Presence and the Art of Seeing Photographically

Photography is a language born of stillness.  By learning to be present and to quiet the mind, you can begin to Develop A Photographer’s Eye.

Photography can take us on a remarkable journey of self-discovery – to a place beyond thought.  It is here that we begin to see a reflection of ourselves in our images. To get to this place, you must learn to overcome some of the obstacles we all have to “seeing photographically.”

The first obstacle to seeing is what Frederick Franz called “The Me Cramp” in The Zen of Seeing.  The preoccupation with self – worrying about paying bills, your job, your kids, whether you can make a good picture – all of this noise in your head impedes the creative process and blocks intuition and therefore your ability to respond and connect to the subject.  The results are almost always disappointing.  Your photographs lack creativity and, more importantly, you have missed out on the sheer joy of creating a great picture.  Getting the “me” out of the way will involve a leap of faith, a departure from how you normally view the world.  As you begin to slow down and be still, as you become present and learn to listen with your eyes, a whole new world of photographic opportunities opens up. The simple path to this stillness is to focus on your breath.  Stay in the present moment and feel the aliveness of your subject.

The second barrier to seeing is that we humans have an uncanny ability to catalogue everything we see.  Instead of surrendering ourselves to the scene and allowing the subject to take us in, we begin to list and name and label what is in front of us.  This makes it impossible to experience the subject in a unique way, in a different light.  It hampers us from exploring the subject fully and learning something new about it.  The resulting picture is often just a record and lacks inspiration, creativity and interpretation.

A third impediment to seeing (as odd as it may sound) is the camera itself.  There are many reasons for this.  I’ll touch on just one in this article.

The camera never lies.  Instead of allowing it to help us see what “is”, to become present and truly relate to our subject, we often use the camera simply as a tool to record our experience.  We have become so conditioned to seeing photographs of subjects in a certain way that we magically lose our ability to investigate them further.  You see this everyday at tourist attractions where the photographer asks his or her subject to “stand in front of the fountain,” for yet one more souvenir picture, taken thousands and thousands of times before.

Great pictures begin with learning to see photographically and learning to see means understanding and overcoming the barriers to seeing.