Looking and Seeing: Assignment: Color

21 April
I started reading the book when I was in Japan, but didn’t have much chance to shoot.  I then tried picking up the book and shooting exercises a few weeks later in Tbilisi, but it was difficult to stay focused on the assignments when I had only a few days to explore the city.  Now that I’m back in Dubai and with no projects on the horizon, I’d like to complete this text and the exercises.  So this afternoon I reviewed my notes and set out on the first assignment, color.  I did so in my immediate neighborhood on SZR, but venturing a little bit further afield than usual.  I followed the suggested procedure by setting my intent (seeing for color), synchronizing my experience (mindfulness of the body in space and the experience of the phenomenal world), and being sensitive to flashes of perception.  What I found was restlessness - wanting to find images - and a repeated interest in objects rather than color.  It wasn’t until about 45 minutes to an hour into my 90 minute walk that I found I had forgotten about finding images.  I was simply engaged in my experience of walking and looking.  I will try again Friday and Saturday.  I haven’t yet looked at my images.  I plan to hold them until next week so as not to get caught up in creating images but focusing more on the process of being with the camera.


22 April
Walking familiar streets is a better way to start this practice.  There is is less compulsion to look for and shoot unusual things.  Form can be largely ignored since it’s been previously encountered, and it’s easier to bring the mind back to color when you’re not anticipating something new.  Maybe also because this was a second day of color shooting following quickly on the first there was some carry over, some small bit of momentum.  I did encounter forms, but today I didn’t get lost there but quickly found my way back to color.  But as I’ve noted before, color without form is just a swatch.

23 April
This morning I went for a bike ride in Wuheida.  My shooting intention was the neighborhood in the forms it presented:  people, buildings, landscapes, trees, animals, etc.  But what I couldn’t help noticing was color, line, texture, light, shadow - all the parts taken individually in Miksang practice.  Focusing on each individually gives allows us the opportunity to strengthen our awareness of each, but it is frustrating ignoring all the other phenomenon.  It is a bit like language practice.  Focusing on bits of grammar, for example, heightens our awareness of the feature under review, but in real life we can’t anticipate when and where we might be confronted with that particular feature.  And while we’re looking for it, a bunch of other features have presented themselves. In terms of teaching, it’s often easiest to choose a text and work through some of the features presented therein.  Trying to find a text with the features you want to teach can be a  frustrating and often impossible experience.

25 April
I didn’t have a chance to go out yesterday and as the week will probably go by fairly quickly, I need to take advantage of what time I have to finish up this part of the text by processing images and writing up my findings.  I shot perhaps 90 images in my two outings (I deleted several before I bothered to take a count), and from those I exported 23.  I then reread the section of the book on reviewing images.  The authors suggest doing this as a group exercise, but I’ll have to settle for myself for now.

“As a viewer, ask yourself:  How does the image appear to your eye and mind?  ... In terms of this particular assignment, is it color as color?  Do you experience a direct, full sense of color?  [If the image is one true perception], Bang!  The images tops the eye and stops the mind.”

It seems to me all of the following do so.

It is not enough, though, that the mind be arrested. It is possible the mind is perceiving, and the photographer is capturing, other flashes of perception such as texture, light, space, or form.  Perception opens itself and does not discriminate.  The images are good, they are Miksang images, they just don’t depict perceptions of color.  This is related to the point I made on the 23rd about the world presenting itself, even when we are not looking for it.

The authors suggest that sometimes too much stuff may be included in the image and cropping may help to retrieve the original perception.  I cropped a bit on a couple of mine, including the cup, which was taken from too great a distance.

I also cropped the bucket of tools, but this image itself is not really about color, but more perhaps form, or even objects.  On review it seems other images were less about color and more about form, or even documentary, like the extinguisher in the chair, or the rope, the traffic line, and the broken cone.

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