I admit, the title is not entirely mine. Many (many) years ago there was a book called ‘Zen, or the art of maintaining a motorbike’ – I think.
My best friend had given it to me because I liked travelling by motorbike back then, but wasn’t always very patient and so he probably thought that a dose of ‘Zen’ would be good for me.
The book was about a father who taught his son all kinds of life lessons during meditative motorbike maintenance. I only read part of the book because it soon became too tedious for me.
My impatience broke through and drove away any glimmer of enlightenment through ‘Zen’. So I live to this day completely untroubled by any enlightenment…
But the title came back to me in a completely different context – photography. Because when I take photos, I can actually enter a kind of meditative state!
I enjoy looking through the viewfinder in the ‘here and now’ and perceive my surroundings completely differently than usual:
I see colours and contrasts much more intensely, the alternation of light and dark, textures of surfaces on which the light is reflected.
My gaze wanders into the distance, wanders over the horizon and returns to individual people, animals or plants that catch my attention. I look for and see details that I might otherwise never have noticed – and I photograph them too.
Do I use these photos later? Only partially, in my blog posts. Many of these photos simply end up as files on my hard drive and in the cloud.
But in the age of digital photography, that’s a much smaller problem than it used to be when I was still shooting with film and developing my photos myself in my basement darkroom. I didn’t have much money for film or photo paper and experiments quickly became expensive back then.
Today I can take lots of ‘superfluous’ photos and enjoy them uninhibitedly. Why is that? Well, with every photo I subconsciously practise taking pictures and (hopefully) get a little better over time.
There is a dispute among photographers as to which is better for learning: quality, i.e. consciously and rather sparingly developing and creating images, or quantity, i.e. taking a lot of photos according to the motto: a lot helps a lot.
I believe that consciously creating a photo and simply ‘snapping’ photos are both part of the process. After all, children learn best through play – even older children. But taking a little care every now and then makes you grow up.
When I visit a beautiful place and know that I want to write an article about it, I consciously work on getting a good and meaningful series of pictures that illustrate my story as well as possible. But even then I ‘snap’ ‘unimportant’ details or take street photos of people that are perhaps too close and too personal to use in my blog.
Why do I do that? I enjoy it in the moment! And it means I’m fully in the moment, fully focussed on what’s going on around me.
For me, this is a rather rare state, because all too often I am ‘mentally pre-occupied’, i.e. lost in my thoughts. I am mentally somewhere else and usually in the future, which I am currently planning, or sometimes in the past. It’s good for me to let go of the future and the past and just be ‘here and now’.
I think this is a phenomenon that affects many people. Especially those who have their smartphone in front of them all the time, no matter where they are. And I’m sure that it’s good to simply sweep aside all the mental background noise and perceive and enjoy the ‘here and now’ with all your senses.
We humans are ‘eye animals’; our eyes, or rather our vision, are our most important sense. And it’s debatable whether a camera in front of your eyes is just as distracting as a smartphone. Well, if you take photos with your smartphone and concentrate on it, then that helps too!
When I’m taking photos, I don’t have the camera in front of my eyes all the time, but I look attentively at my surroundings and only pick up the camera for one or two photos.
In retrospect, I don’t even need to look at my photos to be able to describe the place exactly. The pictures I consciously took have ‘burnt’ themselves deep into my memory, even without photos.
The process is perhaps even more important than the result – another exciting realisation. But of course it’s also nice to look at the photos from the trip again later.
Something else happens subconsciously during the process: the operation of the camera shifts from the conscious to the subconscious, from the cerebrum to the cerebellum. Similar to unconsciously riding a bike, I need to think less and less about HOW I want to photograph something – I do it more and more automatically.
And just like when I go for an unconscious walk, I need to look for motifs, perspectives, composition or light and colour less and less – I see them more and more automatically.
Of course, I’m still an amateur photographer and far from being a professional. That’s totally ok with me, because the journey is the reward. And when I compare my photos from the past with my photos today, I can at least see progress – cool!
Photography has actually become a kind of meditation for me: Breathe in – see the light – breathe out – select the image section – breathe out – press the shutter release. Breathe in – how am I feeling inside – breathe out – what’s beautiful around me – breathe out – enjoy the here and now.
Is that Zen? I don’t know, I never finished the book…
But it’s fun – I promise!
If you don’t yet have a camera for travelling, I highly recommend you buy one and give it a try. Of course – you can also take good photos with a smartphone. I’ve taken a lot of photos on my blog with my smartphone and will continue to do so.
But a good camera can do much more than a smartphone and is much more fun. That’s why, after a few years without a camera, I’ve just bought one again. And it’s already a lot of fun!
This is just a small (and not too serious) introduction to the topic of photography while travelling. I will also be writing more informative articles on travel photography in the future and hope to motivate you a little to take photos while travelling – because it’s fun and because it really enriches travelling sooooo much!!!
Until then, I wish you happy holiday planning.
More interesting articles for you
Coming soon…
Cover picture: Seagull in flight (Photo: Ulrich Knüppel-Gertberg)
