Articles from Ern Jacoby

PEN F rangefinder feeling and downsizing

nobody@ipernity.com (Ern Jacoby) — Sun, 16 Aug 2020 12:38:14 +0000

Ern Jacoby has posted an article:

I chose the form factor of the Olympus Pen F body due to my years of owning and using my father's rangefinder Leica M3 and later my own M6. After 10 digital years with the m43 camera system, I realize how familiar a system becomes. My Pen F is like walking around with different films in older times. I no longer shoot raw, for me the Olympus jpeg output is perfect - when I take time and slow down. Pen F offers all the latest imaging technology, you better read elsewhere. Here I introduce my subjectivity and personal relationship with a cam. The Pen F unique colour wheel is the painters palette and makes fun the moment taking photos without post processing. In situ you choose a Kodachrome, Ektachrome or with the monochrome profile a similar Tri-X film. Play with the yellow or green filter for portraits to keep more details in the skin tones. A red or orange filter would make the face brighter with less detail. Focus into your artistic flow.

It's not a simple camera but a piece of art. The settings of my little jewel are awesome and the shutter sound is sublime for an old boy. My rangefinder dream machine has a beautiful design, is beautifully crafted and well-built, that inspires confidence. Flipping the LCD into camera can save some battery life, gives protection and an oldfashioned impression. As a former Leica enthusiast this camera comes closest to my old love and is my perfect tool for spontaneous artistic snaps. For that purpose it has a big exposure compensation dial. It happens regularely that people ask me if it is an analogue camera. And therefore you have a discretion bonus.

Experience the the art of zen with some small primes, the purest form of photography! I started with the classical 35 and 90 mm, now I mostly grab 15 mm and 56 mm primes m43 system cam (versus 30 mm and 112mm). The versatility of two premium f/1.8 primes is my lightweight walkaround kit. No more over 1kg photo gear in my backpack! I like minimalism, this freedom gives me creativity. It trains to look in wide angle, bokeh and background compression.

Still using a digital camera for many years, is this what a "limited edition anniversary" camera is all about? Even if the Pen-F is born in 2016 it is timeless. Three years after introduction and must have, I purchased a silver one second hand for 700€ and now a black one for 500€, what do I need more? My older stuff goes to my grandchildren for learning by doing. The only but: I dislike the flip screen. The older pop back screen was best for street photography.

How things will develop we will see. The chase for newer gear is neverending, now l focus on my craft. Nothing else has the fun factor of an F ! Don't worry, just keep walking and making photographs, thats all that matters!

Photosophy

nobody@ipernity.com (Ern Jacoby) — Mon, 11 May 2020 17:46:01 +0000

Ern Jacoby has posted an article:

Photosophy by Ern Jacoby PhD

The year 2000 was a turning point for me as a photographer. I hold a little gem of my deceased father in my hands, a Leica M3. And since I develop my skill, the concept "photosophy" expresses best the linking of visual imagery with philosophy: The art of light and the research of wisdom, combined as photo-sophia or photo-sophy.

The speed of light in vacuum is the universal physical constant, postulated as invariance by Einstein in 1905. Light or photons move from an object into the eyes of an observer. And the observer is the observed, but that is a longer story of quantum physicists and sages........ Natural philosophers are fascinated by the energy of light at the beginning of the universe.

Considering photosophy as a mediation between light and wisdom, it is a zen practice. To take a photo like a flash of light in the silence of intuition, fleeting impressions are captured in micro-seconds to condense into an image. Maybe the rising light from another side is a fact. Whatever truth or reality is, there is at this given unique moment no locus neither inside nor outside. Reality lies beyond the photosophers horizon of expectations.

For us photographers this is a well known sensory experience, lost between the past and future, finding ourselves projected here and now within a flash of light. What kind of textures and colours do I see in front of me? How to find a creative angle of vue, best light, sharpness versus bokeh and the right moment. Qualia is the mental subjectivity of what we see, a perception in interaction with the mind and the environment, the raw feeling. „Jpeg“ feeling comes afterwards when appreciating the result.

Photosophy is the research of the hidden beauty within the ordinary!

My personal academic background is philosophy and geology (PhD). With a life-long love and practice of photography, I now fully appreciate the benefits of digital cameras, after my analogical apprenticeship (Contaflex, Minox, Leica M3 and M6) and learning goes on.

carpe diem and keep on shooting

Quantum dialogue - incognito ergo sum!

nobody@ipernity.com (Ern Jacoby) — Thu, 30 Apr 2020 09:48:01 +0000

Ern Jacoby has posted an article:

Quantum dialogue - incognito ergo sum! (c)

by Ern Jacoby PhD

Not being a good speaker generally results in not to be. Thousands and thousands of men and women worldwide communicate. When you ask them, they reply, yes, we had a good talk. This is understandable: to survive in life, and possibly be successful, a rather complete conviction must exist about the own presence as a human being. Since my early years I found discussions a rather confusing business. A lot of it is speculative, absolute, not logic, emotional and absurd. For myself a better and adequate way for this is dialogue. This form of communication is not overwhelmed by the reality of egoism. Dialogue is definitely not comparable with discussion far from that.

Dialogue is like wisdom: A pathless landscape, without any ideology, any leader, without any approach. "If you stick to your opinion, to your knowledge, and I stick to mine, then there can be no real dialogue, because neither of us is free to inquire." (J. Krishnamurti 1895-1986).

For most philosophers there are three different ways of feeling, seeing and interpreting the world. World zero as-it-is-ness: perhaps by contemplation. World one: by sensations, emotions, perceptions, awareness. World two: Biographie experience, interpretations, constructions, ideas, culture, religions und wars. And this happens in world two: Earth is flat, pigs can fly and nuclear power is safe (Greenpeace)! After 2400 years of philosophical reflections, from Socrates to Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994), an ordinary ignorant human being has nothing left to do, like confessing one’s philosophical impotence. The twentieth century philosopher Popper has added to Socrates „I know that I know nothing“ - „and not even that“.

Where to start a fair dialogue? Analyses paralyses, a neverending quotation by J. Krishnamurti. Is there something beyond logos, dialogos, beyond biographical experiences, meanings and ideologies? Perhaps a strange energy? Let's find out by Quantum Dialogging! David Bohm (1917-1992), a distinguished theoretical physicists, remembered for two radical scientific theories: the causal interpretation of quantum physics, and the theory of the implicate order and undivided wholeness. He suggests that there is a "proto-intelligence" in matter and this ground is always one. Master Eckhart (1260 - 1328) called it as-it-is-I-ness. In a logical approach of radical subjectivity the world two is just a construction in our brain. The world you see is yourself: You are the world!

All life is simply a form of energy that we give names to. Where do I come from? You can say atoms but where do atoms come from? But if all comes from nothingness, love, light? No need to focus on an intention. Where does your will, your desire come from? A central figure of the so-called Kyoto School of philosophy, Tanabe Hajime (1885-1962), is generally acknowledged to be one of the most important philosophers of modern Japan. His philosophy of ;Metanoesis; is self-deconstruction and a radical self-transformation. This, in turn, necessitates an emptying of the self. Instead the " Other" is what Tanabe calls absolute nothingness, characterized as negation and transformation in a process of mutual mediation: Through negation to affirmation!

The first thing in Quantum Dialogue is to accept the fullness that is beyond ones ego. In this state the dialogue partners will start to feel relaxed because of the deep rest that accompanies the Dialogging process. In dialogue groups we are not going to decide what to do about anything. There is empty space where we are not obliged to do anything nor to come to any conclusions. Space is empty and free, not to say and to say anything is open and free. And after we finish we are not trying to accumulate anything by knowledge. Following the critique of reason each standpoint is a conceptual construct that reintroduces metaphysical speculation. However, even thought can allow human beings to enter into a mediatory self-consciousness beyond our dualistic point of view.

The attention and perception that emerges in dialogue is not the province of any individual rather it belongs to the group as a whole. It is shared meaning, not individual understanding". By seeing one s desire to search, to know, to exist, observing oneself as an ignorant being, maybe a person encounters a marvellous transformation.

Co-author Ern Jacoby Ph.D. of „Dialogging“ © with Dorothee Jacoby-Urban. Facilitator of "Quantum Dialogue“, participated at the Saanen Krishnamurti Gatherings during the years 1972 -1985, when Krishnamurti was alive.