Reality Reconstructed: Part 2

So, to follow the last entry, where does all of this lead us?  Armed with a grasp of the interpretive, constructive nature of photography, the mindful photographer enters a whole new world of creativity, no longer bound by the need to record everything in a literal sense that he or she sees.  To help with this process, try some of these techniques.  Approach them as Gross and Shapiro suggest in the Tao of Photography: “playfully.”  

I also suggest you approach them with a clear mind, with mindful attention, relaxed awareness.   Approach your subject quietly, with reverence.  Listen intently and fully to your subject.

Instead of seeing the landscape in front of you as a landscape, see the shapes as human figures.  Imagine the trees, or grasses as soldiers marching towards you.

 Get down on the ground and shoot up or shoot straight ahead.  Get wet, get dirty - be a kid, have fun. In college we called it “wet belly photography.”    Find a new angle to view the world.  Climb a set of stairs and shoot down or shoot even higher.  Explore new ways of thinking.  How does your dog see the world?  How does a 2 year old child view his surroundings?  What’s the view of the world for your favorite coffee mug when you open the cupboard door?

Add, kneel, squat, lie on your back and crawl to your photographic vocabulary.

List all of the rules of composition and exposure and design you’ve ever been taught, and then break them.  Break them all.  Break them with purpose.

And finally, challenge any and all assumptions you might have of your subject.  Apply what the surrealist’s termed “depaysement.”  Literally to “de-countrify onself.”  The surrealists used the term to re-see the world and uproot the ordinary from the normal context.  Try looking at a normal situation differently by de-constructing the scene.  A child jumping from a swing into her father’s arms, but instead of telling the whole story by including father and child, focus on just the father’s arms, or the child in mid air.

The surrealists also used juxtapositiion - juxtaposing two or more incongruous elements in the same frame - a basketball player on Bay Street, a bicyclist on a major highway.  (Juxtaposing it must be said,  is often present in our images, whether we intend it to be or not - its the flower coming out of someone’s head when we forget to scan the frame edges.  It is the other side of the same coin).

See the world without labels and you will capture the world very differently.  But above all else, see the world through your viewfinder mindfully and playfully.