Class experience: contemplative approach(es) to photography

Exercise: Color wandering

Steps:

 1. Set intention: “I am looking for color” 

• Look for bold, vivid colors. Look for colors without subjects. For example, your “target” might not necessarily be a red fire hydrant, but instead (perhaps) a colorful, purple, berry stain on the concrete. Who knows? You’ll know it when you see it!
• Look for colors close to you or far away…whatever grabs your attention. If it’s far away, move in that direction and get closer. Generally, avoid black, white or grey. 

2. Wander and look:

• With eyes wide open, begin to walk and wander, pulled only by perceptions of color that catch your eye. Be open to any color that grabs your attention, and then like a bee, make a beeline for it. Get as physically close as you can to the color that initially grabbed your attention. The color is inviting you to have a closer look.
• If nothing grabs your attention, take some deep breaths and keep wandering. Something is bound to appear, eventually. 

3. Looking deeply, in the moment

When you arrive, close to your special color/object, stop moving and just look...take it in for a while. Take your time. Breathe. Enjoy and indulge the moment; look very closely at your color/object. Give it the time of day.

4. Distill the essence

• Do this step without raising the camera to your eye. Trust your natural vision. 
• Discern, visually, what is essential about what you are seeing. Just look. 
• In other words, what is it that first grabbed your attention in the first place? What is extra, or perhaps, distracting from the color/object?
• This may include a recognition that your special color/object is surrounded by other color/objects that might be less important to you, at the moment. 
• In other words, decide, visually, what is part of your “special color moment,” and what is not. 

5. Make the picture

• Raise the camera to the eye and frame the picture to match your distilled perception, exactly…add nothing more, nothing less. Use zoom, or physically move, to optimize your cropping. 
• Adjust exposure, focus, d-o-f, etc.
• Click
• Breathe deeply, exhale, and move on to the next fish

Note: this exercise can be change/adapted to other kind of things, such as textures, shapes, light events, or even objects that provoke certain feelings, etc.