Chapter 5: Particularity My wife and I occasionally visit antique stores and fairs. I walk up and down the many rows of vendors, looking for objects that might attract me, especially a quality of light and one or more of my aesthetic preferences. In the above image I found three of them—exquisite light, simplicity and […]
Chapter 4: Everyday Beauty Searching for opportunities to compose elements within a frame in ways that fed my aesthetic hunger, I frequented scrap yards, construction sites, abandoned buildings, empty fairgrounds, railroad graveyards and antique shops. As a consequence of creating order out of visual chaos, I was experiencing beauty in unconventional places and subjects. It […]
Chapter 3: Fine Art, Expression, Contemplation In the early 1950s, when I was introduced to photography, the debate was raging as to whether or not photography could be considered an art form. In January 1955 Edward Steichen launched an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City entitled, The Family of Man. […]
Chapter 2: The Aesthetic Dimensions Artists working in visual media train themselves to perceive beyond looking by continuously imagining or creating actual frames around everything they see. After a while a pattern emerges in the subjects they choose and the materials and techniques that work best. Along with these, they develop certain aesthetic preferences—choices relating […]
The Aesthetic Experience Philosophers since Plato have sought to define and describe the aesthetic experience. Among them there’s agreement that it’s a capacity unique to human beings, a contributor to well-being and different for each individual, but there’s no consensus on what it is in essence. This is understandable because the word “aesthetic” is an […]
Introduction to a 10-Part Series No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer it has chosen. Minor White, fine art photographer, educator Today I’m beginning a series that describes my spiritual approach to photography. The title of the blog itself, “Contemplative Photography,” can mean different things […]
From where we are looking, what is our view of the world? Being six-foot-five, I’ve always viewed the world from a slightly higher perspective than most people. For instance, I see the tops of furniture and people’s heads, and I can see farther in a crowd. No big deal. But that each of us […]
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. My little horse must think it queer To stop without a farmhouse near Between the woods and […]
An aesthetic and so much more There’s an intrinsic satisfaction, an aesthetic pleasure, that comes from the experience of light when it plays a prominent, sometimes dominant, role in a photograph or painting. The works of masters such as Rembrandt, Turner, and Hooper are largely characterized and revered for the qualities of light they depict. Light […]
The Power of Emergents The earth’s atmosphere with watery clouds was established about three billion years ago. When creatures emerged with eyes around 100 million years ago, they probably beheld skies something like this. While researching the evolutionary timeline for this information, my attention peaked at the word “emergence,” defined by science as a process […]
Contemplative Photography 