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Marisa Livet | all galleries >> All My Galleries >> Times of the year >> Daily prescriptions to survive summer. > Personal choices and responsibilities
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26-JUN-2008 Marisa

Personal choices and responsibilities

Gland (Switzerland)

Life, I mean our daily simple life, even all what seems to be a banal series of habit, is made of choices.
Even though we don’t realize it necessarily at every time, we keep on passing from choice to choice.
We might hesitate or we might try to make a trick, taking two choices or more at a time (mind it; it never works, so it’s just a useless waste of time!), nevertheless we face continuous crossroads and we have to choose what direction we are taking.
Deciding temporarily to not take any choice is a choice too...
Our choices might be profitable, convenient, suitable, right, wrong, negative, painful...
It’s something we can see only after taking them and it can provoke the vicious mechanism of regrets or remorse.
Since taking choices (and decisions as a consequence) seems to be necessary and inevitable and realizing their effect is something we can do only “a posteriori”, we might come to the conclusion that the importance is not in taking choices (it happens practically automatically, we simply cannot avoid to choose), but in taking the responsibilities for our choices, whatever they have been.
The cat now...the cat in the photo has not moved for all the time I have rambled about; as element of a photo, the second in which he seemed to be hesitant and ready to take his choice is frozen in the picture.
I don’t know what the cat is doing now, even though I might guess more or less rightly that he’s still roaming around my parents’-in-law garden.
When I took this picture of him, yesterday evening a little before sunset, he was hesitating and was taking his choice, either remaining close to that strange human creature who looked at him behind a suspicious black box, which made annoying clicks or to run away to the other side of the path and disappear temporarily under a fence.
He decided to go away, even though he did that slowly, stopping for a while, taking distance, but without being scared or anxious.
I was harmless, but maybe my camera disturbed him, anyway he took his choice.
What he could not know in advance was that I meant to give him savouries and delicious leftover of fresh fish.
If he had remained still for a while...
But he took a choice and now he has to take the responsibilities for that.
No fish this time.

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Canon EOS 350D
1/60s f/5.6 at 70.0mm iso200 hide exif
Full EXIF Info
Date/Time26-Jun-2008 20:20:19
MakeCanon
ModelCanon EOS 350D DIGITAL
Flash UsedNo
Focal Length70 mm
Exposure Time1/60 sec
Aperturef/5.6
ISO Equivalent200
Exposure Bias
White Balance
Metering Modematrix (5)
JPEG Quality
Exposure Programshutter priority (2)
Focus Distance

other sizes: small medium original auto
Ann Cleeves29-Jun-2008 10:54
Wonderful cat portrait...as Howard says...he's so clear. I even get the feeling that his back legs and tail are 3D-like....halfway out of the frame!
What a philosopher you are!....anyway, you can clearly see a decision-making thought process going on in this cat's head.
Guest 27-Jun-2008 11:26
What amazes me about this image is how clear it is. Even at only f5.6, you have managed to have the cat in incredible focus along with the basket. And there is a strong clarity of color. A really nice image, and thought. The only question, in my mind, I have about your thought is the suggestion that the importance of making a choice could be less important than accepting the responsibility for the choice. With man's ability to remember, learn, and understand, I feel that makes the choice-making not that automatic, although, as you said, it is inevitable, but a chance for "good" or "bad" choosing. And man could spend more time, like this cat apparently is doing, in the process of choosing. But, of course, I agree, he must accept responsibility for that choice and the consequences. It saddens me that many people don't see the connection between the choice and the consequence, especially the consequence on others. Sure, the cat lost the fish. But the fish has no idea (or at least I think this is the case) of how you feel, react, to his/her choice. Man can know this. He should pay more attention to that aspect of his choice.
Isabel Cutler27-Jun-2008 11:17
The love the glow of light around its body.
Isabel