Dear Followers of Contemplative Photography I’m happy to announce the Substack publication of Media of Hope. I began writing about television’s higher, untapped potentials in the early ’80s. Book publishers appreciated the content, but consistently agreed that “people want to watch television, not read about it.” A year ago, a friend encouraged me to update […]
Our world is as big as the candle we carry Since my introduction to photography in high school I’ve been in love with Light. Long before I understood aperture, exposure or composition, I sensed that certain qualities of light carried emotional and even spiritual force. The qualities of light—its softness, direction, contrast, intensity and mystery—could […]
Part 2: Our Greatest Innovations Are Revealing a Crisis of Seeing Beyond appearances, every technology is an expression of human consciousness extending itself beyond limited thinking. What we’re witnessing today is not merely rapid innovation, it’s the emergence of certain technologies that transcend utility, developments that don’t just improve life, but reveal who and what […]
Part 1: What They Are Teaching Technologies are like “media,” they extend our senses beyond the limits of time, distance, scale, intelligence and life experience. What we’re experiencing today is not merely rapid innovation, but the emergence of technologies of transcendence, those that are not just changing the world. They’re teaching us something radical: that […]
How Love is Learned, Modeled and Shared From Early Childhood on Kinds Of Love Love is a family of capacities. Some forms occur through biology, others through relationship and still others through deliberate moral and spiritual cultivation. As a felt experience, many types have been identified. Eros is romantic or erotic; Philia is friendship and […]
Whether books, baseball cards or baby dolls, they reflect the soul’s agenda… We come here for a reason. Once here, the soul guides us, in part, by the way’s we’re compelled to feed it. Specifically, we activate the endowments (gifts) we were born with, those that drive our interest and motivation to grow and contribute, […]
Are They “Individuals” or “Persons?” In the early 1960s I was photographing quite a lot in Cincinnati’s Findley Market downtown. This woman turned and saw that was pointing my camera at her, so she turned and posed. I took the shot, thanked her and we moved on. After writing my post, “The Typewriter and Authenticity,” […]
Chapter 10: Gradation Aesthetically speaking, “gradation” refers to a gradual or graded change of tone over a surface. Artists refer to it as a grading of “values.” In color photography, gradation can be a transition from one hue to another or to a different level of saturation or brightness. In black and white, it’s the […]
Chapter 9: Geometry Artistically, form and geometry are interconnected but distinct creative dimensions with unique expressive roles. The previous chapter on “form” was about creating a three-dimensional sensibility on a two-dimensional substrate, usually an electronic screen or paper; the object was to create the sensibility of depth. “Geometry” in the context of creative expression, deals […]
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 […]
Contemplative Photography 