Mindfulness

Mindfulness:  "The practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one's thoughts, emotions, or experiences on a moment to moment basis"  Merriam-Webster online dictionary www.merriam-webster.com.

Often, when we go into certain situations, we have preconceived notions or expectations about what we expect or want to happen.  In my article on meditation I stated that I often listen to music that contains the sounds of ocean waves, babbling brooks or even waterfalls and suggested that words to songs can "pollute my mind" and help me raise false expectations of what I want or expect to come away from a shoot with.

Susan Kanfer on the Photofocus website posted a picture of Zion National Park.  Given the same opportunity, many people would come away with just one picture from this opportunity, but Susan was able to discover five other pictures within the one picture that many of us would have taken.

In my previous post titled "A Christmas Walk At The Driskill Hotel, I talked of watching an inspirational video that gave me ideas of possible post processing ideas for pictures I wanted to take to accomplish my ideas.  When you go out shooting, it almost makes the shoot to be a sort of scavenger hunt for the opportunities that you seek and desire to accomplish the objectives you desire.

So what can we do to take pictures that show our heightened  or complete awareness of our thoughts, emotions or experiences that we are having when we take pictures?

First:  Walk slowly over your selected path.  Just as if you were looking for something that you might have lost, I often tell people, "Look up, look down and look from left to right, but look slowly."

Second:  Don't be so concerned with the total picture.  If you go to Google Search and search images of places that you would like to take pictures at, you can see plenty of those.  If you have Google Earth, you can literally see pictures that other people have taken of the places you want to go to.  What will make your pictures stand out is if you take selected images from that bigger picture.  Look for things such as water flowing over rocks, trees that are standing next to each other that perhaps have contrasting colors, perhaps green and yellow or red and either green or brown.  Don't be enchanted with a waterfall.  Again, there are plenty of pictures of those.  Instead look for the water cascading over what is causing the waterfall.  Perhaps you need to put your camera in a vertical position so that you can capture more of the falls.  Perhaps, you need a zoom lens on your camera and a tripod because you can't get close enough to that picture.  Many have suggested using a Neutral Density (ND) filter to make the water more milk like in appearance.  Also, try taking several pictures at a faster speed on your camera and then importing them into Photoshop as layers.  You will find that your vegetation is not blurry around your waterfall, especially if there was a wind, which often seems to happen.

Third:  Before you take your picture, think how you are going to process it.  I eluded to this about the waterfall.  How you are going to process your picture is very important to how you take it. Do you need just one picture or do you need several?  It is difficult to go back and try to take the same picture, especially if the place you took the picture is a long distance from you.  Besides that, the light is never the same because of the rotation of the Earth.  Remember the old phrase, "Better safe than sorry"?  It applies to photography as well.  It is far better to take more pictures and then discard the ones that you don't want to use when you post process than to go back and retake your picture again.

Fourth:  If something makes you happy, take a picture of it.  Life is filled with sorrowful moments. During those sorrowful moments it is often best to go back and reflect on those positive happy moments in your life.  You will find it puts a smile on your face.

There is a quote associated with Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Clemons), "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness".  He went on to say, "And many of our people need it sorely on these accounts.  Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all of one's lifetime.

Happy shooting.

Christmas Walk At The Driskill Hotel

On Tuesday of this week, I had the opportunity to see a video put on by Topaz Labs and Harold Davis called, "A Homeopathic Approach to Adjustments".  I found it to be very inspirational.  One area that I really peaked my interest was where Harold took what seemed to be a "Cat's Eye" marble, photographed it and then brought a copy of the marble down below the shot, and put an object inside of the marble.  The two marbles were touching each other, but hat got me to thinking.

I went on a photowalk the next night and had thought of photographing a bulb on a Christmas tree and then putting a picture inside of it as one of my intentions of photographing that night.

In my travels, I went by the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas.  They had their tree up so I went inside to see it since it was in the middle of the lobby.  When I walked through the doors I heard a trio of two violins and a cello and walked toward the tree.  I looked closely at the tree and then I found my perfect opportunity.  I bulb that had many different facets to it.  I photographed it.  Then when I was getting ready to go out the doors that I came in, I turned around and photographed the tree.

When I went to post process my pictures, I could not help thinking about putting the tree inside of the bulb.  I had seen the technique done for clouds and other objects, so I thought I would try it for myself.  I learned a few things along the way, like I need to merge my layers before putting my frame around the picture, but it worked and I am happy with what I produced.

You will need to keep an eye out for the video as Topaz Labs has not put it out yet (they edit it to fit the youtube requirements).  I am sure if you go to youtube and search topaz labs harold davis and look for the video "A Homeopathic Approach to Adjustments", you will be able to see the video for yourself.

This is what I came out with

Meditation

Many are familiar with the many different forms of meditation that are out there.  Meditation is an essential part of Buddhism. Many meditate while doing yoga.  Still others, while maybe not realizing it meditate during the day.  Some refer to it as “Day dreaming”. 

I first leaned self hypnosis back in the late 1970s.  The person I learned it from told the class a statement that has stuck with me all of these years.  He said, "Many of us claim we don't have an extra minute in our day, but what is it that you do when you go to the bathroom?  Do you just stare at the wall?  It is a perfect time to do self hypnosis to build you up."

In 2009, I was introduced to meditation.  During that time, the members of the class and I experienced a period of silence where we put our feet flat on the floor, sat back in our chair and then closed our eyes.  We built our time up from five minutes to a period of twenty minutes.  Then the teacher would ask, "How was that?"  Each of the members of the class had a different experience during their period of meditation.

For me, meditation is not necessarily closing my eyes and going "Ummmmmmmm" while I am out in the world.  Far from it, my method is to listen to music with some noise cancelling headphones that help to separate me from the rest of the world.  I listen to music that has a lot of water in it.  Music that has sounds like ocean waves, babbling brooks or even waterfalls occupies a good portion of my playlist.  I also enjoy instrumental music from artist like Kenny G and others.  I find that music transports me away from what is going on around me.  In my mind, it must do something because I have noticed a trend of people that seem to run around with ear buds in their ear listening to something.  I have even heard disc jockeys and sports casters that have music of what to me sounds like a metal brush on a snare drum to help them speak in a rhythmic manner.

Have you ever wondered why we enjoy pictures that have water in them?  Could it be that our bodies are made up of approximately 70% water and as such, water brings peacefulness to us?  I think so, at least for me it does.

The next time you go out taking pictures, try listening to music that transports you to a different place.  You just might find that you make more interesting pictures.  I encourage you to share your experiences.

In my next article, I will write on mindfulness, the practice of maintaining a nonjudgmental state of heightened or complete awareness of one's thoughts, emotions or experiences on a moment to moment basis.