Little Book of Contemplative Photography Book

This was the second of the contemplative photography books I read this summer. both are pretty short - the other one had christian in the title (though this one quotes some bible verses). this one was organized differently and had less meditations in it - although honestly either one of them asked enough questions for a lifetime. this one seemed a little more oriented to being a good photographer and emphasized being careful in composition (no trees growing out of heads, etc.) I think this is a particular flaw of mine, being in too much of a hurry to snap a picture - though too be fair I'm often dealing with an impatient model, my daughter or a cat - so I appreciated the instruction. both of them made the point of "receiving" pictures rather than taking them.

this book quoted cartier-bresson quite a bit, which I felt was maybe a little too ambitious for a contemplative amateur photographer. I don't think I'm going to live up to an artist's instructions for my photography.

basically I didn't feel like I got much specific out of either book. I did a couple of exercises from the other one. however, just reading the two has definitely had an effect on my photography. while I was at the week long annual meeting of our regional quaker organization last week, I was interested by some crab apples that were beautifully colored. I decided to do some still lifes, which I'm typically not very good at - I feel very unnatural about arranging them. I picked up some black walnuts in their green hulls and some lacy maple leaves, with some sort of insect damage and went out a couple of times making arrangements on different surfaces and photographing them. it really felt like playing and once I spent 40 minutes just arranging stuff and taking pictures. I really like some of the results and I think I'm going to maintain a container of probably mainly natural objects to create still lifes with. so that's a whole new avenue for my photography, which is important, because I often feel frustrated by the desire to take pictures but the lack of interesting subjects. I would walk more if the walk near my house wasn't - although lovely - boring to me because I've seen it and photographed it so much already. I'm very tuned into novelty. this way, a walk could be a search for new things for my still life container as well as for photographic opportunities, or even settings for the still life arrangements. this is definitely an area where I can grow in my photography, so although neither this book nor the other directly suggested this, they both somehow triggered it, so they were definitely worth reading.