Category: contemplative photography

So, between pondering David du Chemin’s lesson in The Visual Toolbox  and Christine Greve’s first lesson in SlowDownforStills, I’m not sure what I’ve accomplished other than letting my head spin. I’ve thought about some of my favorite images, and I suppose my favorites vary from week to week and sometimes day to day.

I know that for a very global learner and “big picture” girl, I photograph details. I get up close and personal, and the commentators on the sports shows used to say when interviewing athletes, to get the textures and the little things that make up the big picture. I zoom in rather than zoom out.

Oh, I love panoramas of nature and landscape. I want to see the full context as much as anyone else. But I also like to see the trees in the forest as well as the forest. Sometimes, the forest overwhelms me. And then I think of Ann Lamot’s story of her brother’s project on birds. Their father gave him some good advise: take the project “bird by bird.” And so, in photography, I try to take each photograph “image by image,” detail by detail.

 

I also discover that I “isolate” things. If there are four cardinals at the feeder, then I isolate the image to one of those cardinals. If there are a dozen zinnias blooming, I take just one zinnia. And then rather than take the image of the whole plant, I focus on whatever I see as the most interesting.

And that’s the same when I take people pictures. I try to capture the most interesting part of the person rather than the whole person.

So, my vision has to do with the details, regardless of what they are. And I try to let that image tell the story. For example, I have an old piano—vintage 1930s. As a piece of “furniture” it is gorgeous! I love the wood grain and the variegated shades of browns, but what attracts my attention most is the keys, the beautifully aged ivory and ebony keys. My first piano (that I bought myself) had the modern plastic white keys, but this Lester Betsy Ross Spinet has real ivory and ebony. They look different; they feel different. And I am drawn to the mottled coloration and even the “unevenness” of the keyboard. Some of the keys look “curled” at the edges. There are days that I pass the piano, though, without a glance, but then I take a long hard look at it and appreciate it all over again, not just the craftsmanship that went into its construction, but also the story behind it. It is a gift to me from a young couple in my church.

This is the beauty and perhaps the function of photography—not about making great art all of the time, but about learning how to see differently.

Don’t you love free online classes? I certainly do, especially when I get to have lessons from photographers I admire. Christina Greve is one of those photographers. When I saw the class description, I though first, uh, not my “style.” I struggle with still life photography. I don’t know enough about setting up the scene and styling. And my props are next to none.

But then I read the philosophy. It’s NOT a photography class. It’s really a series of prompts to get us to stop, listen, see, smell, taste, hear, and feel the everyday. I think it’s all about contemplative photography practices, but I’m not telling her that!

This is the assignment for week one: look for the “little” things that are all around that we may take for granted because, well, they are all around us every day. I’m thinking: there are the orchids currently in a dormant state; the yellowed ivory of the piano keys; my wedding china in the china cabinet. Outside are the zinnias and Queen Anne’s lace and the sharp lines and ridges of broken shale rock, the softness of moss, crinkly lichens on trees, rough roots (that have a tendency to jump up out of the ground just to trip me up!), fallen red “trumpets” from the trumpet vine, a lone purple Rose of Sharon bloom. . . . I was so busy looking this morning, I forgot to take pictures!

I think this is one of the things that the practice of contemplative photography does: it develops in the practitioner the habit of seeing the details of everyday life, the ones we often overlook. I confess that sometimes I forget to look in directions other than straight ahead as I march through the days. This morning, I walked around the ponds, and I KNOW it must have been there the first time I marched around the big pond. It was on the second lap that I found the feather. (It’s in my pocket to add to my treasure box of feathers and shells.)

It’s been a couple of hectic weeks—three, in fact. There was a week of Vacation Bible School and the photography for that event, and then the July mod at Remington College started the next week. We are halfway through the four-week term. The weather here in SC has been been brutal. If I heard correctly last night, we’ve had nineteen days of triple-digit temperatures in the state. It is hot.

This morning, I had to get out and walk around the ponds in spite of the heat. I took the camera with me. I did not plan to walk for exercise or fitness. I did not have a “destination” in mind, other than to walk the circle around and between the seven ponds. I just went.

Christine Valters Paintner and Julia Cameron, among others, advocate the daily walk. Julia Cameron recommends a thirty-minute walk a day. Some call it “contemplative walking,” going out with an “empty” mind so that one can be receptive to all that is around, to be open to receive whatever speaks or draws notice, to have no preconceived notions about what to see. In doing so, sometimes, we are surprised by what we see.

Today was no different for me. I saw the “usual”: the crepe myrtle bloom, the zinnias and other “wildflowers” in my small flower patch, the hibiscus buds, roses, greenery everywhere. Purple flowers, dandelions, button bushes, dragon flies—all of these danced in the breeze (thank goodness for breezes); corn is maturing in the field.

The Canada geese are making their annual appears and overlay on the big pond; the heron flew over. So much of what I received is the same as every other time I’ve walked, and I’ve been walking around these ponds for over thirty years. And yet, so much is different, still beautiful, still inspiring.

I think that’s what draws my camera and me to these places—the “sameness”, the familiarity, the comfortable nature of things. And yet, there is something new to see: the dragon flies, some “new” foliage, the textures of the field, even the juxtaposition of an older rural way of living just across the road from the modern electrical sub-station.

I don’t know what my children and their children will make of these hundreds of photographs in the future. I hope they see an appreciation of creation and beauty and a desire to tell the story of what my small piece of the world looked like during my life time. After all, that’s what photography and art and writing are all about.

I’ve been trying to do the one-word-for-the-year “thing” for several years now to keep my focus on the “important” things. I have the book, and I’ve signed up for Ali Edwards’ year-long course. I am not doing well at keeping up with the course other than reading and reflecting on Ali’s words.

Today, I’m checking in on who I’m doing with my word.

I chose the word “abide” for this year. Something about that word called to me. I know that we often use that word in the negative, as in, “I can’t abide with those beliefs or attitudes” or “I can’t abide that person.” But there is more positive about that word than negative.

“Abide” means to linger, to stay put, to remain in one place; to live in a place for a significant length of time. It means to be rest peacefully in the moment. It seems that sometimes, life gets too hectic, and we, as a society, forget how to “abide.”

That’s what I like about this thing called contemplative photography. It slows me down, forces me to be still, to linger over a moment, to see below the surface. It’s more than “stopping to smell the roses,” though, although certainly, taking the time to smell roses is a good thing!

Throughout the Scriptures, we are called to “abide,” to linger. In the King James Version, the word appears 82 times in 77 verses. It must be an important word to focus on. (I know, there are many other words used more often, but when I see a verb used 82 times, I think there must be something important about it!)

The word “abide” has an important theological meaning of remaining with Christ, of being “in union” with Christ. But I think we can extend that to other aspects, especially when I think about photography and the kind of photography that I enjoy most—photographing the natural world. To abide in Nature is to see the hand of God in the world.

(There is a dragonfly in this image!) It means seeing small things and appreciating the beauty of it. And there is beauty in everything in Creation.

I was surprised when I looked at this image and saw the squares on top of the round “berries” or seeds or whatever these things are. Learning to “abide” is teaching me to see.

Although “abide” often implies a sense of rest or stillness, “abide” has also come to mean “activity” but in a deliberate way, in taking time to be present, whether it is in nature or with other people or with the Word or in a book of fiction. Although I am actively “abiding,” I am also lingering and remaining for more than a moment.