[Another approach to process]
As photographers, we are all different, and the way I entered close-up nature photography is perhaps unusual in that for me (at least in the beginning) it was not about cameras or even lenses, but only about the “Seeing” in seeing through lenses. Let me be clear. It was not about what I saw through the lenses (the subject of the photograph) so much as it was the very process of “Seeing” itself, the seeing clearly through lenses at micro-worlds and mini-dioramas, what I call “Small Worlds.” There is more.
To hopefully be even clearer, I was looking through lenses at small worlds in nature, rather than at cars, buildings, family, or what-have-you? Mother Nature is what I was looking at through the lenses. Yet, what in actuality I was looking at, what I call “Seeing” (what I was seeing) is seeing clearly as to the nature of my own mind, if that makes sense. It does to me, of course.
In other words, I used photography (and especially fine lenses) to better “See” the nature of my own mind. And it was this process of “seeing” that has always captivated me, and so I paid closer and closer attention to the process involved in what here I am calling “seeing.” And, as a byproduct, my resulting photographs improved as well.
Now, to me, all that is history, my mixing photography with meditation practice until they were one and the same as far as I knew and, at the time, I didn’t even know I was doing this. That realization came later. I even wrote an entire book about this, the mixing of mind-training (Mahamudra Meditation) with photography. It is called “Mahamudra, A Story” and it is available as a free e-book at this link (scroll down), or as a printed paperback on Amazon.com.
http://spiritgrooves.net/e-Books.aspx#DharmaAs photographers, we all know that the process is what produces the result. In my case, the process is the result I am after, not just the resulting photographs. And for me, within that process, it is the “Seeing,” not just as in seeing what to photograph out there in nature, i.e. the impression in nature itself that imprints in my mind and that I subsequently wish to capture photographically.
By that time, I have already captured the exterior image of the nature-subject with my mind. It remains to be seen if I can record that nature impression with a camera. Yet, as mentioned, that is not the “seeing” I have been referring to here, i.e. the resulting photograph of my impression, what I see in Mother Nature. Not at all.
The important “seeing” for me is the “seeing” itself, the resulting clarity of the mind that arises through the sometimes tedious process of stacking photos or whatever. That particular “seeing” could just be called “seeing clearly” or, better put, the “seeing of clarity” itself, as in: seeing the sheer clarity of the mind itself and resting in that.
Now, the question for me is whether that seeing of the mind itself (that clarity) leaves any traces in the resulting photographs. Mostly, they fall way short of what I internally see while I am externally seeing.
And here is the subtle part. The photographs that are the result of what I am here calling “seeing” have gradually improved, thanks to my attention to the process. Yet, as I pointed out earlier, what I am actually seeing within the process itself (as mentioned) is not just the subject of the photograph, but something as well of the nature of my own mind and its luminous clarity.
Is that kind of clarity also captured in the photograph? You tell me. I believe that, to some degree, it is, not because we can record something that is beyond elaboration (beyond words), like the mind itself, but more, as the poet William Butler Yeats put it:
“Because the mountain grass,
Cannot but keep the form,
Where the mountain hare has lain.”
My apologies for the complexity of all this, and I hope this is clear to at least some of you, and perhaps even of some small interest.
[Photo with Nikon D800E, Voigtlander 125mm APO-Lanthar]
