Miksang in Commercial Photography

I received the following question recently from an old Miksang friend. I hope you find my response helpful:

“I have a question that I'm struggling with and I would like to have your opinion. I'm doing commercial photography where images are extensibly manipulated to basically give what the client wants. How does one remain true to Miksang when doing commercial work? Do I put on my commercial photographer hat when I'm working on my business and switch to my Miksang hat for my personal work? Your insight is appreciated. Best, Henry”

Hi Henry.

It’s good to hear from you. The answer to your question is simple, so I’m happy to put an end to the struggle you are having with it. If you are hired to give the client a very slick “professional” photograph of their product (which you do very well) such as an office building or a dishwasher, then it is unlikely that the result will be based on fresh perception. It will be based on your idea of what the client expects as well as your idea of the subject matter. The question of being “true to Miksang” is an interesting one, as it suggests that there is the fresh-perception approach as well as the conceptual-based photography approach which you believe to be necessary to be a successful commercial photographer, and you are unsure if the two can ever come together for you.

Whether or not this can happen for you depends upon your level of confidence in your ability to express more than standard product photos. When you begin to put that confidence out there, the opportunity in your commercial work to see more and express more and still accomplish the desired result for the client will begin to manifest. You don’t have to call yourself a “Miksang photographer”. It’s more of an inner way of regarding yourself. If you think of yourself as a standard commercial photographer then that could limit the kinds of assignments that come your way. If we go into a situation expecting that we have to shoot a certain kind of image, then that’s what we will shoot. The obstacle here is that our sense of what’s expected becomes our expectation, thereby limiting what we can accomplish.

Product photography without the ‘Good Eye’ produces a dead, lifeless, portrayal of the products from the outside that doesn’t express anything fresh or perception-based. For clients who haven’t seen or don’t know what a really stunning photo can do to enhance their advertising bang for their buck, that may be all they expect. Still, if you can, why not give them more?

You can do it and they may find that they love your work, that you are special. Or they may not get it - but find it is adequate. There are clients out there who are looking for more. And they cannot find you if you are not putting all of yourself out there in the world of commercial photography. Clients who want their advertising to communicate the qualities of their product could be your market.

So far, I have explored this subject from what we think about what is expected, and how that limits us in our work. Let’s go further below the surface and explore the inner aspect of this. The fundamental issue concerns the degree of freedom you feel you have to shoot your perception within the confines of the particular situation. Isn’t that how it always is? Doesn’t every situation or environment have its boundaries and challenges? If our minds are open and our awareness is fully present, we can have fresh perceptions anywhere, anytime. When we allow ourselves to connect with the subject or object of our perception, whatever that is, the confines or boundaries cease to be relevant to our experience and its expression.

Even if we are working within a highly structured situation and within a narrow framework, we can take the time we need to look and see the subject, to notice the line, texture, light, color, and when we feel we have fully appreciated its visual expression, then we are ready to photograph it. The more accomplished we are as a Miksang shooters, the more stabilized our discipline, the more quickly and effortlessly this can happen. All visual phenomena have these qualities, and it is up to us to connect and express our experience of the subject or object.

Then the image will be startling, attract attention, expressing the essence of the subject/object. Just because the client doesn’t know that this is possible, we don’t have to hold back. It’s like giving a child fresh milk for the first time after years of drinking powdered milk. Who wouldn’t want the real thing? All this can happen within the confines of a specific arrangement and subject matter. If we think, “it’s just a boring microwave”, how is this different from “my wife, she’s just my wife. There’s really nothing worth looking at particularly. I have seen her for so many years.” The obstacle of familiarity and labeling is at the root of not being able to shoot a product with freshness, and as usual we need to get beyond these limiting views.

Let’s compare this situation with portraiture. In this case, the end product is an image of the person we are taking a portrait of. In Miksang Training we do one-on-one shooting and stay still with each other until our projections fall away and we can connect directly with the subject. When this happens we begin to see and feel, with sharpness and clarity, the subtle aspects of the manifestation of our subject - the line, the light, the texture, the totality they are presenting to us. Here are a couple of examples of my portrait work:

How is this different from product photography?

There are people out there photographing their commercial assignments in this way. There are numerous examples. Check out the Apple advertisements for their new mouse, or their computers. They understand that their clients appreciate the beauty of line, the simple elegance of style, and the total integration of form and function. The photography expresses those qualities. For example – the Mighty Mouse:

Michael told me about an episode of “American Chopper” in which they hired a commercial photographer to come in to photograph their motorcycles for a magazine. You probably know that their bikes are well known for their unique design which expresses something essential about the person or organization who has commissioned the motorcycle. Their bikes are works of industrial art. The photographer took a long time looking at the bikes before he began because it was important that the images express the essence of the bikes. He took his time taking in the detail of each bike, deeply noticing all of the elements and how they were coming together to form the whole. They chose the photographer no doubt for his ability to photograph in this way.

I have never been a commercial photographer, so I asked Michael about your question. Michael has always said that you can’t do both conventional template photography and Miksang photography, that you can’t have one foot in each world. How can you walk with one foot? How can you turn off your awareness, your presence of mind and eye? It’s like putting ourselves on autopilot for our job rather than being full present while we are working. Why would we want to reserve the time we are fully present for when we are not working - just because of an idea we have about what we think somebody else’s idea is?

Michael said that in the end he just couldn’t wear both hats anymore and abandoned shooting any other way than Miksang. He had done a lot of commercial photography and portraiture, but found it difficult to incorporate Miksang principles and experience into these assignments, at least in the beginning. But he stuck with it, blending the two worlds, and was eventually hired on the basis of his Miksang photography portfolio as the Visual Arts Producer and Photographer for the Maritime Region of Parks Canada.

They asked him to photograph the national parks in the region and he did so based upon genuine fresh perceptions of the subject matter. His slide shows were very well received because they expressed some inner quality about the places. His images were also used as the background for the National Parks’ promotional campaigns in magazines and brochures. If you really do what you do completely and go deep with it so that your images express genuine direct experience of what is really there, who is not going to be able to connect to your images?

Michael was commissioned by the owner of a yoga studio in Halifax to produce images for her website and brochure. She wanted images that were visually stunning and expressed something about the inner quality of what she was presenting in her work. I came along as an observer.

We met her at her studio and she dressed in a very blue yoga outfit. She began going through a variety of different poses and we just watched her for a bit. There was a wall of windows along the front of the studio through which indirect sunlight illuminated her form. Michael didn’t instruct her, she just did what she did and he moved around while photographing her. The images were absolutely stunning, and there was no doubt they were flashes of perception arising from within that particular situation.

These types of assignments are quite perfect for the open, awake eye of a disciplined contemplative photographer.

If this kind of work is what you really want to do, then I suggest that you apply yourself to whatever the assignment is with all the awareness and fresh mind that you have, and that you deepen your ability to be in a receptive, open state of mind continuously so that you don’t have to struggle going back and forth. Then there is no question of doing it one way or another, changing hats and so on. These limitations will become transparent, and you become a person whose passion for perception, whose heat for what is seen, will be communicated in whatever you shoot.

© Julie DuBose 2009

Photographs © Julie DuBose and Michael Wood

On Vacation in an Exotic Location: Keeping Our Miksang Seat

Michael and I recently returned from a trip to Europe. In Paris we spent each entire day walking around the city from morning until sunset, taking in everything we could, enjoying the Parisian environment and its unique qualities.

During the recharge period since we have returned home, we have been talking about our experience and today we really had a good review of our images. We realized that besides the specific re-occurring details of Parisian style, such as everyone wearing black, black sidewalks, lots of lovely architectural decorative sculpture to name a few, our images could have been taken anywhere. We were just doing what we always do, looking and seeing—color, texture, light, line, moments of tender heart, just as we have on the Boulder or Denver pedestrian malls, on the Halifax waterfront, walking around the block, in our back yard. You don’t have to have an exotic location to have stunningly vivid perceptions. As Michael always says in classes quoting Dr. Buckaroo Banzai – “No matter where you go – there you are!”.

Secondly, we appreciated how important the editing process is while on a trip somewhere you have never been and may never return to. After all the trips we have taken, I know that the last thing I want to be faced with upon returning home are mountains of images that I don’t care about and never should have taken in the first place. When you are someplace you consider really cool, (Paris, for example) it’s easy to get excited and lose the orientation to shoot flashes of perception. We speed up while trying to take it all in, and we shoot anything new and possibly culturally interesting or entertaining (e.g. ‘cute alert’). Our discernment process goes out the door. We want to take it all with us when we go home, every moment, every scene. Without some opportunity to review what we are shooting, a course correction is very difficult. A lot of energy can be wasted shooting images that we will just end up deleting. What’s the point?

To fully experience each day in a fresh way, I think it’s necessary at the end of it, no matter how exhausted we may feel (why do we have to push so hard each day - isn’t it a vacation, I ask myself?) to review and edit the images taken that day. This way we can realize any traps we may have fallen into, such as - we are not really having flashes, only ideas of somebody else’s concepts about what to shoot, the classic shot of this and that, what will make our friends and family envious of our trip, and so on. Then we can take corrective action. We can slow down and when we are stopped by a perception, we can fully stop and understand what stopped us, stay still in the moment, appreciate it, and then possibly or not, decide to commit to making an image of it. This process is the basis for the enjoyment of the experience itself. It keeps us fully grounded in the present moment, which is the only moment that exists. By shooting without discrimination we are trading the joy of direct experience in the here and now for the later process of reviewing our images at the end of our trip. It’s like running through a field of flowers and plucking them and placing them in a bag to enjoy later. Then when we arrive home the flowers are a pale expression of their original vitality. Because we didn’t enjoy the perceptions as we were having them and we didn’t take the time to translate our experience precisely into our image, the vividness and freshness is lost. Like dried flowers, they are only hollow representations of our memory. And that is sad.

This backlog of unedited images can leave us feeling burdened and fatigued. Because we have not taken the time to process our experience by viewing our images along the way, we can become constipated, both physically and mentally. Without exercising our ability to discriminate the nature of our perceptions (in the sense of visual discernment) and what we want to keep and what we want to let go of, we risk digestive overload. This makes it very difficult to relax and enjoy ourselves. Our experience can become a blur, lacking clarity.

If we can edit as we go, the end result is a pleasurable experience of image review when we return home. Sure, I may still have more images to delete. But looking at each image doesn’t make me wonder why I ever shot it or make me uncertain about whether I want to keep it. I know why I did and that there was a flash of perception that in the end I cared enough about to commit to. That makes me feel good because looking at the image takes me right back to that moment, to that perception. It is still as fresh as the moment I saw it, that time we were in Paris.

Text and Photos © Julie DuBose 2009

The Fully Met Life

When on occasion I contemplate how the practice of Miksang has affected my life, the first thing that comes to my mind is the many opportunities it affords to experience and express the totally cool things that are happening around me—the quality of the light, the breeze, the time of day, the endless coming together of color, light, and line. I can be worrying or distracted by all the details of my life that never seem to end, or I can be transported out of that suddenly as I am penetrated by an unexpected perception which dawns in my mind out of the blue. Noticing my world constantly disrupts my mental absorption with the linear stream of events that is my everyday life. I am reminded that beneath my preoccupation I am vibrantly alive and that nothing in my world is fixed and unchanging. I feel a tremendous sense of richness. I am completely without want for anything at all.

It is a sign of my passion for shooting images that I go out with my camera with the expectation that I will notice something that is surprising and often whimsical. I expect to be touched and reminded of the larger world beyond my own sense of limitation. When this happens I feel fully met, fulfilled in my relationship between my visual sense and my visual world. When a perception stops my mind I feel disoriented, ambient sounds recede, and the perceived appears brilliant, sharp and vivid. I feel joyful. What does this remind you of? Falling in love? Melting in a moment of love for your child? Feeling appreciation for your best friend in the world? Yes. In these moments I feel fully met. My partner in perception, whatever I am seeing, is not holding back, and I have no sense of shortcoming on either of our parts. I am fully engaged because I have no forethought and no second thought about how this should be or whether or not it is good enough. In this moment, the present moment, all is complete.

I am feeling pretty good altogether that I can have a relationship like this anytime I practice Miksang. It’s like an ongoing celebration, a party on a small scale, since nobody has to get dressed up. There aren’t any bad hangovers the day after or the sense that something could have gone wrong. Relationships like this make us feel very wholesome and genuine. They spill over into our human relationships. We notice more and appreciate more. We can let go of what doesn’t work and any struggle we are having and accept more easily the things that don’t conform to what we think would be better. Just as there is no such thing as half a flash, there is no question of having half a relationship. We have to be involved 100%. We are either in it or we are not.

As we connect fully with what is happening, our lives begin to change. Letting go of the fruition of the process of perception is the same as letting go of our hopes and fear about what is going to happen in the next moment, that evening, the next day, when we get old, when we are sick, whether or not our loved one will love, accept, and praise us. It’s all the same thing. We are letting go of our sense that we are not good enough. As we gain confidence in our ability to take genuine photographs, we also begin to feel confident about expressing ourselves in our relationships.

In Miksang we learn to stay open and not project our ideas and preferences onto what we are seeing. This is the essence of non-aggression, acceptance of what we experience without always judging it and determining whether it agrees with our own point of view. If we can bring this mind of equanimity to bear on situations that arise in our relationships, wouldn’t the world be a more harmonious place?

I’m saying these things and spelling them out not because I want us all to feel good about working on ourselves so that we can be better people. Miksang is not another personal improvement project. I’m saying this because everything we do in every moment has an impact upon our ability to wake up. The more we sleep the more we are pulled into a dream state. The more we develop and rest in openness and synchronize our eye and mind, the more vivid and direct the experience of our lives will become. It’s as simple as that.

© Julie DuBose 2009

Editing as a Mirror of Our Discernment Process

Most of us have had the experience in a class when Michael makes adjustments to our images during the image review. He quickly brings what is hidden into the light, adjusts blown out areas, and shows us how to bring our image to mirror what we have seen. He has a great sense of this from many years of looking.

Since we began using iPhoto and digital cameras, Michael has been working with me through the process of correcting the adjustments I have made. I have felt that this refined sense of detail is something that is far less developed in me and I have paid close attention to what adjustments he makes and why. How does one develop this ability to understand and remember these subtleties such as the details in a shadow and how dark it was, the exact hue of a color? I have realized that in order for me to be able to make accurate adjustments, I need to develop a depth of looking often absent in my discernment. I have become very aware that I actually often don’t have a clear memory of subtle aspects such as how dark the shadows were or the exact hue of a wall.

It’s not just that there is light and dark, color, but how much, what shade, exactly? How much detail is there in the shadows, how much contrast between light and dark?

I have been able to get by for quite a while without paying close attention to these subtle details. I guess I felt my excellent camera would take an accurate image and I didn’t need to take the time to notice. And even though adjustments do end up needing to be made, I can fix the image in IPhoto, or so I have thought. I have been able to guess so far based on my vague memory of how it looked. But because the detail has been lacking in my memory, the result is a blind spot in my editing process.

And since I don’t remember the details, what is the basis for how I make my adjustments? Michael will say, “It didn’t look like that. It was darker.”

Darker? I always want to lighten everything up. Always. It’s a true bias. Sometimes I want to make sharp what is soft, even if that’s not how it looked. It makes me feel more comfortable. Once I get to work using the midrange adjustments, I want to see the detail in the shadows or more richness in the color. I make a decision after glancing at the image what needs to be adjusted.

I am really making a conscious effort to look longer and commit to memory the color, tonal hue, contrast, and subtleties of my perception so that editing can be based entirely upon what the perception was. This seems important to me. “Winging it” will come out in the final image. Digital gadgetry can easily compensate for lack of refined awareness in the photographer, but it is used at the cost of the precision, fullness and vibrancy of the image.

Here are some questions I received from Paul Giguere recently regarding cropping and editing:

Hi Julie,

One topic that gets a lot of attention is the issue of cropping photos. Now I know that is usually discouraged (it is the flash of perception as you see it in the moment that is important, not what you want to see later in post production) however, I notice many people use zoom and telephoto lens when practicing Miksang and is this not cropping of a sort? I find it hard to believe that someone was stopped by something when the distance-to-subject is several hundred feet away. What are your thoughts on in-the-field cropping?

I have another follow-on question regarding post-production of our photos. Some who practice Miksang state that no post-production should be done (at all, no exceptions). The photos right off the card are the final versions of the photos. Period. I find this kind of severe. I know both you and Michael Wood do minor post production on photos (curves, levels, etc. . . at least in the workshop any way) in order to bring the photo more in line with what your perception was at the moment the photo was taken. The issue is further complicated when using JPEG (the camera applies many kinds of presets to "improve" the image) or RAW (which needs some tweaking as the image is usually not ready right out of the camera). Thoughts?

Thanks much,
Paul

Dear Paul,

Thank you for your comment and question. We are not opposed to cropping as long as it is used to eliminate what is extraneous to the perception. Sometimes because of the lens we are using or because of where we are in relation to the perception we have to settle for extra in the viewfinder. It is our decision to make that there is too much extra to make sense. In that case we just walk away from it.

Likewise, if our perception is a different shape than the viewfinder, there is no reason the final image should not be cropped so that it expresses the dimensionality of the perception. After all, we don’t see in a certain aspect ratio. Sometimes our perception is long and narrow, or square.

Check out this image Michael took at the Great Sand Dunes in Colorado as an example of this:

Lenses are tools to shoot our perceptions. If we see something across the street and we shoot it with a 50mm lens, there will be so much in the image that is not part of our perception that it will be lost. Someone looking at the image won’t be able to tell what stopped us. Even if we cropped the image, the final result might be ridiculously small. This is too much work and the result weak. If we have a zoom lens that will express the perception accurately then we can use it. Otherwise, we might want to bring our attention in a bit so that what we see in the viewfinder is the perception with nothing extra included.

Cropping is not a tool to improve upon our original perception. It can be used, however, to eliminate anything extra and bring the image in line with the perception. This is always the prime directive, to bring the image to the state that expresses the perception, nothing more - nothing less. Whether we lighten, darken, sharpen, bring up mid-tones, whatever we do with our adjustments, it is only to accomplish this purpose.

Thanks Paul.

Julie

Please join in the discussion on the topic of editing!

© Julie DuBose 2009

Great National Sand Dunes Photograph © Michael Wood 2009

What is Miksang Really?

Hello Fellow Contemplative Photographers.

As we all apply ourselves to the task we have set for ourselves, namely that of using the camera to connect to and express our world, many questions come up for all of us. We all share the experiences of uncertainty, doubt, deep pleasure, and inspiration as we bring our eye and mind to our visual world.

There are many people these days who feel a connection to this type of photography, and it can be confusing and difficult for the aspiring contemplative photographer to clarify the method, the motivation, and measure of what we see and do within this path.

Because of the popularity of the contemplative approach to photography there exists a tremendous pull to systematize, dogmatize, and basically take proprietary ownership of the inherent freshness within this approach. From this fundamentally uncreative urge, a new school no doubt will arise which easily identifies and judges according to standards that are enforced by teachers with checklists. This process has repeated itself endlessly within academic circles and wherever genuine insight has given way to conceptual understanding.

This is not what we hope for. The basis of Miksang is openness and absence of conceptual overlay. The tendency to use concept to describe openness is natural as long as we don’t lose the connection to the fundamental experience we are describing as we talk about Miksang.

I would like to invite you to become part of a conversation about Miksang and how we all make it a part of who we are and how we live.

It is my hope that through the process of conversation about the many things that come up in our day to day experience of seeing and living in this world that this blog can be a source of clarification and encouragement for all of us.

It is easy to lose the thread of genuineness and confidence in our ability to stay with our direct perceptions, and it is also easy to come right back.

Lately I have been looking through the various Miksang postings on the Internet, and there seems to be a lack of clarity about what Miksang is and how you can spot a really successful Miksang image. So I thought I would start out this blog by listing what I feel are the qualities of Miksang shooting and how to recognize the real deal.

True Miksang is not about the content particularly and it’s not about whether it looks like a Miksang shot. To me it is entirely about the ground of the perception and whether that is apparent in the execution of the photograph. This is very rare and in many cases absent from what is being posted on the Internet as 'Miksang'.

What is this ground? The ground of Miksang shooting is the open space of availability. The flash of perception arises out of this empty open space and without the presence of the flash in the image it is flat and lifeless, somebody’s idea.

What is Miksang Really?

Passion and Joy

Passion to connect and express.

Joyful experience of being alive.

Expressed with:

Genuineness

We can see the world without all our ideas and opinions and appreciate it as it is.

Confidence

We don’t have to worry that what we have seen isn’t good enough just as it is.

How Can We Recognize a Truly “Miksang” Image?

First, I would like to point out something that really needs to be said, as I have read various discussions about whether Michael Wood is true to the ‘Miksang style’. There is no Miksang style.

There is a Miksang “way”, which has been called in Japanese “Sha Shin Ki Do” - what the eye sees, the heart knows - the way to join the two.

This cannot be imitated because it is not based on a conceptual formula. It can be felt directly with the mind, the heart, and the eye.

Here are the essential aspects that must be present in a successful Miksang Image:

The Image expresses a Flash of Perception.

The Image is an expression of the Mind Quality of the Photographer.

Can you feel the heat of connection, the peace of no struggle, the absolute mind quality?

If your mind links up directly to the perception in the photograph and no thoughts arise, this is a good sign.

I hope this is helpful, and if you are shooting without starting with an open mind and eye and heart, it’s a good idea to re-establish your connection with the visual exercises we have given you before you go shooting.

I encourage you to write me back with your observations and comments.

Warm regards,

Julie

© Julie DuBose 2009