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The Practice of Contemplative Photography

Aaron Siskind: “We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there, [what] we have been conditioned to expect… But, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs.”

 

I showed my twelve-year-old sister my Starbucks iced coffee yesterday and asked her what she saw.

“It’s a cup. I see a big green logo and… I don’t know. It’s a cup!”

“What else do you see?”

She lets out a long, dramatic: “well….” “It’s got a green straw… and there’s some dark brown fluid at the bottom.”

“Good! But how about the cool symmetrical shadows that the overhead lights are casting? Or the contrast of the bright green logo against the red Asian supermarket bag behind it?”

She shook her head quickly, but then turned it slightly to the side with an amused look on her face—as if she found something that she previously missed.

Is it really important to have noticed the symmetrical shadows or the textures on the lid or the position of the fluid in relation to the cup as a whole?  Well, it’s hard to say.  I’m sure the Navy SEALs hunting Osama bin Laden weren’t meditating on texture and shadow while throwing grenades; but for those of us interested in perceiving more deeply, seeing more completely is significant.  How is it that some great photographers can walk our same streets and perceive images we miss? Andy Karr and Michael Wood’s book on contemplative photography offers some insight.

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Karr spoke a couple weeks ago at a local bookstore in Charlottesville.  I heard about his book stop through the CPI (http://www.meetup.com/thecpi) and the event details were intriguing: the talk was free; the book received a great review from Jay Maisel (one of my favorite natural light photographers); and Karr draws enormous insight from Henri Cartier-Bresson (another idolized photographer).  I had to go.

Andy’s a devout Zen Buddhist and speaks with a soft, tempered eloquence.  His writing is the same way—gentle, warm, inviting.  He spoke about the conventional photographer (“big game hunters” he calls them) always seeking beautiful moments.  But contemplative photography is different, a practice devoted to simply to the act of seeing, appreciating the visual richness of our world.  The book’s images lack a conventional understanding of “subject.” The “subjects” are color, light, form, shape, geometry, shadow, texture, spacing, and so on.  Simply put, to take pictures contemplatively is to meditate with your visual senses.

According to Karr, the difficulty with accessing this way of seeing is due to our longstanding cognitive biases.  We have a tendency to identify an objection conceptually upon seeing it, and our subsequent perceptions string from that identity.  When my sister saw the coffee cup, her mind immediately identified it as a Starbucks cup and stopped there.  Step one of contemplative photography is letting go of such narrative forms of thinking.  Step two is holding on to those instances where we suddenly break away from narrative thinking (a flash of perception as Karr calls it).

The rest of the book is devoted to practicing letting go, seeing more clearly.  There are exercises to help guide the reader to identifying flashes of perception and holding on to them.  The book’s littered with beautiful prints, images that Karr believes to exemplify contemplative approaches to photography.  It’s worth the money, for sure.  If you’re looking for a book for digital photography geekdom, replete with gear talk and exposure suggestions, look elsewhere.  Seeing is the focus of this book, not technical craft.

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The core principles of the book aren’t revolutionary.  But it’s refreshing and thought-provoking to see photographs so unlike my own, a foreign philosophical approach to picture-making.  Yet, the book has helped me pay more attention and bridge the two forms of thinking/seeing.  Cartier-Bresson once said, “people simply don’t look.  They identify but they don’t look.”  I’m guilty of not looking, too.  But learning to look is a hard, difficult process.  It’s like being told that suddenly, you should drive your car in reverse all the time.  Your world will obviously look very different if you do.

I just spent the past week in Minneapolis (a foreign city) visiting friends.  Below are some of my contemplative pieces.  Thanks for reading.

Warmest Regards,

Kevin

Bus Station. Minneapolis, Minnesota

Mississippi River

Downtown Minneapolis Coffee Shop

Rustica Pastry Shop. Minneapolis, Minnesota

 

 

Jun 24, 2011 | Categories:Ideas, My Photos, Philosophy, Reviews | Tags: , , , , | Leave A Comment »

Why

“Why?” is a question I should have asked myself a long time ago.

Why do I take pictures, pick up my camera? Why bother looking through a viewfinder, editing pictures, showing the world a bunch of witless junk? Why even study the images of others?

For starters, I’ve finally realized that the answer isn’t money. I didn’t buy my camera thinking I’d use this to make a living. As a matter of fact, business always takes the fun out for me. I don’t like thinking about marketing or promotions, spamming others to win their interest, becoming a service. Scratch that one out. Photography is emphatically personal. That’s a good start.

Is it because the Human Condition fascinates me? People never cease to surprise me? Surely. Photography is people-watching through a viewfinder (perhaps a rangefinder someday!). And you get the go back to a scene whenever you want, revisit their expressions—oftentimes full of surprises. Okay, that’s on the list.

Is it because beautiful girls are beautiful and should be in my pictures? No, I got bored of that pretty quickly. Girls are still beautiful, but taking pictures of someone’s exterior beauty—or their colorful clothes for that matter—gets old, fast. To each his own.

Is it to become a wedding photographer? No.

Sometimes, I look back at what I’ve made so far with suffocating disappointment. Most of my images are meaningless, meaningless beyond some infantile notion that a few pictures look “cool.” Some pictures are “pretty” or “nice.” No image of mine has you feeling beyond such simple terms. No image of mine makes the mind drift with excitement, stirs the soul, presents a new idea. No image of mine tells a story, really.

Sometimes I really, really hate my photography (like right now).

Getting warmer.

I think that without understanding a basic sense of why, it’s hard to find one’s vision, to grasp purpose. And without purpose, photography does become meaningless. Images become snapshots—careless, witless, without structure or context. After much self-probing, I’ve come to realize that I picked up the camera because of a neglected, child-like adoration of art and graphic design, a profound liking to the poetic tension that is a photograph’s unsettling ambiguity and infallible certainty. And complimenting that love for art is a deep paranoia concerning the fleeting nature of time, as if I’m always running out, running late. Life is an endless torrent. I’m always forgetting things, dropping things, missing things. I find it hard to understand anything unless I revisit it. Slowly, I’ve come to realize that images help me see the world better in all past, present, and future. Pictures let me digest the world in fun-sized candy bar portions. Carefully unwrapping them and seeing what’s there is half the pleasure. Savoring the sweet, sweet candy center is the other. And if I forget anything, I’ll always have the wrappers.

I used to watch lighting tutorials nonstop and read posts on technique every waking moment of the day. Nowadays, I’ve really lost interest in those things such as “how to take nighttime photography!” or “how to make your own DIY softbox!” or “stunning one-light setups for beauty photography!” Those kinds of posts are almost never touch on content, composition, or nurturing creativity. For the past two weeks, I’ve been watching documentaries on consummate photographers like Henri Cartier-Bresson. When you study their work and hear them discuss their approach, there’s always an anchoring sense of purpose behind it all, a great idea.  The common denominator–the overarching theme–reaches back to life itself, one’s humble submission to the infinite possibility of the world we live in. Through photographs, these are ideas that I want to document, then understand.

The next time you pick up your camera (or even right now), I implore you to think about the common denominator of your purpose in photography—“the why.” It’ll help you better understand who you are and where you’re going.

Greece, 1961 | Henri Cartier-Bresson

Important:

This post may sound extremely elitist/arrogant to some, but I hope that’s not what you take away from it.  I’m not trying to say that what I want to do is in any sense better, or more noble, or requires more skill, or takes greater talent, or uses more creativity, or contributes to a greater good than any other form of photography that I find isn’t for me.  I’ve simply come to the conclusion that I tried certain things and I wasn’t comfortable shooting it, so now I’m trying other things.  I could never turn myself into a business or try to make money off of photography simply because I can’t tolerate promotions/marketing/advertising.  Thus, it makes sense that I couldn’t ever become a wedding photographer.  Will I shoot a wedding? Yes, but not all the time.

It’s like lawyers vs. doctors, apples & oranges.  You can’t really argue that one is simply better than the other.  I’m simply trying to find pictures that are more meaningful to me.  For example, I took pictures of my family playing board games last weekend.  Those pictures are more meaningful to me than almost all the images I’ve taken thus far.

Best,

Kevin

Mar 13, 2011 | Categories:Ideas, Philosophy | Leave A Comment »

Inspiring: TED Prize Winner 2011

See for yourself!

TED Prize Winner JR & INSIDE OUT from TED Prize on Vimeo.

Mar 03, 2011 | Categories:Inspiration | Leave A Comment »

A Collection of Ideas and an Engagement Shoot

I know I’ve been bad. It’s been a while since I’ve actually written anything. So I suppose this post is catch-up. And that just means that this is disorganized mess of random things.

For starters, I think that if you’re shooting for free, make it portfolio worthy. Make it something that you can learn from, something that all participating parties can take away from. Otherwise, why shoot free?

It’s a longstanding truth that’s always worth repeating: less is more. My friend Tammy Keefer (http://www.jasonkeefer.com) told me that it’s rather desensitizing if you post the same kinds of pictures over and over (even if they’re all good). Even within the frame, less is more, unless “more” is what you’re trying to capture.

If you do a successful/unsuccessful shoot, don’t forget to portion a good hunk of time to review what actually happened: what went well and, more importantly, what didn’t go well. If you’re studying for a big test and you do a practice exam, would you simply take it and never go over your wrong answers? Probably not.

When shooting outdoors, don’t do the stupid thing that I did and purposefully remove the silver/gold side of my reflector (I just brought the white). It doesn’t work. It’s a great scrim/diffuser, but you wont reflect anything with a thin, translucent white material.

And here’s a completely stylistic/subjective issue. Concerning the subject of image sharpness, what’s the big damn fuss? I don’t ever intend on using high-pass sharpening. As a matter of fact, I’ve been blurring 90% of all my recent images. Why? Because the crevices and caverns of skin pores don’t interest me, nor do I want to interest my viewers with them. To me, a photograph is a fleeting moment, but a moment that’s still “alive,” if that makes any sense. I’m most interested in pictures that are mid-______: mid-jump, mid-laugh, mid-thought, mid-run. I like pictures that seem like they’re about to burst off the page. An ultra-sharpened image is like freezing something in -273.15 degrees Celsius—it’s dead. It’s emotionally sterile. But of course, that all depends on what you’re trying to do.

I can’t do anything artistic without coffee. What… the… hell.

I wish I had tried learning natural light first and then learned artificial lighting. It makes much more sense that way, and I can’t exactly explain why. I think natural light forces you more to “work with what you’ve got and make something of it.” But here’s the thing: natural light is truly surreal. It’s stubborn yet beautiful, harsh yet soft, blinding yet eye-opening, evocative yet diminishing, mystical yet predictable, and tremendously rewarding, yet perpetually frustrating. That’s got to be the coolest element you could work with and learn to use. Can a pencil do that? No. Okay, that’s a TERRIBLE example, but still.

I thought I signed up to do portrait photography, not human psychology! Yet, the two are inseparable. I did take AP Psychology once in high school. Perhaps it’s time I think less about the exposure and more so towards making someone feel at ease and comfortable in front of the camera. I’d rather have a poorly-lit image of tremendous expression than a perfectly exposed image of absolute stiffness.

Graphic design is really important. That is all I have to say about that.

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Last week, I did my first engagement shoot for my friend Beau and his fiancé, Lindsay. Let me preface all the unimportant stuff to follow with the important stuff: they are truly incredible people and models of good character. And photographically speaking, they are an absolute blast work with. If awkwardness were the South Pole, they’d be the absolute North. They simply repel awkwardness, which made the shoot seamless and effortless. Let’s not forget that the two are absolutely adorable together. Yes, I just said adorable, but I only used it once. Cut me some slack, you manly men out there reading this.

Here’s another haphazard arrangement of ideas: Natural lighting is hard, man. I have a long ways to go before I can feel absolutely comfortable shooting in it, before I can quickly identify good light and make the most of it.

The social dynamics of an engagement photoshoot is pretty interesting. I need a couple phrases in my pocket that’ll relax people, and learn how to tailor my words to communicate the idea I’m trying to capture most efficaciously.

Taking pictures of awesome subjects is enticing and immensely distracting. In the middle of the shoot, I literally had to tell myself to slow down, think, and stop wasting card space. It’s no use if you take 700 pictures that all suck. Even if it takes thirty-minutes to get one great shot, it’s the great shot that you walk away with at the end, the shot that counts. The challenge is to keep the conversation going on in the background so that it isn’t awkward while you figure out how to compose your next shot in an interesting way.

Like I mentioned earlier: less is more. It felt pretty disheartening not editing entire sets of good images simply because they all look alike. But in the end, it’s all worth it.

If you’re shooting in a field that’s probably a farm, be prepared to find lots and lots of cow poop. I think I stepped in cow poop about twenty times during the shoot. Cows are like nuclear reactors. A cow’s daily droppings could probably power my apartment for couple days. Those things are massive and aplenty.

I saved the best for last, actually. The best part of the shoot I realized soon after editing a couple of pictures. It wasn’t the fact that I had a couple of pictures I liked and could put in my portfolio. Those pictures don’t even scratch the surface of things that matter. Rather, the best moment was, for me, the sudden realization that pictures are truly timeless (duh!). People come and go, but a picture stays intact, so long as you hold onto it. I’d be immensely humbled if, many years from now, Beau & Lindsay were to use a couple of my images to remember a glimpse of their twenties, of what it felt to be alive that Sunday, together, happy, and absolutely in love. That’s what photography can do. That’s why I do it.

Feb 21, 2011 | Categories:Ideas, My Photos, Rants | 1 Comment »