How Do You See?

Jan 9

How do you see? How do you see with a machine? How do you see with a machine of alloy and glass in your hands? Do you first see…or do you see when you hold up the machine to your eye? Does this seeing happen when the device held close to your face, in fact augments your vision? Does it enhance your ability to see…?

If seeing flows from perception, what do you perceive? How do you perceive? How do you open your mind, expand your consciousness, and focus your cognition on lines, shadows, luminance, curves, color, feeling, and emotionality to perceive first?

Do you wrestle with stopping your mind from running away on its own vector? Can you slow your mind to take something in? Can you decode the message for you—hidden in plain view? Can your mind flow around and envelope a thing, to glimpse then see clearly? And, as you are doing these things, can you compel yourself to decelerate to some slower velocity threshold of discovering?

When you acquire “the thing,” can you make yourself pause to appreciate it? Can you inquire about another matter…is this thing for you? Is it only for you? Has the thing come for you in that moment as a gift? Do you understand why such gifts come to you? To others? What is the thing to be seen as an experience in the thing you see ahead or above?

Then, upon receiving, can you ruminate on the nature of the gift? It is bigger than you? Is it more beautiful than you could otherwise imagine? When the weight of the machine dangling from the end of your arm reminds you that you are a photographic artist, what do you do? Do you decide there is a “next”?

Having approached “the thing” and absorbed some part of its essence, what is to be done? If you can see the art—the beauty possessed within something natural or made by human hands, can you form the story of its essence in that moment? In that place? In that time? With that machine?

Do you form the story, or does it arrive in front of you? Do you own it or did it appear to you…as a thing to be possessed—or as a gift? As you place the device to your face and feel the familiarity of its cool metal to your skin, does your mind move toward the thing? As you manipulate, rotate, re-position, select, rise, kneel, stoop, twist, pause, still, depress…what do you net? Was it worthy? Did you get it on the first shot? Did your first shot remind you of your old errors that occasionally (still) resurface at inopportune photographic moments?

Can you recognize what to do better in the next moment? Do you know how to correct as much as what to correct? Can you confront the idea that you may never come this way again? Can you summon calm to control your options before the moment slips away? When the light flees? Or the personality of the object changes? Can you effectively deal with this pressure to get the shot? Can you keep it firmly planted in your mind that the issue is not the machine, it’s your use of it? Do all these (inconvenient) truths point back to you? Can you own that? Can you flip it all around? Do you know how to? Is this a life lesson moment, photographic moment…both or neither? Can you make space for each? Can you hold each?

Can you live with the consequence of not getting a do-over? Of not passing this way again? Without ever getting another opportunity? Is this all too big for you? Do you minimize? Do you externalize? Do you resign? Do you make excuses…you’re tired, hungry, disadvantaged, addled, grumpy, or distracted? Do you turn and walk away because the efforting impeaches you—it reminds you that you remain on a longer path of skill formation than where this moment found you? Does this feel laborious or imposing like work? Like joy? Like love? Like fulfillment? Like reward? Is your perfectionism impeding the moment? Does all this drive home the truth that your skills (still) do not match your artistic idealism? Can you locate the technique, identify the method, or employ the tweak to enable the device to faithfully reproduce what you saw? Or, are you (still) the limiting factor?

Can you take the picture with all your technical prowess and artistic might yet be satisfied? Can you avoid overlooking the magic when the device captures a picture which transcends what you had in mind? Are you open to surprise? Are you open to wonder? Can you appreciate and nurture the union between machine and human…the outcome where the machine extends the human?

Can you pause and offer a sincere thanks for something you did not necessarily know would happen? Do you possess the humility to honestly admit you lacked the power to willfully summon the experience as you entered it? Perhaps unwittingly? Perhaps inadvertently? Unintentionally? Do you realize you’re not a rainmaker you fancy yourself to be but a humble artist…a witness? That “the thing” comes, when it comes? That there exists possibility that “the thing” possesses agency? That the moment of “the thing” will not be compelled to arrive one moment too early? That perhaps there’s a deeper, somewhat concealed truth: “the thing” arrives when you are ready? That much if not all of your art-making experience cannot be scheduled?

Can you appreciate the significance of what just happened? Can you be open to every facet of it as experience, as classroom, as feat, as work, as inspiration, as craft, as creation, as art, as outcome, as consequence, as victory, as defeat, as path, as destination…as choice?