Being Mindful of the Creative Process

     Yesterday afternoon was the first time in awhile that I was inspired to run back inside my house, grab my camera, and wander around outside taking pictures in my neighborhood.  Intrigued by the reflections created in the windows of my car from the clouds and the sun, I snapped a few shots.  Noticing that the sky was ideal for taking reflection pictures-- a gradation of cloud tones from white to light gray to darker gray with some sunlight against a blue background-- I thought it would be neat to take a series of reflection pictures within the windows of cars in my neighborhood.

     Walking towards a car parked along the sidewalk in front of my house, I noticed something interesting.  In approaching the car, I saw an intriguing reflection.

Simply moving several steps in a different direction, the reflection was no longer there.  The magic had disappeared-- all I could see was the inside of the car.

     Suddenly, it occurred to me that this phenomenon of the reflections appearing and disappearing, with the slightest change of angle and lighting, is much like the creative process itself.  Thoughts rapidly fired in my brain as I became inspired to write this blog entry about mindfulness, for the first time in almost three months...

     Three months without blogging about mindfulness...The first month made sense.  It was June-- the last month of a crazy, hectic-busy, stressful school year.  I could understand my lack of time, lack of motivation, lack of inspiration.  I looked forward to taking pictures and blogging during the summer.

     But then July came and went.  No new blog entries, no nature photography.  I had a list, which seemed like excuses rather than valid reasons of why.  I was busy taking 10 credits worth of classes-- both in person and online, took several trips, participated in four different summer work projects at school, and attended a technology conference.  There were also several stressors that occupied much of my brain space as well.  Still, I thought that during the school year I was often very busy and very stressed and blogging about mindfulness was a great way to relax.  So why wasn't that happening now?

     Next, I attributed my lack of blogging to not having the right container.  During the school year, at times I was inspired to blog about teaching and learning, but realized that what I wanted to blog about did not fit into the theme of this blog.  So I decided to create a new blog, one more specifically targeted about teaching.  I thought, "Now I'll be inspired to write."  Now, three weeks since I created my new blog and I still haven't posted my first entry.  This has been a little bit frustrating and  disappointing for me-- eager to start up my blog and create a readership.

     It's not that I haven't been prolific this summer-- actually quite the opposite.  In fact, I've written significant portions of three different blog entries for my new blog-- I just haven't finished any of them.  I've been somewhat hard on myself about not being able to complete any of these entries.  But then something clicked in my head when I saw the sunlight creating reflections in the car windows, which would suddenly disappear when I walked a few steps, changing my angle, or when the sun ducked behind the clouds.

     Just like reflections, creativity can not be forced.  I can put myself in certain situations or to go some of my favorite places like Spy Pond, but I'm not going to feel inspired every single time.  Creativity is not just about will power, about wanting to be creative.  It's also about unexpectedness, about intangible feelings, about something that sparks the mind to think in a different way than it has before.  Like reflections, creativity can be fleeting.  There can be a glimpse of a creative idea that starts me off on a project but then may duck away for a time, like the sun behind the clouds, causing the reflection, or the spark to disappear.

     When I thought about my three unfinished blog entries in this way, it occurred to me that some of my best writing is created when I am mindful and respectful of my creative process.  Sure, there have been occasions when the creative bug bites me and I am flooded with inspiration, causing me to to write a poem or a short essay in a burst of energy.  However, more often, I write in stages, in drafts, with time spent apart from my writing so that I can come back to it with fresh eyes.

      It can help to have time in between writing the ending of a piece of writing and the main part--this can be days, weeks, sometimes even months.  Time allows me to come up with ideas when I don't even realize that I am doing it, helping me to formulate my thoughts.  Giving ideas time to percolate in my head can help me overcome writer's block.   Maybe this is what is happening with all of my unfinished blog entries.

     Being mindful of my own creative process, I will stop being so hard on myself for not finishing my blog entries.  And trust that with time, the creative bug will come back, allowing me to complete them.  And most of the time, when the creative bug comes back, the piece ends in a way that I never would have originally anticipated it would.  Just like I never predicted the neat warps and contours that would be created in this reflection simply by walking a few steps over...

Grace Happens

Driving to work on Friday, I was feeling very stressed out and anxious.  Suddenly, I noticed a bumper sticker on the gray Honda Accord driving in front of me:  Grace Happens.   Instantly I began conjuring up pretty pictures, graceful pictures, that both myself and my friend Grace have taken.  Little did the owner of that car know, but I felt much more relaxed during the rest of my drive while I tailed behind that bumper sticker.  I've often seen the opposite phrase but never this one.  I thank the owner of that car for reminding me of that simple fact:  Grace Happens.   Here are some pictures that remind me of just that!  Enjoy!

Graceful Animals

 The Grace of Spy Pond throughout the Seasons

Graceful Ice

Enjoy the grace that you see in nature everyday!

"It is What it is": Flashes of Perception in Contemplative Photography

     "It is what it is" is a common phrase that my friend Grace often uses.  While I've always appreciated this comment, it wasn't until reading Chapter 8 of The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes, by Andy Karr and Michael Wood, that I truly understood how profound this phrase really is and how it relates to mindfulness and contemplative photography.

  
  In this chapter, entitled "The Flash of Perception", Karr and Wood describe the experience of perception.  Perception is when your eye and your mind are aligned.  There is a quality of motionless, when you are not distracted, not jumping at every little thing that is happening, and not getting caught up in it.  You experience stillness and groundedness.  You just allow yourself to be on that dot, appreciating whatever you see.

Perception can either occur by relaxing into a feeling of being present or in a flash of perception.  Flashes of perception occur when there is a gap in the thinking process, that is sudden and shocking.



The practice of contemplative photography involves finding those moments when your eyes and mind align and capturing them on film.


In learning about the qualities of perceptual experiences, I discovered what I love about photography and mindfulness.  First, experiencing clarity-- perceiving sharp, brilliant images that are unfiltered, definite, and precise.   Unfiltered means that the experience or image is not overlain with labels or ideas.   As Grace would say, "It is what it is."

Second, there is the quality of definiteness where there is no doubt about what is being perceived.  Third, there is the quality of preciseness, meaning that all of the details appear clearly, all at once.  Last, perceptions are rich-- the colors and textures are unusually intense.

All of these qualities combine to create experiences where I feel completely absorbed, in the present moment, when there is no separation between myself and my perceptions.

     Karr and Wood describe how I feel after engaging in contemplative photography-- "joyful, relaxed, liberating, buoyant, light."  They say that all self-centeredness and preoccupation fall away.

     My friend Grace's phrase aptly describes my state of mind when I am in the midst of appreciating the beauty of nature around me, fully absorbed in a mindful state of being.  "It is what it is."  All preoccupations and worries just melt away.  All that exists is the present moment, the image, and the experience.
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To Readers of My Blog:  I am interested in hearing about an experience where you were completely absorbed in the moment, when you experienced a flash of perception.

Figuring Out My Calling: Contemplative Photography

     Last summer, I began this blog with the idea to explore ideas about mindfulness as it connects to photography and teaching.   As I've blogged about my own pictures and conversations I've had about photography with my friend Grace, it became very clear to me that we both use the art of photography as a way to be mindful of the world around us and to relax.  However, it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I discovered that there is an actual term for this type of photography, contemplative photography, and other people who write books and blog about it.  Now, one of my favorite books about photography is called, The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes, by Andy Karr and Michael Wood.  It is teaching me more about one of my favorite arts and providing me with exercises to further enhance my ability to be mindful and artistic.

     To put it quite simply, contemplative photography helps the photographer to be mindful of the world around her and to live an artistic life.  According to Karr and Wood, "training in contemplative photography will deepen your ability to live a creative, artistic life...appreciating the details of our ordinary existence.  The practice of contemplative photography will definitely increase your appreciation of the world around you, which is infinitely richer than you could ever imagine."  They go on further to describe the contemplative mind as being "free from preoccupation."  They describe a mind that is open, fresh, and receptive to whatever arises...a mind that is not bound up with either thoughts or emotions.

    Filled with beautiful and thought-provoking pictures that serve as illustrations of this concept, the book also contains many interesting exercises that enhance the photographer's ability to enter a contemplative state of mind.  According to Karr and Wood, the "purpose of these assignments is to help you connect directly with the visual world and to express that experience photographically.  Assignments provide specific intentions for you to work with....The assignments have been developed for the purpose of training...as methods to help you align eye and mind."



     Today I tried out the first assignment and really enjoyed the experience.  First Assignment: Color.
Here were the guidelines for this assignment:


Look at color out of context without labeling it, without conceptual knowledge of what you are looking at.  Just think about it as flashes of color.


Guidelines:
1.  Black, white, gray, beige, are not colors 
2.  Look for bold, vivid colors
3.  No graphic designs, words, letters, numbers, flowers, nature
4.  Get in close and don't shoot anything extra


The assignment further instructs the photographer to:
--stop physically when stopped by a flash of color.  Spend half a minute looking further, contemplating what stopped you without lifting your camera.


--understand what you see-- Where does your perception start/end?  What's included/what's not? Is the perception horizontal or vertical?


--Look at the perception through your viewfinder and ask if that is what stopped you


The assignment even gives photographers a way to walk away from a shot without frustration:
When you struggle to take a picture or lose track of what stopped you, walk away & start over




      What I love about contemplative photography can best be summed up by Beumont Newhall, a photographer, writer, and curator.  "We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually."  This first assignment of Color certainly helped me to see color in a new way today as well as ordinary objects within my neighborhood.

The photograph above was my favorite from the Color Assignment.  On my own, I never would have thought to just isolate the colors as a point of interest for a picture.  My eyes will definitely be more open in the future towards this type of composition.

The same flashes of color from a different perspective...

I like how this picture shows swatches of colors, making a three dimensional space appear to be two dimensional.

After my experience with the Color Assignment today, I am looking forward to future assignments and how they will help me be even more mindful of my environment.  I also recently discovered a website for this book that contains the assignments and a gallery with readers' photos who have completed each assignment.   http://seeingfresh.com/

Flowers: A Sign of Spring!

     I absolutely love the month of May!  Despite the allergies and the busyness at work, May brings sunshine, warmth, beautiful nature, and of course, my birthday:)  No matter how much stress I am feeling, it is hard not to burst into a wide grin when I walk outside in sunny spring weather.  One of my favorite signs of spring are the beautiful flowers and trees that slowly peak their heads out and then suddenly one day are in full bloom.  Since flowers and trees are such a common subject for photographers, I try to be mindful of finding interesting ways to portray them through capturing bright colors, interesting angles, intriguing lighting, interesting arrangements, and scenes that provoke emotions.

Bright Colors

 

Pinks and Purples

A Beautiful Red Rose

Intriguing Lighting

Whenever I grab my camera, I am always drawn to the way that light illuminates subjects, especially when it does so in unexpected and interesting ways.  In the following picture, the bright sunshine made an ordinarily mundane and commonplace object beautiful, a gray metal fence.  It also highlighted the brilliant colors of the flowers.

 
In the following shot, I was captivated by the yellow glowing eyes of the cat and how they reflected the colors of the yellow flowers in the grass.  The cat has a demonic look which contrasts nicely with the happiness of the yellow flowers.

In the next picture, I like the way that the sunlight illuminates the petals of the flower.   The lighting is further emphasized in the shot due to the crispness of the flower, and the unfocused background.

Interesting Angles


Taking pictures of flowers at interesting angles can make the pictures more engaging than they might be otherwise.  I enjoy playing around with the angle at which I hold my camera as well as the angle at which I stand while taking a picture.

I love these purple flowers but when I took the shot head on, the composition of the picture was rather boring.  However, simply shifting the angle of my camera created a more engaging composition with a slanted door and frame of the house.

Rather than head on, I took this picture by leaning over the fence to capture the image of the flower from above.  Not only does this angle capture the inside of the flower, but it also exaggerates the difference in size between the pink and the purple flower.

In taking pictures of the flowers from outside of a metal gray fence, in some of the shots I included the fence and in others I stuck my camera in between the metal bars.  I found that the pictures that included the gray fence were a different take on the flowers and helped to frame them in an interesting way.

I also like to experiment with taking pictures of flowers from below.  The following is a picture of one of the most gigantic sunflowers that I have ever seen, taken in Providence, Rhode Island.

Interesting Arrangements

The way that flowers are arranged in a composition can affect how engaged the viewer is with the picture.  In the following shot, the flowers follow in a diagonal line from the foreground to the background of the picture.  As a result, the viewers' eyes travel from one point of the photograph to another.

Sometimes colors pop in a picture when there is a limited amount.  In the following shot, the bright yellow buds jump right out from the page since they are surrounded by nothing but green leaves.

When we look outside in a mindful way, Mother Nature often provides us with intriguing scenes.  All we have to do is open up our eyes and see clearly to view them!   I love how this green leaf slices through the yellow flower.

Sometimes the angle in which a flower's leaves fall can be intriguing...

Standing underneath a tree, I took this shot and found this incredible pattern created by the flowers on the trees.

Evoking Emotions

Pictures of flowers can often evoke emotions such as in the following shot that exudes happiness.

 
My challenge to you as you are outside enjoying the beautiful spring weather and the prettiness of Mother Nature is to appreciate the flowers outside in a new way.  Make note of the way that the light illuminates them and try to view them at different angles (head on, above, below, from the side).  Think about the way in which they are arranged and how that affects the way that they look.  Most of all, just take a minute to stop and appreciate their beauty.