose hairstyle suggested she had already encountered some form of electrical discharge, said that we’d be playing until 8:45, though I’d been promised that we’d be done at 8:30, because I had to scram by then to make my gig with Heineken in Kaohsiung later that night.

The show itself went pretty well, considering our lack of practice in recent weeks. At a couple of points some official would jump on stage in between numbers to make a speech or hold a raffle. I began to think that it was more of a raffle featuring music than a real concert. Ordinarily I wouldn’t have minded this, but time was short and I had to go. As I resisted the thought of tackling said official and thus ending their speech, David asked me if I wanted to leave early, but I said I’d stick around until we were done.

After the show, I felt a little guilty about jumping off the stage straight into the waiting car without a word to anyone else, but I had a train to catch. Luckily the driver was a local who knew the back roads well enough to get me to the station in 15 minutes instead of the 40 minutes we’d been told the trip would take, and we caught the 9:30 to Kaohsiung with enough time to spare to grab some dinner at a Mos Burger.

The Heineken gig was at Kaohsiung’s Pig & Whistle, near the harbor. I was led upstairs by Small Eyes, an intern for the group, to find the band lazing around the green room, already nicely sauced for the show if the amount of empty glasses and pitches of various liquors on the table was anything to go by. I’d changed into my green outfit on the train, so I was good to go.

Or so I thought. It turned out that some changes to the program had been made, so I got a new setlist from Small Eye. When I got on stage for my first trumpet song, I found that my mic wasn’t working. I tapped it: nothing. I tapped it again, and it fell to the floor. I picked it up and tried to reattach it, and the clip fell in two pieces. All on stage, during the piece, as Ah-ji and Ah-zheng laughed behind me. Since my part was coming up and I had no amplification over the other electric guitars, drums and keyboard in a loud bar, I forgot about the mic and just blasted it as loud as I could, marching-band stadium style. It seemed to work, but damn, it’s been a while since I’ve had to do that.

Later in the set, Noname launched into Zhang Zhenyue’s “Freedom” much earlier in the show, just after a song I played trumpet for, so I decided to play along, though I usually don’t play on that song. This also seemed to work. It was hard to say as I couldn’t really hear myself.

It was early morning before we finished, as usual. Noname had hired a bus to take us back to Taipei, but it wouldn’t be arriving until 3 a.m., meaning getting back to Taipei around 9 a.m. This prospect didn’t appeal to me very much, and I intended to attend Henry Westheim’s studio opening in Taichung the following evening, so I decided to stay in a hotel in Kaohsiung instead. Chenble had a contact at the King Town or something near the train station, so we got the last room available, a small niche with no windows just above the buffet room.

Brunch the next day was free, but it took forever as Chenble seemed to want to eat the entire thing. By the time we managed to leave the hotel, it was early afternoon and raining outside. A ride on the KRT later we were at one of the stations with waterfalls complementing the surrounding downpour. As we waited for it to stop, I took a few pictures of the place, mostly in black and white. I don’t particularly care for the colors of the Panasonic LX3, and find myself using the black & white function most of the time.

We walked over the Love River and got tickets for a river cruise just as a bus full of tourists pulled up, dozens of people pouring over into the line. Several boats motored over from underneath a nearby bridge, where they had been huddling during the rain. the sun came out in full force until brilliant blue skies, and it was a pleasant enough ride, but far too short; I don’t know why they don’t go further up the river; perhaps things don’t smell as good up there.

We walked along the river a little, but time got away from me, and before I knew it, it was time to go. I’d wanted to attend the studio opening, but by the time we returned to the hotel, gotten all my stuff, gotten back on the KRT to Zuoying, it was nearly 8 p.m. already. I was tired from the gigs and the walking, so I decided to just come straight back to Taipei instead.

I finally got the travel video from my trip to France and Spain over last Chinese new year break up:

It’s the first video I’ve done with the Panasonic LX3, and while it is good with low-light situations and has a wider, faster lens, the colors seem more muted than those of the Canons I’ve used before, the vertical lines are more egregious, and the image stabilization isn’t quite as good, either. That said, it did ok considering, and I enjoyed making this video to give you a taste of what the trip was like, in addition to the endless blogging and pictures (which I still haven’t finished putting up on Flickr.com yet). It’s 46 minutes long, with moderate swearing, but no nudity this time. Heh.