Week #22 Photo Challenge

Shadows and Lines

"Ordinary things when really seen, make extraordinary photos. Such photos seem to make themselves. They seem like presents that are given."

           David Vestal

Week #21 Photo Challenge

Sheets

Nalanda Miksang is based on the teachings of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and his work with the contemplative arts. As I begin my journey with this practice, I have found these words to help me frame the path for my journey.

"Either you look and see beyond language - as a first perception - or you see the world through the filter of your thoughts, by talking to yourself. Everyone knows what it is like to feel things directly. Intense emotions...don't have a language. They are too intense in the first flash...Synchronizing mind and body is looking and seeing directly beyond language...you can see on the spot with wakefulness. Your eyes begin to open wider and wider, and you see that the world is colorful and fresh and so precise, every sharp angle is fantastic."

Chogyam Trungpa Ripoche - Shanbhala Sacred Path of the Warrior

Week #20 Photo Challenge

City Window - San Francisco

Started a new book this week, Looking and Seeing, Nalanda Miksang Contemplative Photography by John McQuade and Miriam Hall.  Looking forward to learning more about Nalanda Miksang, a contemplative photography training out of Canada, and starting some of the exercises they have developed. I'll share some of my thoughts about the book over the next several weeks.

Week #19 Photo Challenge

Light on Leaves

"If you have something to say about life, you must also find a way of saying it clearly. And if you achieve that clarity of both perception and the ability to record it, you will have created your own composition, your own kind of design, personal to you, related to other people's, yet your own. The point I want to make is that there is no such thing as THE way, there is only for each individual, his or her way, which in the last analysis, each one must find for himself and in photography and in living."

Paul Strand 

Week #18 Photo Challenge

Reflections 

"I believe to be good at anything, even those things we love most, requires discipline. Because growth happens when we hit our limits (and our limits are either at the edge of our comfort zone or the furthest extent of our current ability), it is discipline that gets us past the natural boundary."

David Duchemin - Photograph - issue 12

Lately, I have been at a place with my photography where I was feeling stuck. I knew that I needed to keep going out every day with my camera and keep at it - but I just wasn't connecting with my images.   This week, while I was down in Palm Springs, something shifted. I was able to use my camera in a way that contributed to my ability to capture what I saw - I stopped fighting my camera and started to be one with my camera. This experience seems to reflect what David Duchemin is saying above. Growth happens when we hit our limits. 

Lessons learned? Just keep at it - even when you feel like you have hit the "creative wall".