The Five Ways of Contemplative Photography: Part One

    Over the years that I have spent ruminating about contemplative photography I have concluded that it is really an umbrella term.  There are many ways to practice it.   I've chosen 5.  I'm sure there are others we could add but this is a start.

1.  With the eyes of the Inquirer

   When you practice contemplative photography in this way, you look at the landscape as a botanist or geologist or any scientist would.  You will wonder at the diversity and intricacies of the natural world.  You will gain wisdom from understanding the why's and the wherefore's.

   It is an approach that demands that you touch and turnover.  It is the physical encounter with whatever you see that excites you.  It was as an Inquirer that I approached the stone beaches I visited in September.  I couldn't just photograph them, I had to handle them, collect them, wonder about their origins...they were fascinating.

   But the inquiring contemplative photographer takes the inquiry one step further as I did in the post, A Beach of Metaphors.  You can begin the process of contemplative photography in many ways but for  me there is only one way to end up, at least for this contemplative photographer, - searching for the metaphoric possibilities in the landscape.  Tomorrow we will look at the second way.