Part Four - Where I am cont.

This is the last post for this blog. The images to follow were all taken on Sable Island, NS after I had received training in Miksang. Hopefully, you will notice a difference in my style compared with the images in the previous blog.

This simple image portrays a strong sense of ‘horse’; curvature of the back, texture of the mane and the strong connection with the eye.

Simple yet strong images exist and with a little looking they can be seen every day, every where. This sand pattern on Sable stopped me as I drove along the beach on my ATV.

One of my favourite images for lots of reasons, mostly for its simplicity and the strong sense of time; there is a water droplet delicately hanging from the wire.

Through spending time observing rather than shooting with the camera different viewpoints of the same image appear. These sanderlings remind me of people wandering through a shopping centre.

This is another good example of what one sees when one spends time observing. I really like this.

Chogyam Trungpa in Dharma Art describes the experience of being relaxed and open when observing.

There is a standing-still quality, a stalement in which comments and remarks become unimportant, and seeing things as they are becomes the real thing. Its like a frog sitting in the middle of a big puddle, with rain constantly falling on it. The frog simply winks its eyes at each raindrop that falls on it, but doesn’t change it’s posture. It doesn’t try to either jump into the puddle or get out of the puddle. 

This is how I felt when I took this photograph of the tree trunk. It was late in the day during a stormy, windy, wet and cold day. I was cold and tired and heading home but when I turned a corner I saw this image. It stopped me completely and I knew, despite the weather, I had to capture this. The image held me still and it seemed as though the stormy weather had dissapated. I really felt like the frog in the puddle.

Once one has performed the process of observing, discerning and finally capturing the image several times the processoccurs very quickly so that brief moments such as this one are seen and captured.

This is another good example of looking.  I was on top of a dune watching an incredible sunset when I turned around to look east and saw this image. So simple and yet so much there, for me anyway. The delicate pink sky and face of the dune beat anything I saw in that sunset.

A sand bucket discarded on the beach. But woth wondeful patterns of sand.

A wonderful perception for me. Perceptions are of course truly personal.

This is a good example of how labels can affect your perceptions. These gulls are greater black back gulls. They are a nasty bird, attacking chicks in nests, pecking at the eyes of seal pups and quite common on Sable Is. This label would distract one from seeing their true beauty. Without the label a wondeful perception as this one can arise.

A simple broken shell on a beach.

To conclude, this quote from Henri Cartier-Bresson sums up my thoughts on photography.

My passion has never been for photography in itself, but for the possibility-through forgetting yourself-of recording in a fraction of a second the emotion of the subject, and the beauty of the form; that is, a geometry awakened by what’s offered.