SeeingFresh, Week 5: Space

This week's assignment, say the instructors at www.seeingfresh.com, is to shift your intention from seeing forms in space to seeing visual space itself.

Here are the three images I submitted for consideration:

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UPDATE 7/3/11: The center image was selected for the "texture" gallery,while the other two images seem to have been declined for the any of the five galleries. The question at this point becomes: do I treat the educators as commercial clients and serve up what they seem to want (photos that seem to evoke a vast, psychological space) even though the tighter interplay of positive and negative space evident in the declined photos really seems to have met the scope of the assignment as they wrote it? Is it that I just didn't submit an image that was similar enough to one that the instructors themselves would have taken?

At this point, I think I need need to take a few days to toss around my ideas about rejection, even though as a juried artist, I'm pretty much toughened up about the jurying process. Due to the nature of this particular type of artwork, I should also consider how my ego could be my biggest roadblock. I also want to consider the amount of "authority" I wish to give the instructors when my heart tells me I did the assignment "right." I also want to look at the idea of respect: did I properly honor the instructors when my opinion of them seems to vacillate with how much they like my work (and how much I like theirs)?

Art of Recovery Kickoff

Earlier this evening, I attended the launch celebration for
"The Art of Recovery," a collaboration between the New Hampshire Art Association and the Seacoast Mental Health Center (Portsmouth, NH). The artist volunteers will be working with SMHC patients clients to provide them with fun, unique outlet to celebrate art and their own personal recoveries. The resultant artwork will be displayed and sold at the May 2012 Art of Recovery Event and Auction.

I was appreciative for the first opportunity to display my work in more than a year and enjoyed meeting artists, sponsors, and Center employees. Thanks also to the Portsmouth Gas Co. Restaurant for hosting the shindig: the appetizers were yummy!

I look forward to meeting the Center client with whom I'll be paired. I also wish all the participants a meaningful and mutually beneficial experience.

SeeingFresh,Week 4: Light

Here's what I'm thinking of submitting in a few days for the "Light" assignment at www.seeingfresh.com. The purpose of the assignment is to " see patterns of light—not [just] things that are illuminated, or shadows cast by objects that block the light." (While one of the photos does include a shadow, the real "subject" of the photo is the light as it is reflected off the wall and statue.)

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UPDATE: Again,only two photos were selected. I am guessing that the hand pic was not accepted because it was not sublime enough and should have paid more attention to the pattern of light, rather than to the pattern of non-light/shadow.

SeeingFresh, Week 3: Simplicity

According to the instructors at the seeingfresh.com Contemplative Photography web site, the purpose of Assignment 3 ("Simplicity") is to explore
"where the experience of the form is heightened because of the space around it."

I've been rummaging through my photo archives and here are the three images I'm considering submitting this coming week:

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UPDATE: The red vehicle closeup was recategorized as an example of the "Color" assignment (where I think it works well.)

The horse closeup was accepted as part of the "Simplicity" assignment for which it was submitted.

The leaf closeup was declined. While I still think it met the parameters of the assignment as written up on the web site, I do think it lacks the Zen simplicity that other, accepted photos exhibited.

More Lancaster, PA pix

SeeingFresh, Week 2: Texture

The following images are my "homework" for the "Texture" assignment at the Contemplative Photography web site SeeingFresh.com. I'll be doing all five projects, with the purpose of better "putting eye, heart, and mind to work together" and further my use of photography as a meditative technique.

The purpose of the assignment is for the photographer to feel visual texture, in order to "connect deeply with form". The resultant photographs are artifacts of that direct experience.

Here's what I intend to submit tomorrow:








Again, I'll let you know which images, if any, the teachers post. I'll also critique any works which weren't accepted.

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UPDATE: All three images were accepted (!) and can be viewed at http://www.seeingfresh.com/assignment-galleries/texture

The Art of Recovery

I will be serving as an artist volunteer with the Art of Recovery program, a collaboration between the New Hampshire Art Association and the Seacoast Mental Health Center (Portsmouth, NH).

The artist volunteers will be working with SMHC patients clients to provide them with fun, unique outlet to celebrate art and their own personal recoveries. The resultant artwork will be displayed and sold at the May 2012 Art of Recovery Event and Auction.

For information about the program, read its fact sheet.

She Shoots Horses, Doesn't She?

How close to get is all up to you. There's no "wrong" way to capture a moment. (Yes, there are two different horses shown below. The blue-eyed baby was only a little more than two weeks old!)

SeeingFresh, Week 1: Color

I'm finding myself drawn back to Contemplative Photography or Miksang ("good eye"). (Perhaps because my meditation practice has been sluggish recently.) I first self-studied Miksang through "osmosis" in the summer of 2008, while volunteering at Karme Choling in Barnet, VT.

The excellent site www.seeingfresh.com has guidelines for teaching yourself Contemplative Photography. It emphasizes five concepts: color, texture, simplicity, light, and space.

My goal is to complete one lesson per week, both by shooting new images and by sifting though my photo archives for pix that meet each lesson's criteria. I will be uploading three photos per week to the SeeingFresh.com site, corresponding to each assignment.

The first week's assignment was "Color" and how it "has no meaning, apart from what thinking-mind superimposes on it."

Here's what I came up with:









After the files were submitted, the Contemplative Photography teachers will be reviewing them for compliance with the assignment and perhaps posting them to their site.

Stay tuned....

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UPDATE:

The second and third image were selected for posting to the site.

I got no feedback about the image which was not posted, but I thought hard about what could be improved for future submissions. The photo has interesting texture and composition and is "correct" within a traditional, technical context. However, it doesn't work as well within a contemplative photography context because it's hard to separate plants from their "greenness." In fact, while shooting the image, I thought, "Here's an interesting green plant," not "Wow! Green!"

Next week's assignment is texture, and I'll push harder to select images where my first instinct is "Wow! Texture!"