Slow Photography #66 Temporal Intelligence: The Power of Patience

- August 14, 2015

The spider is a timeless symbol of patience and persistence.

I watched a spider at work. It did not complain when wind, rain and time undid its creations; its effort to repair a beautiful, practical web design was deliberate and skillful. When it's web was damaged, it patiently rebuilt, and waited for the flies. Its actions were powerful.

As photographers, we might take a strand from the spider's web. Why? Because patience is not only powerful, but a lifelong spiritual reward and a path to find emotional freedom.

"Patience doesn’t mean passivity or resignation, but power. It’s an emotionally freeing practice of waiting, watching, and knowing when to act. "

~Judith Orloff

Slow photography is patient. It means waiting, watching and knowing when to act. It spreads where ever there are photographers who challenge the mindless. Slow photographers discover the power of patience because they care about their craft. The inherent pleasure of deliberately taking one's time is one of the main reasons Slow Photography is growing.

"If you don't have time to do it right,

when will you have time to do it over?" ~John Wooden

Slow photography began with the first photograph. In response to the impatient digital age, it has spread widely, given an awareness of the dangers of automatic, thoughtless imagery. Today we have a growing "slow photography movement" of SloFo. It emphasizes thoughtful, patient, deliberate craft: "I think, then I photograph" as opposed to "I photograph, then I think."

"Only slowness can counter speed. Only the mindful can challenge the mindless."

~ David Campany

The Discovery of Slowness, a founding text for the slow movement, was Sten Nadolny’s 1983 novel about Arctic explorer John Franklin. Franklin's pace of living and thinking is portrayed, by Nadolny, as "that of an elderly sloth after a long massage and a pipe of opium." Franklin was teased by peers in his childhood, and in later life when Franklin first reached the arctic he found a wild and savage land. Its pace harmonized with his own. The North was a place where very little happened, and where it was important to take one's time, stopping to ponder before rushing into action.

"Taking time to sit back and watch and think about what you've seen is important. Traveling did a great deal to me. I found that when I travel and just sit in the corner and watch, a million ideas come to me."

~ Lionel Richie

Complaining is the opposite of patience. There are complaints about photography everywhere. Yet, as mindful photographer's, we may instead practice the power of patience. Patience with daily frustrations gives us a spiritual power. Cultivating patience, we can center and regroup. Patience is a choice to hold back, to think, gather ideas, and then at the right moment, to act.

"The deliberate engagement of delay should itself be a primary skill that we teach to students. It’s a very old idea that patience leads to skill, of course—but it seems urgent now that we go further than this and think about patience itself as the skill to be learned."

~Jennifer L. Roberts

Thanks for your visit. Jim

____

Acknowledgements:
Thanks to photographer Reed George for his May 2015 blog post about Slow Photography. He refers to SloFo, a word I coined in 2014. Reed explores the interface between creativity and equipment, and shares his favorite Slow Photography camera. He links to a video I made, shooting in the Bahamas with a selection of Konica, Nikon, and Nikonos film cameras.