Baby Boomers

by Carol

The last of the baby boomers turns 50 this year. The trouble with being a baby boomer, is that its very hard to come up with an original idea. If you go to a store and say, "maybe I'll wear a red dress to that presentation," The next Sunday the New York Times declares that "red is the new black," and shows the streets of New York covered in red fashion. You think, "maybe I'll take up photography," and the next week there's a woman on the arthritis medication ad hiking with her camera up to a picturesque lighthouse.

I will let you in on a secret - I sort of thought I invented contemplative photography. (I know - make all the Al Gore references you want. OK stop laughing.)  It was only that what drew me into the serious study of photography was that I saw so many parallels between what I do for a living (audiology) and my photography lessons. I have a masters degree and years of study behind me when I teach a hearing impaired person how to hear a new way through a hearing aid. And I read every article I could about teaching the eye to see as I was learning photography. I read all the brain literature about the differences between processing visual stimuli and processing sound stimuli. Then I got curious about the other senses and was thrilled to find Theresa Sweeney's "Touch Painting." I started to form an idea. Maybe, given time, I could research these topics and put together an approach to "full personal exposure" to the images you are taking.

That's about when a friend signed up for a course with Vision Photographic Workshops at the Jersey shore, (taught by Michael S. Miller ) and came home talking about taking photographs without your camera, motion and creativity, touching the trees to feel their texture before photographing them....I'm sure I'm mis-stating or over-simplifying some of this - I haven't taken the Visions workshop yet myself - but it sure sounded as if they were encouraging the use of all your senses to make a better photograph. I began searching the internet for information and very quickly realized that there is an entire world out there called "Contemplative Photography" and it goes waaayyy beyond my simple idea of using your senses to the fullest. It incorporates meditation, sketching, writing, even sometimes yoga.

Sigh -OK- so maybe I'm not so original! But I am thrilled anyway to find publications like "Stone Voices," fields of study like Ecopsychology, and websites like The Photographic Sage, The Miksang Institute and too many more to list here. It's a perfect next step for me, combining many of my interests, and taking my approach to the next level. It also expands my personal photographic experience of using photography as therapy for this fast-paced world; helping me to slow down, to choose more intentionally, to stop worrying about the future and live in the present.

So I will continue to practice Contemplative Photography. I will continue to research training the senses. Whether its a new idea or not, it is new to me! It makes no matter whether I contribute to the field or just practice it. It has captured my interest, improved my images and expanded my experience. So maybe you will see me someday in the pages of a medical or a photographic journal; maybe you will just see me standing out in a field or forest somewhere with my camera; or maybe you will see me in the next arthritis ad.  Rest assured - I will be out there somewhere doing what I love!

Is there a phase of photography, or of life, that captures your interest? Share it with the rest of us boomers - there is bound to be someone else who's interested in it too.

"Its not enough to be holding your camera. Its not even enough to know how to use it.What's most important - in this, as in any creative endeavor - is our ability to be present, attentive: to notice, to listen, to see."
                                                                                                              Diane Walker