It's hard to cultivate a relationship when multi-tasking or fighting distractions. Just reflect upon how exaspirating it is to conduct a conversation over a meal when the dinner partner has a smart phone on the table and repeatedly glances at it. What's more important, the trivial text or tweet, or me? Please, at least give me a half hour of your undivided attention, if you can remember how to do that.
As photographers, we are engaged in cultivating relationships with our subjects, and risk allowing distractions to degrade these relationships as surely as a smart phone at dinner. There is a cost for giving up full engagement and presence. Something goes missing from the picture. This isn't just about rushing through the photo shoot. It's about allowing the body to slow down and settle in. It's about bringing the breathing and heart rate down from a frenzy to a slow, relaxed, and attentive rhythm. It's about quieting the mind. It's about gaining more control by being less controlling. It's about giving the soul of the subject and the soul of the photographer a chance to touch. I'm not just talking about portrait and event photography, where we are expected to engage with the people we photograph. I'm also talking about street photography, nature and landscape photography, still life and product photography. Indeed, I'm talking about any creative engagement where we have a personal investment in the outcome. If the objective is to express something about ourselves in the way we see and record and respond, then we cheat ourselves and the whole enterprise when we give less than full frontal attention to our subject.
Author Bors Vesterby has a recent post on the Luminous Landscape website that addresses this topic, titled Dynamic Patience. Link to it here and linger with it for a few minutes.
