There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.~Leonard Cohen
The technical side of editing an image requires study to become proficient in using the tools. The sentient side requires dedicated hours of contemplation and artful connections.
Your image has to stand on its own. If it's hanging in a gallery, you're not going to be standing beside it to tell everyone who comes by that it's really better than it looks because of what it means to you or what went into making it. You shouldn't have to explain it. It's either a good photo, or it's not." ~Jay Maisel
CREATING MEMORIES
Star Prairie says: What is it exactly that called me here? Mystery is what called me here--the answers to questions I hadn't known yet to ask, hadn't lived yet. Something Wise knew I was getting ready to ask those questions, and to hear the answers, and it called me in so that we could talk.
Christina Brittain says: Star Prairie made me reflect on a lifetime of chasing knowledge to arriving at this current place where I now know lots of things. And my own question, "How many special memories stay with me from all that learning?" In truth, 'Very few." Until I picked up a camera and headed to Nature to share rare, unfiltered laughter with the world, and preserved many moments in images.
AROUSING INBORN WISDOM
Arousing your ancient, inborn wisdom will help you see more simply and completely, most often with a new realm of experience beckoning you to visually, emotionally, and spiritually explore paths never before travelled.
When you set logic and reason aside, and experience the world with your myriad of ancient senses, you begin to explore all that appears before you in a fresh new way.
Let your camera be your passport to revealing much more about the world around and within you. Create a working partnership with the main subject of your image, the dominant physical characteristics that form it, and the energy you and your subject possess, exchange, and project out through shared heart and spirit.
Creating a relationship with your subject through symbiotic caring helps you share deep, extraordinary 'love' dormant within. Your ancient wisdom guided by inborn sensory connections to the universe help connect and illuminate the viewer and the viewed into one.
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Take camera in hand to record present moments of joy...you are writing a future of preserved memories to be relived time and again.
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When you are strongly attracted to a particular subject, be it a person, place, or feeling, encourage your camera to capture and hold onto the present-moment experience and make it last. As long as the connection between observer and observed are sustained, new mysteries are apt to be revealed and preserved by your camera for visits at later times.
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Take time to ponder whether your inner attraction to the subject should be photographed in a wider frame to capture more, or a smaller frame to promote focused shared intimacy.
Sometimes you can 'see' greater detail in nature by looking more rapidly, a technique used by professional trackers, naturalists, outdoor educators, nature psychologists, martial arts practitioners, and others called 'scatter vision.'
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You apply this method of seeing by letting your attention sweep quickly across your entire field of vision, taking everything in broadly rather than detail by detail.
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As you look, first try to see out of the sides of your eyes in an "unfocused" manner, and then zoom directly in on something, anything, that catches your immediate attention, such as a sound, color, movement, shape, or even an internal feeling.
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Call upon as many ways of knowing as possible, beginning with the common senses of sight and sound, and then arousing the more obscure senses, such as place, direction, motion, territory, season, weather, temperature, color, form design, community, etc.
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As you begin to "scatter" your vision, connect deeply to your surroundings, half by eye and half by ear, and then make intuition-based connections to all facets of nature.
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Try jumping back and forth from your conscious, 'thinking' senses of sight and sound to your unconscious, 'being' innate senses.
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This is 'scatter vision,' which might also be called natural alertness, wakeful awareness, or deep listening in place.
Explore the world and self by blending creative photography with Nature around and within.