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| A hundred-12 months-vintage Live Oaks at Avery Island, Louisiana |
? Rad A. Drew
Have you ever had the feeling that the universe is trying to inform you something, however you?Re just now not listening? This beyond month I had a pair of things, reputedly impartial occurrences, that I now agree with are linked and conspiring to train me a lesson.
The first of these “events” occurred about a month ago, when I stumbled on a book by Torsten Andreas Hoffman, titled, Photography as Meditation (which I highly recommend, by the way). Now, as someone who has been both a photographer and one who’s practiced meditation on and off since college, the book really caught my attention.
In it, Hoffman makes a connection among meditation and photography, and shows that both are either intended to or by using their nature, require you to be inside the present second. Meditation may be described as the exercise of quieting the mind, even as pictures, in the doing of it, reasons us to recognition fairly narrowly on the situation we?Re capturing and in lots of ways enables us grow to be in that equal area of quietude.
On a latest journey to Louisiana, the second ?Occasion? Happened. Nancy and I went to Lafayette, Louisiana; she for a three-day metalsmith workshop and I to scout for an upcoming photo tour in and approximately New Orleans. While she became in her workshop, I turned into out exploring the marshes, swamps, and bayou u . S . Of southwest Louisiana.
The first day I went out I found that I was chasing an image. I couldn't drop Nancy at her workshop quick enough. I wanted to be on my way. There were pixels waiting to be wrangled. I was hell bent on getting a shot of a shrimp boat, coming in after a long day in the Gulf. I don’t know why; blame it on Forrest Gump, I guess! I wanted that image. I chased that image. I drove to the areas where the shrimp boats should be coming in and I was either too early or too late. I’d learn from a local fisherman that if I just went to this place or that place, I’d be sure to find what I was looking for. I looked and I chased and I ran.
What I found at the end of this first day is that I had burned up a lot of road but I’d taken very few photos, in spite of the fact that I was in some of the most beautiful country I’d ever seen. I had spent my entire day trying to be somewhere else and in so doing, I failed to be in the present moment and aware of the beauty and extraordinary photo opportunities all around me. Sometimes that adage, “Wherever you go, there you are” just isn’t true. I went but I wasn’t there.
That evening I began to reflect on my day’s experience. As I did, it occurred to me that the lesson that began the day I found the book Photography as Meditation , had continued with my day’s chaotic experience. I was being reminded to be still, to watch, to listen, and to feel; to be present; to clear my mind of the clutter of wanting and desiring , and to be still to receive all that was around me. I thought about Hoffman's book and began to realize that this is what he is talking about: this state of quite and receptivity is the place from which creativity flows.
The subsequent day, I set out with a one-of-a-kind mind-set. I concept approximately the position of breathing in meditation. One shape of meditation is to be nevertheless and virtually focus on one?S breath because it is going inside and out. I started my day being very aware of my breath. I determined on a path to go, instead of on a destination. While heading in that path, I stopped, I walked, I ate, I met human beings ? Locals and traffic, each ? And I had a memorable time. I photographed a good deal greater and I discovered that I was going with the waft of my day extra than I turned into trying to pressure it to be something aside from what it changed into. I immersed myself within the marsh, I walked under one hundred-year-old live very welltrees, and I saw and photographed birds I?D never seen before, and, with out effort, I found myself at the harbor as shrimpers were unloading their trap at sunset.
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| Thistle, Cameron National Wildlife Refuge, Southwestern Louisiana |
? Rad A. Drew
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| Boat-Tailed Grackle, Cameron National Wildlife Refuge |
? Rad A. Drew
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| Blue-Winged Teal, Cameron National Wildlife Refuge |
? Rad A. Drew
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| Black-Necked Stilt, Cameron National Wildlife Refuge |
? Rad A. Drew
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| Louisiana Marsh |
? Rad A. Drew
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| Miss Shirley, Cameron, LA |
? Rad A. Drew
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| Woolly Bugger Shrimp Boat, Cameron, LA |
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| Jennifer Kay, Cameron, LA |
? Rad A. Drew
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