I’ve often heard this – don’t
take photographs when you are out in nature, just soak in the beauty, the camera
is an impediment! Any intense moment is
to be experienced and released and cannot be caught in a cage. I have to say I largely agree. Often when I
take workshops in Nature I ask the participants to refrain from photography for
a time and simply be absorbed in the activity or experience. It may dilute the
intensity.
The reason why the camera is
an impediment is because of the ‘capturing’ attitude of the person behind
it. The attitude is the cage, not the
camera. When you want to hold on anything, any moment, any person, you block
yourself from the total experience. You
don’t absorb it entirely, with all your energy, your sensitivity, your
being. A part is not there – the part
that says, I want it to linger, I want to pocket the moment, I want to take it
back with me… the way a child may want to take back the ocean in a shell she
collects from the shore. Nice try -
doesn’t work! So, the wise one will say,
forget the camera, the totality of the experience is more important, because it
is that which will transform.
However, there is perhaps
another perspective we should consider.
Having the camera/tool without the hunger to capture, to see - to
simply see, not to hunt! Whether it is
the camera, or the gun, the liberated mind doesn’t go with a purpose to shoot
and ‘bring back the meat’. They simply
go for a walk and a beautiful moment may find itself reflected on a film, a
poem, a painting… The walk then and what comes through it is like the descent
of an art form into the consciousness of the artist, it is about being open,
not about ardent seeking. The artist who
paints the sunset, what is he doing? Is
he an idle, imitator or can there be a space where something deeper, nobler can
find an expression?
I’m not referring the the idle chattering mind
that has not experienced the deep ecstasy or silence that the experience of
beauty brings. There is a movement from silly prattling to a deeper experience
that perhaps doesn’t lend itself to words – like love. But there is also poetry, there is also
painting, there is also photography. If
these become forms of art, an ennobled art that captures the suspended
silences, the inner alchemy that the outer catalyses, that celebrates the dance
of creation, well that shouldn’t be confused with the hollow soda-pop exclamations
of, “Oh! how pretty yaar!”
