Being Fully Present With a Camera

Before we dig in, I'm giving away a fine-art print to one lucky winner. More details below, and competition ends tomorrow, Nov. 16.

Hi Friends, here are some things that I am reading, enjoying and making this week.

The camera as a meditative tool - I recently re-read the excellent book The Remarkable Ordinary by Frederick Buechner (pronounced BEEK-ner). It is a wonderful read that celebrates the power of revering God's creation, even (or especially) the seemingly mundane things.

In it, he talks about the power of haiku, calling it "the simplest, most minimal form of literature I know."

If you need a refresher (I did), haiku are short 17-syllable poems born out of Japanese Zen culture. One of the most famous is by Matsuo Basho:

An old silent pond.
Into the pond a frog jumps.
Splash. Silence again.

Buechner dissects this poem in an eye-opening way -

"What I love about this haiku is that so much of what literature normally does is not being done here...The whole genius of haiku is that they don't mean anything. People who try to figure out what a haiku means are beating up the wrong path...It simply frames a moment. Of course, as soon as you put a frame around anything, you set it off, you make it visible, you make it real. Haiku enable us to see, to experience, this moment that is framed."

He goes on to explain the essence of art in general, that it forces us to stop and consider the thing that is framed.

"So, art is saying, STOP. It helps us to stop by putting a frame around something and makes us see it in a way we would never have seen it under the normal circumstances of living, as so many of us do, on sort of automatic pilot, going through the world without really seeing much of anything."

Being a photographer is a gift in that when I'm looking through the viewfinder nothing preoccupies my mind. I only focus on what is in front of me and I can be completely present with that subject.

The type of photography that most fills my soul is when I stop to absorb a seemingly mundane object, like the fencepost in the image above. Look at it again. Yup, it's a fence post. There might be millions like it in the US. But this fencepost caught my eye while driving on a North Dakota dirt road and I appreciated the way it seemed to gesture and stand resolute against the windswept grass.

After rereading Buechners' book, I realized that my Golden Light Series is a collection of haiku - my own visual poems that put a frame around different objects and invites the viewer to take a deep breath and simply enjoy the moment with me.

I can't wait to expand this series and continue to explore ways to capture images infused with peace.

If my commercial work and Badlands landscapes are exclamation points, my Golden Light images are 'dot-dot-dots.'

Do your own visual meditation - Try this with any camera, even a phone. Next time you see something that catches your eye, shoot your first image, the one off the top of your head that your instincts tell you to get. Then, reframe it from a different angle. Shoot it tight, shoot it wide, get low to the ground, then shoot again from straight over the top. By using an extra few moments to dig deeper with your camera, you'll notice things about the object that weren't immediately apparent. You many not like all of the images, that's totally fine. The point is that when you can be completely present with that subject, it will reveal pieces of its character that you would not have seen if you only shot the first picture.

To be clear, I'm not advocating to shoot pictures for the sake of pictures. We live in an over-documented world as it is. This 2-3 minute exercise is more about being completely present, absorbing the moment, then moving on to the next moment. It's an act of journaling and consideration.

I plan to write more about the difference between being present with a camera vs. being distracted by the camera. In the meantime, this quote from one of my mentors Kim Komenich will get your wheels turning - "Move from picture to picture, not frame to frame."

If you're scratching your head, I'll discuss it in my next newsletter.

The fight to save the Bismarck Rail Bridge - For those that don't know about Bismarck's famous rail bridge, it is an iconic landmark that was built in 1882 to span the Missouri River and is in danger of being demolished. Regarded to be one of the United States' most endangered historic places, the Friends of the Rail Bridge continue to rally community support and fight to save it for future generations as a public green space and walking path.

I captured an epic panoramic image of the bridge at sunrise years ago and am offering a free museum-quality archival 44-in. print to one lucky winner who signs up for the Friends of the Rail Bridge newsletter BEFORE TOMORROW. The winner will be announced tomorrow, Nov. 16.

Bismarck Rail Bridge | Win this fine-art print | Enter before Nov. 16, 2023

For more information about the current state of the fight check out this article, and this editorial in the Fargo Forum. Their Facebook page is here.

Image of the week - Windswept Prairie. This image is a favorite from my Golden Light Series. The motion of the grass was blurred because my camera was stationary on a tripod and my shutter speed was slow, allowing the gusts of wind to transform the North Dakota prairie into ocean-like waves. I still remember the feeling of being surrounded by miles of prairie grass in the summer wind. One of my favorite hobbies in North Dakota was getting lost on dirt roads and coming home with new pictures treasures.

Thanks for reading! Have an amazing rest of your week.

Chad Z.

One life on this earth is all we get, whether it is enough or not enough, and the obvious conclusion would seem to be that at the very least we are fools if we do not live it as fully and bravely and beautifully as we can.

Frederick Buechner