Playing With YouTube

After two years of owning my Cannon A620, I've finally begun using its video, the moving picture option. You can see one of my movies here. It's nothing very profound, just a busy Jerusalem street scene.

In terms of "art," it will never replace stills. Whenever my eyes wander, I find myself "composing" pictures, on what to focus etc. Movies, video--that's something else.

Photos, especially black and white, last forever, decades, a century. In our digital world, most of our pictures and movies are virtual, not real. You can't touch them. Nobody is going to put a cd or memory chip under their pillow or in their wallet.

Many people report that photos they've stored in various internet "services" have disappeared. Periodically, I print some important ones. If I can't hang the picture on the wall, make an album or look at them on Shabbat and Jewish Holidays, when it's forbidden to use electrical gadgets, what's the point? There's no reality in their existence.

Today the sky is pale grey, not photogenic at all. It may be a washout for all of the Succot plans. There's rain "in the air," at least the odor of those early winter, dust-cleaning rains. If there's something worth filming, and I succeed, I'll youtube.