Our mind is not a camera. Seeing is not a passive act. We see what we expect to see, or, as Anaïs Nin put it so beautifully: “We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.”
Depending on my mood, I see differently. Sometimes I feel as though I have blinkers on and its difficult to become enthusiastic about the images Im taking. At other times my perception is sharp and the excitement grows as I photograph, and the images are a reflection of my mood.
Walking, photographing, watching is captivating for me and it’s the way I wind down, or in a way you could call it meditative.
As my friend Candy Walker wrote on FB yesterday “I can mind quilts” and yes, I create mind quilts.
“See with one eye, feel with the other.”
― Paul Klee
Every Quilt designer should study the art of Paul Klee. I first saw some of his paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York last year and I’ve studied his art since.
So that leads me to think that sometimes, ‘seeing’ could be in he genes or is it that we are creative in the same way.
I force myself to take out my small camera and shoot the whole image rather than zoom in on an object. Sometimes it tells a better story. However, my eye always composes the small detailed image and I wonder if I need to train my brain to do both…. hence the small camera.
When I downloaded this image from my camera yesterday I was fascinated by the photo… so today I will go back and study it further and shoot it with the ‘big’ camera to gt the angle correct.
Learning to ‘see’ is a state of mind and its part of the program I’ll be teaching in San Miguel Allende in March.
Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk. –Edward Weston
