Slow Photography #67 Don't PAY Attention, DANCE It

Eagle Owl, captive,Miami Zoo. Text and Photographs
Copyright 2017 Jim Austin Jimages, all rights reserved.

Great blue herons on the beach, Florida USA.

Atlantic gulls, offshore, squabbling over a fish.

Find. Focus. Frame. These three steps are "The Dance" before we fire the shutter. Clicking the shutter is the easy part. 

The Dance is our practice, our moves, an most importantly, our attention.

The secret to adroit dancing is that we are completely involved. While the steps begin in our mind and brain, we perceive that our body leads the way. Just like skilled dancers, good photographers get ready, do a series of steps, and then let go. Dancers and photographers use Ready, Set, Go! 


This skill sequence allows us to quickly shift our attention. If we compare our attention to a chimpanzee, we humans are much more flexible in our attention. Gaurav Patel believes we humans may have traded "speed for some kind of cognitive flexibility."

We take our shifts in attention for granted. Yet the true nature of attention is still unknown. Publications on the nature of attention are numerous. Put in very simple terms, attention can be spatially-based and object-based. Studies in object based attention suggest that attention helps us represent an object in our vision, and lets us perceive, process and remember its features much better. 

For photographers, attention should mean intense attention, staring, concentrating and heightened observing. Talking while photographing takes away from this intensity. 

Attention is also a bit like casting a fishing line: part anticipation, part rhythm and partly letting go. Stephen Shore, one of the 20th century's master photographers, used this casting metaphor to describe attention:

" When you're casting you have to time your cast so that the fly on the end of your line settles gently onto the water, thus giving the trout the impression that it's biting at the real fly. It's a tricky procedure to master, and the key to it, the way the experts explain it, is constant pressure. It's a feeling of the line on the rod tip that is always there.

Without constant pressure the timing falters, and so does the fly line, leaving the caster with a disconnected, where-did-it-go feeling. Of course, it's very possible to take pictures without constantly paying attention to every decision that needs to be made, but my experience was that when my attention wandered and I started making decisions automatically, there was something missing in the pictures and I was left with that where-did-it-go feeling."

About every twenty seconds, our attention shifts slightly. This happens in our brains, somewhat like breathing, without our awareness. Our attention moves from "self" to "other." Our thalamus and parts of the limbic system are part of a vast network. It can shift our attention away from a focus inside our own thoughts, to thinking about what is outside of us. We can take a self(less)ie."

 

Class C Sloop races in Exuma, Bahamas.

Photography is less about making pictures where we look to our Self and more about experiencing the world outside of us with full attention. There is a rhythm to this focused attention. For instance, consider an orchestra conductor. The conductor makes music’s meaning clear through body motion. The upbeat is the preparation for any event. The fascinating part of conducting is setting the right tempo. When we watch the conductor setting the tempo and dynamics for an orchestra, we can see he or she is just slightly ahead of the music and begins a leading movement, ahead of the beat.


The same tends to be true of Slow Photography.


We set our tempo as we make our moves that lead up to the shutter's click. These moves form The Dance, and the focused, thoughtful tempo of Slow Photography. Great photographers, like Cartier-Bresson and Robert Frank, would "dance" through the scene they were capturing, continually in motion to frame their visions. Like orchestral conductors, they seemed in tune with the flow, in advance, a step ahead of the beat. It's not that they moved slowly, and we're not talking about slow shutters or time exposure; in fact, the physical movement to get ready to shoot may be quick and agile. 

However, the anticipation, what I call the "Ready, Set," develops slowly and deliberately.

“The real heroes anyway aren't the people doing things; 

the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention.”  

John Green

Night scene near Yale Brewery in Vancouver, BC.

  

There is a famous WWII photograph with a story that demonstrates this anticipation. Joe Rosenthal photographed a widely recognized image. He had the opportunity to photograph a larger flag than the official Marine photographer, and made an iconic image of marines raising the American flag on Mount Surabachi, Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945.  

Remember, this was in the film days, when a photographer took a single picture at a time with a film Graflex, often with only one opportunity to get the perfect shot. There were two flags at the time, a smaller one, and a larger one that was just going to be raised so it could be seen all over the island. Rosenthal talked to the marines, asking them what was going on. He had to quickly decide whether to shoot both flags simultaneously -- one rising while the other lowered -- or to photograph the second flag as it was being raised. He chose to focus on the second flag. Rosenthal's anticipation and attention made all the difference.

Like a conductor, Joe Rosenthal was ahead of the event. He took advantage of chance. It was not luck, but along the lines of the idea of Louis Pasteur, who wrote : "in the fields of observation, chance favors only the prepared mind."

Perhaps The Dance favors a prepared mind as well.

Saint Augustine Wild Animal Park, Florida.

What does it mean to have a prepared mind? It means keeping your finger ready, resting on your mental shutter release. It means developing a curious mind as you put slight tension on the line. It mean keeping vigilant, like an alligator or any animal does in the wild.

Some say that the camera gives us the power to focus our attention, but the baton does not lead the conductor. This comes from within. Here and now, we can train our attention. Why? Well, in the words of Buddhist sage Thich Nhat Hanh: “The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it."



Thanks for your visit.
Jim.