Looking Deeper

Attention is a funny thing. You can invest very little effort in paying attention and as a result get very little out of that attention. Or you can spend time and effort

and seeing what lies beneath the surface. When I photograph flowers my first images are almost always weaker and less moving to me than after I’ve spent time looking at them deeply in different light and from different angles.

And when I go someplace to make photographs, I find that the longer I spend simply observing and not making photos the more meaningful and moving I find the photos I finally do make. That’s one of the reasons that I make so many of my photos close to home or at home.

It has frequently been remarked, about my own writings, that I emphasize the notion of attention. This began simply enough: to see that the way the flicker flies is greatly different from the way the swallow plays in the golden air of summer. It was my pleasure to notice such things, it was a good first step. But later, watching M. when she was taking photographs, and watching her in the darkroom, and no less watching the intensity and openness with which she dealt with friends, and strangers too, taught me what real attention is about. Attention without feeling, I began to learn, is only a report. An openness — an empathy — was necessary if the attention was to matter. Such openness and empathy M. had in abundance, and gave away freely… I was in my late twenties and early thirties, and well filled with a sense of my own thoughts, my own presence. I was eager to address the world of words — to address the world with words. Then M. instilled in me this deeper level of looking and working, of seeing through the heavenly visibles to the heavenly invisibles. I think of this always when I look at her photographs, the images of vitality, hopefulness, endurance, kindness, vulnerability… We each had our separate natures; yet our ideas, our influences upon each other became a rich and abiding confluence.

— Mary Oliver

Intention/Attention

I used to have a spiritual teacher who said, “Intention is everything.” But I believe that we need to marry intention with attention in our creative endeavors and in our relationships with others. If my intention is seeing and sharing beauty in everything, my deep presence and attention are necessary in looking deeper and seeing beauty.

May you walk in beauty.