The Art of Seeing - Week 14 - Sky and Clouds as Metaphor

Quote of the day: “You are the sky. Everything else – it’s just the weather.” ― Pema Chödrön

Light-hearted

This week for The Art of Seeing, I’ve been working on another one of Doug Beasley‘s wonderful Vision Quest Cards: Photo Assignments For Personal & Spiritual Growth for my photography self-study/challenge assignment. For this assignment I drew the card, “Photograph the sky and/or clouds as a metaphor for a mood or feeling. Title each image with that feeling.

Clarity, purpose

This was a fun assignment for me as I often photograph the sky. I love the way that the light and the clouds create different feelings. I went out and shot some new photos as well as reviewing old photos for this assignment. Truly this was pure joy, though deciding on the metaphor for a mood or feeling for each photo was challenging.

Anger

Some were so clear and for other photos I felt like the word for the feeling or mood was just beyond my grasp.

Possibility

Sitting with a photo in quiet contemplation helped me to gain a better sense of the feeling or mood I associated with it.

Peace

Sometimes the mood or feeling was a single word. Others times it was a phrase that described a more complex feeling.

Hope Rises Through the Midst of Pain

Once in a while I would pick a word and then on second glance realize that there was a better word. For the photo below I started with the word, “Happiness,” but when I looked at it again I realized looking at the sky in this photo just made me feel cheerful.

Cheerful

Sometimes the words surprised me, like on the photo below. At first glance the sky looks rather ominous. But there is such energy there and brightness there just waiting to be unfurled.