On Slowing Down

"Don't try to take better pictures, but to look. Yes, to look." ~ Guillermo Franko

I was recently in London and one Saturday night I grabbed my camera and walked to Chinatown. It was wall-to-wall people. It was lights, it was noise and it was, frankly, overwhelming. I was swept away by it all. Being principally a street photographer I started shooting, looking for images, but mostly it was just undisciplined shooting. After a couple of hours I was exhausted and left. As I fell into bed I quickly reviewed my images, all 246 of them. What I saw was upsetting and disturbing. It was all a mishmash of randomness. It was the opposite of what I am attempting to cultivate as a photographer, as a mindful photographer.

Let me talk about gear for a moment. I have turned my digital camera into what is sometimes referred to as a brick. That is, I've turned off the rear display, turned off the auto functions, and set the lens to manual focus. The few buttons on my camera have been deactivated. I've done everything I can to make it nothing more than an simple instrument of my creative vision, stripped of everything superfluous. In other words, I've done all I can to get the gear out of the way such that I can focus on the creative effort as directly as possible.

"Perfection is finally obtained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there's no longer anything to take away." ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

However, the gear is only part of it. That evening in Chinatown I still failed in discipline, failed in vision, failed in my attempt at being mindful.

Being mindful is a practice. It is something we must work at bit by bit, over time. In his book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin writes: "A practice is the embodiment of an approach to a concept. This can support us in bringing about a desired state of mind." (p44.) After suggesting a few methods by which one can develop a worthy creative practice, Rubin closes the chapter by summarizing the reasoning behind developing a practice:

"The purpose of such exercises is not necessarily in the doing, just as the goal of meditation isn't in the meditating. The purpose is to evolve the way we see the world when we're not engaged in these acts. We are building the musculature of our psyche to more acutely tune in. This is so much of what the work is about."

My night in Chinatown demonstrated that I had much work to do toward building a more robust musculature of my psyche. This comes as no surprise. I am aware that all worthy practice is without end, all practice is a fashion toward an outcome that will never arrive. There is no end, only means. That is to say, it all is practice.

I have taken measures towards enhancing the musculature of my creative psyche. Despite photographing with my "brick" of a camera, I obviously need to find a means to build a better practice towards the mindfulness I seek. For me, that means changing things up. I have returned to film photography. It is slower, more paced and methodical. And the analog affords mystery. There is no instant feedback, no display to read, thus my emotions are immediately uncoupled from the images I am making and consequently my head remains focused on what is in front of me, not what I can see on the display. And to challenge myself further still, I am using a big heavy medium-format camera--without a meter! Granted, it is a radical approach.

I am not suggesting that you throw out your gear and take a radical turn in your photographic practice. Nor am I suggesting that you jump on the current bandwagon for analog photography. But I am suggesting that you evaluate your approach to image making. The measure of your approach is not only the quality of images you're making, but also the creative practice you are developing. Does the practice enhance your sense of creative well-being, does it reward you psychologically and emotionally? If the answer to that is yes, then congratulations, now push yourself harder, creatively speaking. It seems to me that as creative individuals comfort is something we should we wary of. Lurking behind comfort is an undisciplined ugly beast. Likewise, if the answer is no, then you need to consider where you wish to go and how you're going to get there. Either way, we must continue to challenge ourselves. That is the only responsible creative approach.

Thanks for reading. You can find me at Doug Bruns Photography.

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