Contemplative Photoraphy

© Copyright 2007
G eorge D eWolfe

Contemplative Photography 
 What is important is our insight into the nature
of reality and our way of responding to reality

Thich Nhat Hanh

Contemplative Photography 
 Beauty is simply reality itself

Thomas Merton

Reality is simply the present moment

Alan Watts

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 To accept the present moment

of reality before us is

the greatest act of faith

we will ever perform.

Life, filled only with moments,

is a life of faith.

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Contemplative Photography:
Expanding Your Vision

We begin as children seeing the world as a mystery. The mind absorbs and reflects the
experiences of youth as a stainless mirror, and continually adds them to the knowledge bank of
neurons. These stored memories combine and create another world, the conceptual world, where
ideas and unlikely combinations of invisible elements stir constantly in the alembic of the mind.
Somewhere along the road to adulthood, the mind accepts this other conceptual world as the
real one. It is the purpose of Contemplation to return us to the world of the real, and the role of
Contemplative Photography is to express it. Contemplative Photography is where a calm and
aware mind unites with the primary elements of human vision. It is the clear visual expression of
reality.

Contemplation is paying attention, right now, wherever you are. Contemplation notices
things that cannot be accessed by language. It allows us to be calm and aware of our events and
surroundings. Contemplation is neither frivolous nor spiritual. It is human. It is a skill. It is a
choice. Thomas Merton called it, “…the direct intuition of reality…a direct grasp of the unity of
the visible and the invisible…a plain fact, a pure experience, the very foundation of our being and
thought.””

When practiced skillfully and over time, contemplation can attenuate or even cure most human
mental cares such as fear, anxiety, desire and stress – cares that begin with the conceptualizing
nature of the human mind. When practiced in conjunction with art, it is one of the highest,
and yet paradoxically one of the humblest, expressions of human life. It is seeing like a child, in
mystery.

Contemplative Photography is just such a practice. It combines the practice of seeing with the
age-old practice of mindfulness. Rather than just seeing like we do most of the time, dualistically
and conceptually bound, we see calmly and are totally aware of what is in front of us in the
moment. We see objects and relationships as one with no preconceived conceptual baggage.–
Contemplative Photography proceeds from the correct perception of reality to the clear expression of it. It is
different from other types of photography in that it demands nothing from us and nothing from
the object. It is an expression of the pure visual nature of reality as it unfolds in front of us in
the moment. Learning Contemplative Photography requires that we tear down the conceptual
edifice that was unknowingly created from infancy by our culture and reconstruct a new one: a
mind that is calm and a vision that is aware.

Contemplative Photography 
What is a Masterpiece?

Whenever I visit a museum there is a game I play.

Because it is impossible to see all the exhibits and
appreciate them all in one day, I go with an agenda.
Ten years ago I had a day to burn in Washington
and went to the National Gallery. The agenda,
knowing that the National had such a large collection
of portraits, was to determine, for myself, who the
greatest portrait painter in history was. At the end
of the day I had picked nine painters who I thought
might be contenders for the prize: Rembrandt,
of course, with his luminous and mystical images
of ordinary people; Rubens, who painted human
lustiness like know one else; And Renoir, whose
women are so compelling and beautiful. But it
was one other that caught my eye and made me sit
down and look. And, as I sat in front of the life-size
portraits of Anthony VanDyke, I felt a presence that
did not exist in the others. The people he painted
leapt off the canvas and became real.

It was under such a pretense that photography

began: to depict the presence of reality. Painters
like VanDyke produced works that appeared to
be “super-real,” even over or under-exaggerating
form and color, but yet still lay grounded in what
is called “The Faithful Image,” a one-to-one
correlation between what is represented and the
representation itself. Photography accomplished
that representational correlation to a precise (but

Contemplative Photography 
not exact) degree, and so accurately that it
was considered the visual “truth.” As a result
painters, from the middle part of the 19th
century, went looking for reality in other
places: Impressionism, Cubism, Abstract
Expressionism, and, in the latter 20th
century, a Postmodern sensibility that derives
its pleasure from a lack of form altogether
and a reliance almost totally on conceptual
content. In the midst of all these movements
photography also wanted to be accepted as
an artform, but, in order to do so, was asked
to relinquish (at least partially), in the mid-
1970’s, it’s strong suit of depicting the real
world for a “patch” job, the combining of many
images into one, and joined the rest of the art
world in the conceptual box canyon it had
ridden the dusty trail into. With the advent
of digital imaging we are now presented with
a “Virtual Reality” world where everything
is decidedly conceptual and “almost” real. Of
course, this is all a long story made very short.

Photography (Imaging) has come to be

synonymous with word Photoshop, the
industry standard digital image editing and
manipulation software. This as both a blessing
and a curse. It is a curse because it promotes,
willy-nilly, the compositing of images, the
mixing and matching of many images into
one - a montage, a “patch” job. The height of
this outrageous image manipulation exists in

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the pages of a well-known national tabloid,
where we are led to believe, absolutely, the
ultimate absurdity - that what is false is true.
In addition, it fosters the idea that conceptual
“Virtual Reality” is a replacement for the real,
and may, indeed, be superior to it. Other
than the fact that this might be inherently
dangerous, the one consistent observation I
have about “Virtual Reality” is that it lacks real
presence.

On the other hand, Photoshop, in its most

important, yet least understood role, allows
us to take a digitized image and give it the
presence we saw during the moment of
photographing. It is better at this one task
than any darkroom technique ever known.
This idea came to me only gradually, through
experience, working with both traditional and
digital photography.

Photoshop is an image editing software

program made by Adobe Systems and is
part of the “closed-loop” lightroom digital
workflow that begins with an input image
from a digital camera or scanner, is transferred
to a computer where Photoshop resides and
works, and finally, the finished image is output
to a digital printer. The quality, control, and
archival nature of this output are now superior
to any traditional photographic technology.
Furthermore - and this is the most important

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point - the image seems more real than it did
with traditional media.

I started to notice this difference eight years

ago when photographing jewelry. The metallic
gold and silver color and “substance” was
retained better in a digital image than with
the traditional color transparency. Gems
seemed more lifelike and sparkled off the
screen, as they never did before. I then began
to find, with the output from the new Epson
photo printers in the late 1990’s that the
printed image appeared more alive, more real,
and more full of life. I began making color
and Black & White prints that equaled the
tonal range of silver and dye prints, but the
realism of the digital print was superior. I
began to ask why, and the answer slowly, but
effectively, arose from the very foundation of
photography itself - Light.

In both B&W and Color we now have at our

command, in Photoshop, complete control of
the light in an image. Before, with traditional
media, our control was limited to a minimum
- burning, dodging, paper grade changes,
fill, and negative development. But the two
great bugaboos of the traditional darkroom
- local contrast and desaturated highlight
and shadow colors - were barely solvable
only by the few willing to master the difficult
techniques of masking and Dye Transfer.

Contemplative Photography 
The control of these difficult light problems
is literally at your fingertips in Photoshop and
the digital workflow.

In Photoshop we now have complete control

over local contrast. We can manipulate the
contrast of any area of a photograph down
to the pixel level. We can show differences in
the separation of light values from 1% off-
white to 0% paper base and from 99% gray to
100% black ink. If this isn’t enough, we can
also control the ambient sense of the overall
feeling of the light as it interpenetrates the
whole. In color, we can control precisely the
chroma (saturation) of highlight and shadow
colors, making them more vivid and real than
the unforgiving white highlights and black
shadows we had with traditional media.

A masterpiece is, above all, the creation of

an individual artist's genius. This suggests
that an individual authentic response to the
world is one of the main aspects of this genius.
Authenticity is different from originality.
Originality is the desire to do something
different. Authenticity is the desire to be
yourself. Finding this authenticity requires
that the artist have a desire for wholeness
in the world, that things have a pattern or
a unified place from which he can speak.
Wholeness and an authentic individual
response to this wholeness leads to what

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might be called Presence. Presence is the
subject the artist has chosen, represented by
the artist's authentic response, and driven into
wholeness by the artist with craft and skill
in the finished work. This is a Masterpiece
- determined by the very heart and soul of the
artist and his relationship to the world. The
process is life-long, it's manifestation nearly
impossible, and centered on wholeness with
the world.

If we look at the history of photography

and the great pictures it has given us, it is
truly the honesty of the light that has held
the whole together and made the moment
seem real. Luminosity creates our world as
photographers. It is the light that ultimately
produces presence, in the portraits of Anthony
VanDyke or in the field beyond your door.

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 Wholenness

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 Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost

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Radical Acceptance

Suppose we really don’t know what Reality is. What

is our next step?

Accept the moment in front of us

Acceptance is a CHOICE – Accept/Deny - Robert Frost

Acceptance is not judging

Acceptance is a commitment (over and over again)

Acceptance is acknowledging What Is

Acceptance leads to a positive authentic response

If you do not accept, you cannot see (non-acceptance is illusion)

Denial is the root of evil

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Mindfulness
Still photography is the visual capturing of a mo-
ment. The study of a moment is the discipline
of mindfulness, an ancient practice that allows us
to see the present moment non-judgmentally, on
purpose. Mindfulness brings us greater awareness,
clarity, acceptance, and mental calm. It allows us
to see the true nature of a moment, to see reality
truly, to penetrate from the actual world of the
senses to the mysterious world of intuition and
the spirit. It does this by allowing our true percep-
tual sense to come to the fore and allows all our
concepts and expectations of things to pass away.
It literally allows the mind to become clear.

Imagine a picture of a tree and its reflection in a

pool of water. The tree is reality and our mind is
the pool. When waves occur on the pool, we can-
not see the tree clearly, as when words, thoughts,
concepts, desires, and attachments cause our
minds to be turbulent and we cannot see reality
clearly (which is most of the time). When the
pool is calm, we can see the tree clearly, just as
when our mind is clear of concepts and desires, we
can see reality clearly. Mindfulness causes the pool
of the mind to become mirror-like, so that it can
reflect reality. It is seeing truly. It is seeing what is.

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Mindfulness puts you on an intuitive path, calms
your mind, and makes you aware of what is in
front of you at that very moment. It makes the
mind an empty vessel, ready to receive new and
pure experience. It is indeed the philosophy of a
moment, which is what we photograph.

So how do we recognize this feeling of mystery

accessed by Mindfulness so that we can take the
meaningful photographs that fill our lives with
peaceful joy and tranquility? My first experience
with this was to sit quietly in front of a sea shell
and practice Mindfulness. The shell, in that mo-
ment, seemed to glow with a slight iridescence
that was greater than before. Notice any change
like this in the object– shape, outline, or tonal
value, no matter how small. This is an indication
that the subject is not really changing, but that
your vision is changing to see reality purely, as it
is.

Another “tell” is the tension in yourself that “tells”

you when and when not to take a picture. I have
found that when the “tell” leads me away from
the image, or ”tells” me not to take it, that this is
an indication of an important change in my vision
about reality, and I go ahead and make the picture
anyway, even if I can’t see anything visible that’s
interesting, or something that I would normally
photograph. Trust this sense – it is your intuition
and Mindfulness at work at its best.

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Basic Mindfulness

Choose a comfortable, alert position. Sit quietly,

close your eyes.

Focus your attention on your breath. Keep your

attention on the rim of your nostrils watching the
cool air come in and the warm air go out.

Ignore any thought, memory or sound, smell or

taste. Focus your attention on your nostrils and
nothing else.

If you notice your mind drifting with a thought,

calmly acknowledge the thought, let it pass, and
bring your focus mindfully back to the breath.

Practice for 15 -30 minutes a day for 2 weeks.

You should see a definite improvement in your
calmness of mind and awareness of reality. The
effect is cumulative: the more you practice mind-
fulness, the more it calms the mind, the more you
see truly.

When the mind is united with the breath, we are

able to fuse inside and outside into one, and with
focused mind on the present moment, unlim-
ited possibilities for expression of that moment
through photography abound.

What changes is that we no longer see incorrectly

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 Luminosity

Contemplative Photography 18
Why Luminosity Is Important
Luminosity is represented in a photograph by
tones of black, white, and gray. Luminosity is
light. It represents all that we can see about
the world we photograph. Every object,
event, and mood depends upon visible light
represented by luminosity in the photograph.

Luminosity is important to visualize when we

are taking a picture, when we are transforming
it in Photoshop, when we calibrate our
monitor, and when we print. Because of the
nature of visual perception, hue and saturation
are processed separately from luminosity in
our brains, and we must forcibly separate 1
luminosity and train ourselves to see it to
accomplish the quality we desire in a digital
fine print. A good print starts with seeing the
luminosity of a scene and ends with it.

The photograph of the Matterhorn (Figures

1 and 2) was made when I was 19 years old
in 1964 with a Kodak Instamatic camera.
This photograph has been one of my greatest
teachers. I have kept it by my bedside for years
and I’ve learned more about photography and
the world from it than all the hundreds of
books or teachers or photographs I’ve known.
It’s largely important because I made it before
I knew anything at all about photography or
f/stops or film speeds or great photographers. 2

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It is pristine vision. The camera was the
cheapest Instamatic Kodak made (about
$10, if I remember correctly). The film came
in a cartridge that you dropped in and the
image size was 1 inch by 1 inch. I knew at
the instant I snapped the shutter that the
photograph was a good one, at least visually.
I have spent over four decades trying to figure
out why, and I have learned much. One of the
most important of those things I’ve learned
is about light and how to photograph it.
That morning, looking at the Matterhorn, I
discovered luminosity.

The light in this photograph has always been

special to me, and I continually want to know
why. The light seems to be a part of the scene
and yet not part of it. How do we see this
and how do we, metaphorically, put ourselves
in the path of its beam? The answer, for me,
came from the aesthetic interpretation of two
concepts that describe light: ambient light and
reflected light.

Ambient light is the light from a light source

(in this case the Sun) that falls upon the
subject we are photographing. Reflected light
is the light reflected from the subject (in this
case the Matterhorn) we are photographing.
The quality of both these types of light is seen
and represented differently in the black and
white luminous tones of a photograph. Here

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is what two great men have written about this
peculiar phenomenon:
From the 1978 Polaroid Annual Report:
Dr. Edwin Land:
“… the photograph is two entirely different
kinds of report transmitted to us by what
appear to be mixed languages, the language
for delineating objects and the language for
displaying illumination.

There have not been many great

photographers in history, but the great
ones usually turn out to be masters of the
vocabulary of these two utterly different
languages in black and white photography.
For most would-be photographers these
languages are mixed together and never
disentangle, like the babble of voices at a
cocktail party. The breathtaking competence
of the great photographer is to cause the object
of his choice to be revealed with symphonic
grandeur, meticulous in detail, majestic in
illumination.”

From Natural Light Photography (1952):

Ansel Adams:
“Light, to the accomplished photographer, is
as much an actuality as is substance such as
rock and flesh; it is an element to be evaluated
and interpreted. The impression of light
and the impression of substance which are
achieved through the careful use of light are

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equally essential to the realistic photographic
image…To utilize it (natural outdoor light)
fully you must know how to evaluate its
intensities and qualities, not only in their effect
on sensitive emulsions, but also in relation to
the intangible elements of insight and emotion
that are expressed in a good photograph.
A certain esthetic philosophy is involved;
something more than the physical conditions
of light and exposure…the chief problem is
to preserve the illusion of light falling upon
the subject. A print intended to convey an
emotional impression might differ from a
normal photographic record.”

Both Land and Adams are talking here about

the same thing. They are talking in general
terms about the two types of light that a
photographer has to deal with: the light
reflecting from a subject (reflected light) that
causes its texture and form and the light falling
on the subject (ambient light) that causes the
overall “mood” or aesthetic character of the
image. The quality of light both reflected from
the object and the ambient illumination falling
on the entire scene are represented in the
photographic print by luminosity alone.

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Visualizing Luminosity
Taking time to visualize and control the
luminosity in a photograph will pay rich
rewards in the print. The first tool that I
use for this purpose is an item borrowed
from traditional photography that helped
photographers visualize a scene in black and
white before taking the picture - a Kodak
Wratten 90 monochromatic viewing filter
as shown in Figure. Next to it is the Tiffen
Black & White Viewing 2filter - the same filter,
just in a fancier (and handier) - viewer. The
filter itself is amber, but it cancels out color
and turns the world into a monochromatic 3
view that shows the contrast relationships
and tonal mergers that will occur in black and
white photographs. This filter is also used
extensively in the motion picture industry for
the same purpose. The "90" helps us to see
a world that we have trouble visualizing. It
is available in many forms, from the original
Kodak gel to the specially made viewers by
Tiffen. (Figures 3 and 4)

When I study the scene in front of me for

luminosity using this filter, all I have to do, if
I like what I see through it, is, in Photoshop,
draw the saturation slider in Adobe Camera 4
Raw to -100 (which desaturates the image
and shows only the luminosity. Note: In
Photoshop CS3 and Lightroom I simply

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press the Grayscale button) and I'll usually
achieve a decent black and white (luminosity)
image right off the bat. After getting a good
luminosity image (by further refinement in
Camera Raw or Lightroom, if necessary), I
either keep it that way for a black and white
print, or convert it back to color. With
this simple tool and correction, we see that
luminosity is the key to controlling many
important things in the image: Color, shadow 5
detail, highlight detail, midtone separation,
and tonal blending in the2image.
In Figure 5 we see the original color scene, in
the middle photograph Figure 6 we see the
image with the 90 viewing filter, and the final
photograph Figure 7 shows it converted into
black and white. The viewing filter subtracts
most of the color from the image and we
view it in monotone, helping us to see the
possibilities of the luminosity.
6
Seeing and Controlling
Luminosity in Photoshop

While it is relatively easy to see the reflected

light from the surfaces of objects and control
them with local burning and dodging in
Lightroom and Photoshop, ambient light
is quite another matter. As is hinted by
the quotes from Adams and Land, both
are important for the “presence” of a good
7

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photograph and print, in both color and black
and white.

The struggle to find a method to reveal

ambient light started for me over ten years
ago. Through the work of Adams and realistic
painters I discovered that there exists in each
photograph a web of light that represents the
ambient “glue” that holds the feeling of the
image together and allows it to unify. In reality
it is a web of light that creates wholeness to
the image.

Photoshop has a very good tool to identify

and modify this “web of light” in a photograph
– Color Range in the Filter Menu. To find
this web in an image I open Color Range
and look at the Highlights, Midtones, and
Shadows as separate areas. The one that has
a web of light that covers most of the image
(it could be in one or all three areas), is then
chosen using the Color Range command,
which turns that area into a selection that can
be manipulated with Curves or Levels or other
necessary tools. The following examples show
an image in various stages of diagnosing where
the web of light exists, what needs to be done
to enhance the web, and the final photograph
showing the result. (Figures 8 & 9). Notice
how the highlights and the midtones show a
web throughout the image and the shadows
do not. I increased the contrast in both the

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 8

9
Contemplative Photography 26
midtones and the highlights using the Color
Range selections to achieve the final adjusted
image.

A photograph usually contains both ambient

and reflected light, but one will usually
dominate the other. Think of reflected light
as defining an object and ambient light as a
feeling. Absolutely defining such aesthetic
truths is impossible. By engaging ourselves in
this discovery process, we see that luminosity
has meaning. There is a visual vocabulary of
tonal value caused by luminosity in black and
white and color photographs that is created
by the action of light alone, independent of
content. The answers to any questions about
luminosity must be treated as a continually
unsolved riddle that always changes and that
offers us endless possibilities for an authentic
response of expression in a photograph.

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 Shape

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Shape and Space
One of the things I observe in people learning
to see is that they are visually attached to
shapes. This is hardwired in the visual cortex
of the brain. But cameras don’t just see shapes.
Cameras also see the space around the shapes,
so that a photograph is a dual representation
of what artists call Negative space and Positive
shape. Psychologists call this phenomenon
Figure/Ground, where the figure is the
positive shape and the ground(background)
is the negative space. The camera sees both of
these equally, but most new photographers
see only the shape. Because of this we have
to learn how to see the negative space as well
as the positive shape to give harmony and
balance to the image. It is part of the process
of learning to see reality.

Looking at the negative space surrounding

a shape makes it easier to see the overall
harmony of a picture. There are three ways
to see how the camera sees this, easily. One
is to use a 35mm slide mount and compose
the picture through it rather than through
the viewfinder of the camera, trying to see
the negative spaces only. Another is to smear
a thin coat of Vaseline on a piece of clear
packing tape, paste it to the viewfinder and
see general fuzzy shapes and spaces in the
viewfinder, but detailed images on the negative

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when it is developed, dominated by the shapes
and spaces you saw. Lastly, take the 35mm
slide mount and a watercolor marker, stand
facing a window, hold the slide mount up to
your eye, and draw on the window exactly
what you see outdoors.

“Reality,” writes Ray Grigg,” is often contrary

to appearances.” Why are we so attached to
shape that it takes exercise and practice to see
all of visual reality, including the space around
it?

Because of its hardwired nature in the brain,

seeing just shape(or figure) alone is contrary
to seeing what exists. When we see shape we
see appearance, because the brain is “running
home to mama.” But when we see shape and
space together(photographically speaking), we
see reality as it is. The act of defying what the
brain actually does, in the visual sense, allows
us to see shape and space correctly. This is the
major reason we have difficulty in seeing the
world as it is photographically. We have to
overcome what we already think is real.

In order for us to see something, it must exist.

This is not the dualistic existence of René
Décartes, the cogito ergo sum, I think therefore I
am. Rocks, according to this statement, do not
exist, because they don’t think. But, indeed,
rocks do exist. We see them, they change.

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They appear as shapes, coming from nowhere,
then disappearing after millennia into dust and
nothingness. We do not see this. Our surface
sense of seeing(the hardwired one) attaches
to the object as if grasping for it and cannot
let go. When we grasp at something, we can
see nothing else. It causes suffering. Similarly,
when this object changes, we suffer because
of the loss of the object seen. This is repeated
thousands of times daily to photographers
of all persuasions. Wilber Wright’s reaction
to the first flight of the airplane in 1903 was
to turn around and yell at the photographer,
“Did you get the picture?!” How many
photographs has each of us lost because we
were trying too hard, grasping to get the
fleeting last light of momentary existence? In
the most profound and mysterious of ways,
something arises out of nothing, positive shape
is created from negative space. When you
reach the point where you can not only see,
but feel this phenomenon, you have gone a
long way in learning to let go, to stop grasping,
to see truly.

Let’s look for a moment at the accompanying

photographs, one a straightforward example of
negative space and positive shape, the other a
deep and provocative image where the shapes
and spaces are hidden. The corn plant shows
the black background and positive shapes
clearly. While it took months of looking,

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catching the light just right, and finding the
precise viewpoint, the play of shape and space
is marvelous. The photograph of the light on
the bushes pushes the ralationship of space
and shape further. Here there are shapes, but
they are not as well defined as the corn plant.
They are more subtle, and tend to bring out
light and mystery. The third image of the
reflection taxes space and shape to the limit,
so that you have difficulty telling one from the
other. It brings out the essence of what Henry
Thoreau hinted when he said we must look
through and beyond Nature. These images
illustrate what it is possible for positive/
negative space to accomplish in a photograph:
one the obvious play of shape and space and
the other a hidden, intuitive, and almost
invisible performance.

But I hesitate. Looking for the hidden reality

behind the appearances of things is a wordless
and silent occupation. One can say much and
overpower the experience with meaningless
and uncertain phrases. It must always be
the photograph that speaks to us, the visual
alembic of silence and grace. A photograph
can be many things. For me it will always
be a probing into the hidden world behind
the appearance of things that the qualities
of shape and space point to. It is stepping
into an autumn field to look for the meaning
of existence, to find, as a great philosopher

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once suggested, “the dim dream that builds a
milkweed pod.”

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 Corn Plant

Light & Bushes

Reflection

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 Authentic
Response

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 The Koans of Seeing

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The Koan
A koan is a riddle that has no solution in rational
thought. The answer, if it can be truly called an
answer, is found in the authentic intuitive response
to an experience. What is required to “solve” a koan
is not to copy or repeat but to respond in a full, au-
thentic, and living manner to the moment. It seeks
for an intuitive and comprehensive grasp of the
whole. In rational terms, the koan is never solved. It
is calm, quiet, undisturbable, and appears to give us
a glimpse of eternity.

The Koans of Seeing are a series of visual koans

that can only be responded to authentically, by
the photographer, in a photograph. No thought,
conceptual idea, or analytical process can solve the
koan. Only an authentic photograph. An authen-
tic photograph is one that is taken by you with no
conceptual, cultural, contextual, or copied residual
vision or thought. Authentic response is always
intuitive and original.

The lessons learned from these photographic koans

are many, but the most important I think is that
they allow you to solve puzzles in life that have no
rational answer. In a way, the koan is never solved,
it is only realized. Realizing the koan is finding the
center.

Contemplative Photography 37
The Blank Wall

Contemplative Photography 38
Listening

Contemplative Photography 39
How Long is a Moment?

Contemplative Photography 40
Awakening

Contemplative Photography 41
Hidden Wholeness

Contemplative Photography 42
The Web of Light

Contemplative Photography 43
Seeing Through

Contemplative Photography 44
The Unknown Color

Contemplative Photography 45
 Photography
and
The Spiritual Quest

Contemplative Photography 46
Photography and The Spiritual Quest

I spent the first half of my life talking to God;

I am bent on spending the last half listening.
I found that talking gets in the way. Talking
intrudes into my relationship with the universe
by cutting me off from it because of what I want
and grasp for. But it’s not really important what I
want because once I gain the object of my desire
I worry about losing it. Either way I suffer. So,
what I see and accept now is in the reality before
me in the moment. Accepting is different than
grasping: there is a calm and aware and unified
sense to it. And I’ve learned that when I’m pres-
ent now the world is a unity to me and not frag-
mented or separate. To be whole, to be centered,
to have meaning in our lives, to be at peace – this
is the Spiritual Quest of old.

In order to understand this personal riddle of ex-

istence, to be on a Spiritual Quest, each one of us
must somehow examine reality – the true reality
of ourselves and our relationship to the universe.
Accomplishing this feat requires that we confront
raw nature and ourselves. The great religious
leaders of the past, philosophers, poets and art-
ists grappled with this problem, typically, in wild
places.

Be Still

Observe Everything

Believe Nothing
Contemplative Photography 47
Yet, it is in the heart where the real search begins.
It began, for me, oddly, with a rock in the forest.

I had come down off a long treacherous moun-

tain ridge and was walking homeward through
the forest. It was dusk, and specks of light dotted
the brown floor here and there. A small clearing
appeared a little way down the darkening trail,
and seemed like a good place to rest, I told myself,
after a long day with the camera. As I approached
closer to the clearing I could just make out a shin-
ing white rock that seemed to glow with a cool
whiteness that is indescribable. Perhaps it was
only my mind playing tricks with me, but I can
swear the brightness grew in magnitude. A rock
has no business doing this, my objective geologic
sense told me. The professors in their dusty labs
didn’t warn us. There were no specimens for
identification I had ever come upon with which
to compare it. How the photograph I made came
to be an almost perfect image of that moment is
a mystery to me, yet as my attention centered on
the stone, something similarly inside centered
itself and was formed. The craftsmanship of
the camera and the inner feeling of an outward
cxpresence were one: the image contained the
experience.

Contemplative Photography 48
Contemplative Photography 49
We begin, then, unknowingly, with a plot of
ground. For me it began with the rock and is
composed of many other experiences: in a frost
covered field, in the quiet grace of a milkweed
pod, in a landscape devoid of form. I look con-
tinually to renew this magical experience because
somehow, mysteriously, it forms my being and
relationship to all that exists. Our acceptance of
these mysteries starts from such a place as a white
rock glowing in a clearing and expands outward to
include other parallel experiences and the entirety
of our experience of reality. All I have to do is set
forth across an open field and it appears before
me. It is not something imaginary or invoked
— it is real. This experience of reality is as old as
the human race. It demands, for whatever reason,
expression. The Spiritual Quest, true photog-
raphy, and all art start from the same beginning:
an experience of unity and oneness from an event
that turns our ordinary world upside-down. We
spend the rest of our lives in pursuit of and ex-
pressing this Quest. This workshop deals with
some of the skills involved in the Spiritual Quest,
and, above all, as those skills relate to the photo-
graphic expression of it.

It would be presumptuous of me to even try to tell

you what is a meaningful experience for you

Contemplative Photography 50
to capture in a photograph and even more so to
presume to know your own Spiritual Quest, but
it is not presumptuous for you to tell yourself.
What I can relate to you about first experiences
of the meaningful images in your life is that they
tend to be very small, as is the way of all great
things. There is this slight inclination of change
in you and the subject, a feeling of subtle calm,
and not elation. It is a vision of certainty, but you
cannot say of what, cannot speak the words. It is
timeless, childlike, unspectacular and mysterious.
The emotion is one of great humility – and great
interior power, of being one with the world. It is
an encounter of the immediacy of visual percep-
tion and the quiet serenity of a calm and aware
mind. As I become older I am aware that this
feeling is similar to the rustling of leaves on a fall
day. Amidst this grace of the fall of leaves is a
hesitancy present on the fringes of awareness. I
watch and listen to them as an animal might listen
to a strange sound, with my head cocked this way,
then that. It is a feeling with which I have associ-
ated the harbinger of the Spiritual Quest, perhaps
even the herald of God himself. It is the sound of
silence and beginning and hope.

I have been a mountain climber for over 40 years.

There is great spiritual and physical energy in

Contemplative Photography 51
it and we have this saying that if there are three
stars shining in the sky in the morning you should
start. This is a geographical statement and a spiri-
tual one. It reflects an attitude about the relation-
ship between the heavens, the earth and ourselves.
This morning I arise softly and carefully, and take
my camera and old pack from the closet. With
the same curiosity that must have moved our an-
cient ancestors I approach the door to my dwell-
ing in silence, always silence. I look outward, but
not only with my eyes, to a sky full of stars. There
are few things as joyful to the heart as this: this
beginning again, this wonder, this mystery.

Contemplative Photography 52
Qualities ofThe Spiritual Quest

Be Still

Observe Everything

Believe Nothing

Contemplative Photography 53
Be Still

Photographs can create unity and expression only

when they embody the silence from which they
emerge. Silence opens the door to a new dimension,
a secret passage, an invisible hole in the fabric of
the universe. Being still creates the gate through
which seeing and the camera can operate together
harmoniously.

Contemplative Photography 54
Observe Everything

Man cannot afford to be a naturalist,

to look at nature directly, but only
with the side of his eye. He must
look through and beyond her.
Henry David Thoreau

Contemplative Photography 55
Believe Nothing

Awareness cannot be taught, and when it is

present it has no context. All contexts are
created by thought and are therefore
corruptible by thought. Awareness simply
throws light on what is, without any
separation whatsoever.

Toni Packer

Contemplative Photography 56
Selected Bibliography

Barclay, William, The Mind of Jesus, San Francisco, Harper Collins, 1976.

Cheng, François, Empty and Full, The Language of Chinese Painting, Boston, Shambhala, 1994.

DeWolfe, George E., George DeWolfe's Digital Photography Fine Print Workshop, San Francisco, McGraw Hill,
2006.

Edwards, Betty, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, Los Angeles, Tarcher. 1999

Feng, Gia-Fu and English, Jane, Tao Te Ching, New York, Vintage Books, 1972.

Grigg, Ray, The Tao of Being, Atlanta, Humanics New Age, 1989.
The Tao of Zen, Boston, Charles E. Tuttle, Inc., 1994.

Gunaratana, V.H., Mindfulness in Plain English, Boston, Wisdom Publications, 1994.

Hagen, Steve, How The World Can Be The Way It Is, Wheaton, Quest Books, 1995.

Hanh, Thich Nhat, The Miracle of Mindfulness, Boston, Beacon Press, 1976.

Herrigel, Eugen, Zen in the Art of Archery, New York, Vintage Books, 1989.

Kabat-Zinn, John, Wherever You Go There You Are, New York, Hyperion, 1994.

Livingstone, Margaret, Vision and Art, The Biology of Seeing, New York, Harry N. Abrams, 2002.

Loori, John Daido, The Zen of Creativity, Cultivating your Artistic Life, New York Ballantine Books, 2004.

Merton, Thomas, The Way of Chuang Tzu, Boston, Shambhala, 1992.

Mystics and Zen Masters, New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993
Zen and the Birds of Appetite, Boston, Shambhala, 1968

Packer, Toni, The Work of This Moment, Boston, Charles E. Tuttle, Inc., 1995.

Soeng, Mu, Trust In Mind,Boston, Wisdom Publications, 2004

Suzuki, Shunryu, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, New York, Weatherhill,Inc, 1970

Tse, Mai Mai, The Tao of Painting , Bollingen Series, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1959

Zeki, Semir, A Vision of the Brain, London, Blackwell Science, 1993

Contemplative New York, Oxford University Press, 199957
Photography
Inner Vision,
 Be Still
Observe Everything
Believe Nothing

Contemplative Photography 58