We started the New Year with a wonderful talk by Peter Fraser - it was truly inspiring to see his work and to listen how he experiences photography. At the end Peter asked us to do the following experiment:
choose a safe place
sit or stand for 30 minutes, eyes closed
as soon as you open your eyes make photos of what you feel & not what you see…
This sounds easier in theory than in practice. So, yesterday late afternoon I suddenly felt to give this experiment a try. Choosing a very safe and familiar place I sat down in my kitchen, placed the camera on the table, set the timer for 30 minutes and closed my eyes. And it felt like a meditation which is not new to me. Thoughts were turning in my head, I let them come and go, a natural thing to do. Well, I had a pretty hectic day and not much to eat, hence, I started thinking of food and what I have in the fridge & that I could maybe make a photo of that?! Not really what this experiment was about, right? The thought left my mind again and time was advancing until the 30 minutes were over. I opended my eyes and instinctively moved straight to the tea pot and made a few shots of that. Only afterwards I realized that I was very thirsty… not sure if that was part of the experiment… I couldn’t make more photos, somehow now that my eyes were “dictating” again and it was the seeing sensation that led me to the subject and not my intuition.
And the experiment goes further… this morning I was doing Yoga in the living room, 20 minutes of concentration in order to be able to do the practice . The sun was shining right into the room, on to me and I felt “something”. I turned around and saw this on the wall:
Not sure if this photo fits into the brief… but then again, isn’t it about feeling the photo?! Which I often do and most of the time I don’t have a camera on me when that occurs! Maybe this experiment also teaches us to actually follow our instinct and to make the photo when it happens?! In the long run this can be an effective method, I guess.