How to transform your time with the camera into a meditative downtime with just a little adjustment
In the age of digital photography most camera models have a little preview monitor on their back. Many photographers use it for the whole making of a picture. Which means, especially for mirrorless cameras, that, before the shutter-release button is pressed, you can adjust the exposure, set focus, not least frame your composition.
Amazing, because with older DSLRs (digital single lens reflex cameras) you could not see in real time how for example your choice of aperture would impact the histogram respectively the later finished photograph. Thanks to new camera technology you are able to see a preview of your photo. And when the shutter-release button is pressed, the little monitor shows the newly made photo for a few seconds.
'Conscious', Regensburg, 2009 © Dr. Christine Lehr
But this comes with one big disadvantage. Often times you see photographers on waysides extensively engaged in their monitors. Not only for a short period of time, or to change camera settings, but to review the series of photographs, that was already taken, for minutes. Striking and irretrievable, because in this way you miss the present moment.
With a small but effective change in handling your camera you will be able to approach the present moment again and more deeply. It is in the abstinence of screening your pictures while you are still on your way. You don't give in to the temptation to see your acquirements by now. But you train your patience through limiting yourself to the viewfinder, or to using your screen exclusively during the time before the shutter is released.
Advantages are a considerably more relaxed, even meditative time with your camera, a widened view on events and things just before you, another relation with your own camera. The camera does not hinder creativity, by untimely and unnecessary consuming your attention with regard to the actually next photographic step. The camera becomes the tool to filter impressions from the present moment, to transform them into poetry.
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