Through Awareness All Things Can Become Visible
In The Slow Approach, we share individual perspectives on what it means to slow down, and how doing so can have a positive effect on our experiences as well as the images we capture.
When I recently learned of the Slow Photography Movement, I thought it might be a group of photographers dedicated to the “slower” pace of film-based photography. As I listened to Matt Payne’s Podcast on Slow Photography, however, I realised it was more about your attitude towards your own photography than what style of photography you practice. It’s a counter-culture swing against the current trends in image-making.
What I got out of the interview was the emphasis on being in the moment. That is, not being in such a busy mental state as to approach the subject with preconceived ideas.
In an article I published over 20 years ago I expressed similar sentiments. I was writing about what I termed Awareness, and I stated it to be the most significant creative factor in photography and the least discussed.
Awareness is an experience that I can recount back to early childhood memories. It’s a process of recognising the emotional tension between visual elements, and finding that magical balance where chaos is replaced by order contained within a frame. That frame can be a memory of a bedroom window, viewfinder, or ground glass screen of a camera.
But Awareness is also about respecting your subject. To know it, to immerse yourself in it, to go beyond the superficial. It requires understanding, compassion, sensitivity, and time. These qualities not only guide your compositions but also your decisions during print making, becoming incorporated into the very ethos of your photography.
I wrote my article, Awareness, within the context of producing my large format color calendar of Western Australia, called Horizon. Using color transparency sheet film, a wooden field camera, no electronics, and no filtration, it is a very simplistic photography kit. Today, I still use the same camera. Simplicity frees me.
So I invite you to step back in time, to read my thoughts of twenty years ago about landscape photography and maybe compare them to where we are today. In an age where landscape photography has become prolific, have the fundamentals of meaningful landscape photography really changed? I think not.
“Everything in the world is invisible, except that which we make semi-visible. By the introduction of awareness, all things can become visible”
Early Memories of Awareness
One of my earliest recollections of Awareness was as a child. It was a summer evening and I was lying in my bedroom staring out through the darkness of an open window. The night air was warm, humid, and still. Out of the darkness, an enormous bolt of white light burst across the sky, snaking and dividing as it drove a forked path into the ground. In that instant, the sky was transformed from deepest black to palest blue, burning a ghost image onto my retina. The image was a gnarled old jarrah tree framed within the bedroom window, silhouetted against the sky. Its branches reaching skywards, opposite to the lightning’s direction, as if both elements were communicating in some secret way. There was a roar of thunder, the weatherboard house shook and for a fraction of a second, this image framed by the window seemed strangely satisfying. It was as if the emotional tension created between these elements was held in some magical balance by the frame.
Seeking Balance and Harmony
Years later, as an adult, I would obsessively seek out that mystical feeling of balance between elements and emotion framed within the viewfinder of a camera. Nature provides for me some of the most compelling subject matter, capable of evoking simultaneously conflicting feelings. These can be joy, wonderment, awe, and fear. Such tension between emotion and the reality of the physical forms created by nature’s forces is inspiring. It is this search for beauty, balance, and harmony which finds me making photographs in wild places.
Simplification
Other than a tool, cameras are of little interest to me. This is not to imply a lack of attention to technique or disinterest in new technology, merely that they are secondary to making the photographs.
Sound technical knowledge comes from familiarity with equipment, materials, and regular practise. Simplification of tools and techniques is, to my mind, highly desirable. Simplification can accelerate learning and is also necessary in minimising the weight of my backpack.
To make the images for this calendar I use a large format, wooden field camera. It is basically a box shape with a lens at the front of the box and a ground glass screen at the back, with leather bellows in-between.
Upside Down and Back to Front
The leather bellows allow the lens to be moved closer to the ground glass screen or further away from the ground glass so that the image can be brought to focus on the screen. To see the image, you have to throw a black cloth over the ground glass screen and place your head under the cloth, just like in the old days. The image is dark, always back to front and upside down. You cannot hand hold this type of camera, it must be mounted on a tripod.
The camera has no electronic circuitry, no auto-focus, or built-in exposure meter. Sheet film is carried in a film back which is inserted in place of the ground glass screen before I make a photograph. I use three lenses, representing wide-angle, normal focal length, and short telephoto in this film format.
No Filters
I don’t use filters, except for clear ultraviolet filters which are there for lens protection, although I sometimes take these off. All of my colour photographs are made on transparency (colour slide) film.
Great effort goes into matching the colours reproduced here in the calendar with those colours actually recorded by the film. I prefer to use mostly one film type, being familiar with its exposure and colour characteristics under a wide range of lighting conditions. I determine exposures using a handheld light meter.
Working within Limitations
This camera is bigger than a 35mm or medium format camera, and is slower to use. However, for me it has advantages. First is the clarity of the reproductions which can be obtained from the larger 4x5 inch film size. This is important to me so that I can preserve maximum detail in the calendar images. Preservation of detail also heightens the illusion that the viewer could literally walk into the photograph and touch the subject.
Second, as the camera is slower to use, the very act of making a photograph becomes a more conscious series of sequences. I am required to think carefully of my viewpoint, the subject’s form and dynamics, the contrast range of the light, and all of this prior to getting the camera out of the backpack. I don’t want to go to the trouble of unpacking my camera for an image which I think is mediocre.
It’s not the Subject but your Feelings
It is not so much the subject, but your feeling towards the subject, which matters most in photography. To make an aesthetically pleasing photograph requires an awareness, comprising of an understanding, compassion, and sensitivity towards the subject.
Awareness is the least discussed element in good photography and a lifelong process. I have passed areas I have previously visited and have been surprised by the potential images I had not seen. There is the constant trap of approaching the subject with preconceived ideas and when the prevailing conditions do not fit these ideas, returning empty-handed.
Awareness as a Creative Tool
This process of gaining awareness is the most significant creative factor influencing my compositions. To me, compositions are about feelings. They are a melting pot of experience and understanding which the photographer brings to their subject and it is how these feelings and thoughts correlate to the size, shape, and placement of elements as they are composed on the ground glass screen.
Building Awareness
Building your awareness of your subject requires you to go on your own inner voyage of discovery, to develop your curiosity, to constantly be open to the unexpected.
Within Nature, I find this process of awareness infinite. It is not only a physical and creative process for me but a spiritually rejuvenating process that I can find nowhere else.
(Revised essay from 2000 Horizon Calendar, Stormlight Publishing, Applecross, Western Australia)
Since this essay 20 years ago, photography and the way we share images has undergone massive changes. However, with all those years passing, the sentiments I expressed then remain my guiding principles today.
Those principles affect what, where, and when I photograph. They guide me with my compositions, as a process of discovery, of photographing the subject “as found”.
My aim is to discover a vision through awareness, rather than impose a vision through affectation. I’m not comfortable with cutting and pasting skies or adding or subtracting elements. My curiosity is in the subject revealing itself to me through immersion.
To understand the subject is to move beyond it being a mere object. On the other hand, a misunderstanding of the subject can, unfortunately, lead to treatments of beautification and decoration to fill that void.
The Slow Photography Movement and its philosophy has the potential to improve your photography. It does not matter if you shoot film or digital, large or small format. It is an attitude that is counter to the current online race. Slow Photography Movement emphasizes the experience of a landscape rather than the endless consumption of imagery from iconic locations.
So, when you are next out with your camera, slow down. Forget the camera for a moment and enjoy the landscape, the reason why you are here. As you pause, decide if you really need to make that photograph.
