Zen connections: the power of photographic story-telling

Have you ever won­dered what hap­pens when you mix a lit­tle bit of ancient wis­dom with mod­ern legal tech­nol­ogy? You get a book that is not a book; a story told in pic­tures; an inter­ac­tive com­mu­nity where you are invited to share a bit of yourself.

Wel­come to my lat­est cre­ation: Zen and the art of pho­to­graphic story-telling, a story by The crazy Colom­bian. In this book I tell my story in the tra­di­tion of other Zen mas­ters. In the process, I exper­i­mented with some emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies such as Cre­ative Com­mons licenses. I invite you to read the book online. Don’t have time now? Then down­load it and read it off-line. Don’t like read­ing on the com­puter? That’s fine too: Just order the book (avail­able in soft– or hard-cover), and take it with you for your next holiday.

If you like the book, I encour­age you to send it to peo­ple that you love. Did you feel that I touched a part of your heart while read­ing it? Then go to the last page of the online book, and share your story with the rest of us.

If you want to know why I am doing this, keep read­ing. In the remain­der of this arti­cle I will explain why I chose to tell the story in the style of Zen; and how this book would not have been pos­si­ble with­out the assis­tance of other gen­er­ous artists who released their works using Cre­ative Com­mons licenses.

Pre­sent­ing your story with a bit of Zen

Less is More.

Bal­ance rules.

Ele­gance is a won­der­ful master.

Design is king.

Some of these Zen prin­ci­ples inspired me to do things dif­fer­ently. I have spent most of my work­ing life in the cor­po­rate world. I have refined my story-telling skills using Pow­er­point decks. And it was only recently that I became aware that when you take many of my cor­po­rate sto­ries, they share some unfor­tu­nate characteristics:

1. They have an exces­sive amount of text
2. They will attack your senses with too much detail and leave you confused
3. They turn the pre­sen­ter (usu­ally me) into a well-dressed par­rot whose only jobs is to read from the slides

Recently, I learned it doesn’t have to be that way. Accord­ing to best-selling author Garr Renolds there is a lot we can learn from Zen mas­ters. In Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen Garr shows by exam­ple how ele­gance, balance,and Zen sim­plic­ity can dra­mat­i­cally improve any story; espe­cially those that are to be told in front of an audience.

It was after read­ing Garr’s book that I started exper­i­ment­ing with his ideas; in this book, I made full use of his many sug­ges­tions. The final story is much more inter­est­ing because of him.

Pho­tog­ra­phy in the new world order

How do pho­tog­ra­phers make a liv­ing? By restrict­ing access to their cre­ations; retain­ing all rights to copy and dis­trib­ute their works; and using scarcity to increase demand for their art. Or at least that is how it used to hap­pen. In the New inter­con­nected world of the Inter­net, new busi­ness mod­els have emerged. Some artists will release their images through stock pho­tog­ra­phy web sites, and get roy­al­ties every time a cus­tomer pur­chases their work. Oth­ers are join­ing closed com­mu­ni­ties where their work is released and the users of those com­mu­ni­ties pay them via a vot­ing system.

But the most adven­tur­ous ones are releas­ing their work using Cre­ative Com­mons (CC) licenses. The most restric­tive of these licenses allows view­ers to ‘share’ the artis­tic cre­ation with friends for free, as long as they (a) Attribute the cre­ation to its orig­i­nal author, (b) Keep the cre­ation unadul­ter­ated, and © Derive no com­mer­cial gains while shar­ing it. What this means is that if I see one of these pho­tographs in flickr and get inspired by it, I can down­load and for­ward a copy of it to my friends (as long as I tell them who took the photo) and still be act­ing within the realms of copy­right law.

In the new world of CC licenses, there are some authors, musi­cians and pho­tog­ra­phers that are much more gen­er­ous with their cre­ations. In using the least restric­tive ver­sion of the license, these artists will allow you to share and dis­trib­ute their works under one con­di­tion only: that you give attri­bu­tion to the orig­i­nal artist. That’s all. Do you pre­fer to change the sat­u­ra­tion of the photo and make it all have a blue tinge? Go ahead. You have a great sou­venir busi­ness and want to frame and sell the photo at tourist kiosks? As long as you pro­vide attri­bu­tion to the orig­i­nal pho­tog­ra­pher, you are allowed to do so.

Why would an artist do this? In some cases, it is because they are ama­teur lib­er­tar­ian artists. In oth­ers, because they are try­ing to show­case some of their best work and become bet­ter known. And in a few instances, because they have some­thing that they believe needs to be shared.

My book was not only com­posed using pho­tographs released under the most gen­er­ous CC license; the book itself is released using this very same license type.

Story-telling in the 21st century

Mix these 2 con­cepts, and you end up with my book. Orig­i­nally writ­ten in Eng­lish, I have also now trans­lated it into Span­ish. Go ahead; visit zenphoto.crazycolombian.com (Eng­lish) or fotozen.crazycolombian.com (Span­ish) and see whether you like it.

Tagged as: Book, eBook, Experiment, Photography, webBook, Zen