Practice Day: Moments and People

Today I went to the first practice day in many months, I was so busy before my trip to India that I could not find the opportunity to go any earlier. All the while I felt the longing to go though, these days bring me more into contact with contemplative photography, it's great to talk to peers and to exchange our experiences.

Today's intention was on Moments and People. Last October I took the whole workshop on Moments and Visual Haiku and if one repeated the workshop now it was possible to join just for a day which I did.

I explained all about Moments and People in October's blogpost, so here is just a short reminder. Moments have a fleeting feel: one moment it is there, the other moment is has dissolved. You need to be alert and awake to be able to perceive moments.

And today was an excellent day to be awake and to see moments with people: it was a warm sunny day and there were lots of people on the beach.

I remember that I found this quite challenging last October, but today I felt  more relaxed especially at the beach front. I felt restless for a short while when I was walking through the sand amidst all the sunbathing people and some of them were watching me with my camera. I saw the wonder on their faces. This is still one of my weaker spots. Apart from that I had a great day with lovely people (the other participants) and many fresh perceptions.

Practicing moments with people

Yesterday I got together with two girlfriends from the Miksang group. We met at the Vondelpark in Amsterdam for a coffee and then went photographing. Anjali and I put our intention on Moments, Meta on That.
That signifies connecting with the qualities of a field of perception (i.e. leaves or people). It is not a special moment, it is not depending on time, it is always there.
Moments signifies an event: our heart resonates with something, it is there and then it is gone. It has a fleeting quality.

I wanted to go to the busy area of the Museumplein which is a touristy kind of place. A few large and famous museums are located on the square and usually lots of tourists go there to take photos. I thought that was an ideal place to practice Moments with people in continuation of the workshop of last weekend.

guy taking picture

Well, there were lots of people around, no problem there. The problem with people is that they move around all the time so you really have to be available, to have your camera in the standby mode and ready to hit the release button.

young guy with map

I noticed that people sitting down and taking a picture themselves are relatively quiet and easier to focus on. Having my DSLR instead of my powershot made a huge difference: it reacts quicker so the shot is more accurate.

oriental woman taking photo

It was a grey day though, so no deep shadows or high highlights and there was hardly any wind. The perfect weather for a little outing.

seagull in pond at Museumplein

two guys with cell phones

woman just after taking a picture 

woman taking picture

After shooting we went for lunch in a nearby quiet place. We chatted, selected our pictures and showed them to each other on a little laptop or an iPad. Practice days like this are relaxing, joyful and instructive at the same time. We all learn from each other.

Umbrellas

Today, it rained for most part of the day. In the afternoon I decided to go outside for a walk in town and photograph people with umbrellas.

As I went around town I noticed it was not so easy to do that. First of all, people move around all the time and secondly holding a camera and an umbrella myself is a little bit like juggling.

Then there is the thing that I don't want to take pictures right in the faces of people, so discretion is another ingredient of this craft. 

lots of people in the rain

two girls under a pink umbrella 

see-through raincoat

I saw this plastic see-through raincoat and I thought it was charming. The colourful edges really make it happy coat.

couple under a red umbrella

Here and there people stood still for a short while, then it's easier to aim, focus, relax and hit the release button. 

couple under a lopsided umbrella 

four-coloured umbrella

I decided that my Canon Powershot is not up to the task: it takes about 3 long seconds before actually taking the picture and that is too long. By then people have moved to a different position.

three umbrellas close to the Flower Market

couple under a yellow umbrella

I am going to try this again, but then with my DLSR. I am curious as to what the difference will be.

Day III Moments and Visual Haiku: moments and people

On the third and last day of this workshop our teacher explained that there are three similarities between miksang (photography) and haiku (poetry):
1. Subtle resonance. We come to a more subtle layer in ourselves, our heart resonates with something and our heart becomes also more subtle. Subtiety and heart level are inextricably linked with each other.

2. Immens directness. On the second day during writing a haiku we worked with senses which experience direct perceptions. Miksang is also about sense perceptions, the contact with your own body: what do you feel, smell or hear?

3. Looking and seeing. Looking is considered a skill aspect: we are looking all day around, looking is a means. In Miksang contemplative photography we are training ourselves in looking in a more open-minded and unbiased way which will lead to seeing (wisdom aspect). Seeing is an experience, which is also imbedded in our language: "I'll believe it when I see it." Insight and heart connection are also part of seeing. A haiku is also about insight, experience and heart connection.

The morning of the third day we started walking a block around our teacher's apartment with the same assignment as yesterday: perceiving moments with leaves on sidewalks for just about half an hour. The assignment for the whole morning was perceiving moments with people. It can be quite daunting to do that in the wild, so we started practicing on each other. First as a group and later in pairs.

Above is an impression what it looks like when we were photographing each other. The pictures of the hands are taking when we were split up in twos.

Marielle's hands

Annette's hands

After lunch when we were a bit more comfortable with this field, we spread out either photographing moments with leaves or people.

kite surfer and friend

As I wrote before I am still not in my comfort zone photographing people, especially in the streets. Also, jumping in front of someone with your camera is so not Miksang. I need to feel comfortable looking at people without them thinking I want something of them and secondly still make contact with them from my side to establish that heart connection, that little jump of my heart when I see something that takes my breath away even for a tiny little bit.

footstep filled with sea foam

I am afraid it didn't really happen with me, photographing people, but I did see some other moments. You meet moments or you don't and I sort of didn't that afternoon.

How about you, do see moments during your day?

Day II Moments and Visual Haiku: other moments

I split up day II in two blogposts because there is too much to show to do it all in one (read part I over here). Apart from practicing writing haikus, we went out to photograph moments so we put our intention on moments. One doesn't go hunting for visual haikus, they just emerge out of nowhere.

Yesterday we explored moments in sand, today we started with exploring moments on the street and with leaves in particular. Fallen leaves portray rather literally decay in nature.

I had a lovely day today and I thought I had it all figured out: I thought I understood what the difference was between that and moments.

However, looking back at my selection of 15 photos together with the other pupils, I realized that was not the case. There were a lot of that pictures, which I will not show here to make it not confusing for the reader. And I had not shot one visual haiku, unfortunately.

The components of a visual haiku would be:
1. heaven principle: the space. In yesterday's case that was sand. 
2. earth principle: the moment
3. man principle: something extra, something unexpected or funny

Like I said, I didn't come across any visual haikus, but I wrote another one:
the musician is playing a tune
autumn leaves on the ground
the bench feels hard

 

This footstep is almost audible according to our teacher.

 

 

Today was interesting, fun and instructive all at the same time. Writing a haiku is definitely something one can train, photographing a haiku is a totally different matter.