Thursday, January 29, 2015
Contemplative Photography
Buddhist philosophy has a concept called 'Seeing things as they are'. This means looking at things and not judging them. For example, you see a red traffic sign. Probably, most people, in their busy worlds, will not even see the sign. If they do, they may only register it as a mundane object. The contemplative photographer see's the red as it is, and appreciates it for what it is. This way of seeing, opens the photographers eyes to beauty, symmetry and all aspects of life. All you have to do is look.
For this set of pictures, made I sure I took my time and really tried to look carefully. One of the greatest photographers of all time Henri Cartier-Bresson coined a phrase The Decisive Moment. Which is a way of explaining when a photographer makes a picture and why. The next picture, I was hoping for something to happen in the frame, maybe someone walking across it. To add to the composition, but it was really cold, and that put me off waiting longer! So patience and timing and meditating are all vital skills for the photographer.
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"Photography is essentially an act of recognition by street photographers, not an act of invention. Photographers might respond to an old man’s face, or an Arbus freak, or the way light hits a building—and then they move on. Whereas in all the other art forms, take William Blake, everything that came to that paper never existed before. It’s the idea of alchemy, of making something from nothing."
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