Some artistic food for a thoughtful sunny day

I came across this quote today:

"There are painters who turn the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun"

-Pablo Picasso

As an artist, a photographer specifically, I rely heavily on light, and as a human, I am incredibly inspired by the sun; So this quote appeals to me. Not only in it's literal nature, which invokes warm thoughts of a painter and his canvas poised next to an open, ocean-facing window, a easterly Spanish breeze sealing in the pure and powerful authenticity of the moment-- But also in it's symbolic resonance...

Making something extraordinary from nothing. Creating the ultimate warm and luminescent, universal, life-giving star out of a two-dimensional blob of paint. This is where the talent lies in art. This is where the magic is. This is what I LOVE about my job. And ironically, this is why I am not a painter...

I love photography, because in addition to actually documenting moments, I get to share my actual perception of the world with others in a medium, so life-like, that they can't argue its truth. A photograph, in it's truest form {which can be argued is becoming harder and harder to come by with the digital revolution sweeping the art/industry and the advent of programs like Photoshop} is a direct likeness of the subject...

And yet, somehow between the existence of the "subject" in day-to-day reality, and the image projected through the lens, burned into the halides of the negative {or the digital sensor}- there is life. There is something a little bit mysterious and a lot amazing that takes place in that space. There lies the fingerprint of the photographer, the artist, the conduit of the emotion and composition of that one moment... There lies the difference between a master and an amateur; titles that have nothing to do with education, equipment, age, privilege, location, language or gender. There lies the incredible "eye" that you either have or you don't. There lies translation of life to memory...

There lies the difference between a yellow spot, and the sun.