One thing that I like about Photography is that it helps me to look at things more closely and helps me to observe the world with more patience. It teaches me to see details that I otherwise might have missed.
From my own experience I can say that when I take photographs, I feel that I immediately change into a discovery mode, where I explore whatever is in front of me (a leaf for example) with great concentration and attention. I will investigate the leaf with my lens from different angles, zoom in and change the focus point several times, in order to “get to know” the leaf better. It is only then that I feel I get a glimpse of what the leaf actually is.
It helps me drift away from the concept of knowing what a leaf is, and brings me into a world of childlike awe and curiousity. In Daoism letting go of concepts is a major learning (Watts, 1975). By thinking that we know something, we restrict our view on what it actually is, cause when we are confronted with something we deem familiar we tend to not look at it with interest. That way we miss aspects that might have revealed surprising learnings.
Alain de Botton (2002) did a little experiment on this – when walking around his neighbourhood, which was very familiar to him, he tried to “reverse the process of habituation” by disassociating his surroundings from the uses he had found for them until then. He instead looked around as he had never been in this place. He found that “under the command to consider everything as of potential interest, objects released latent layers of value” (de Botton, 2002, page 251).
In this way photography helps to become unfamiliar with day-to-day items, which leads to us being able to see them in a new light, and ultimately we can get a different perspective on those objects and the meaning we place upon them.
Literature
de Botton, A. (2002). The art of travel. London: Penguin Books.
Watts, A. (1975). Tao: The Watercourse Way. New York: Pantheon Books
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