Part 10 of 16: Must Be Present To Win
Last time, in Part 9, we explored the various aspects of savoring, and in this part, we turn our attention to practicing savoring and refine our ability to anticipate, savor, and reminisce. TWO activities grace our schedule this time around, with the first one being a photojournal assignment and the second being all about setting aside 20 minutes of personal vacation time a day for a whole week.
“A Lens to a New World” photojournal Instructions
1. Familiarize yourself with the camera settings before heading out. The more comfortable you are, the more effective this exercise will be. You don’t want to spend your time fumbling, so brush up on them before going out. If you don’t have the time or the know-how, simply use whatever automatic setting seems best.
2. The day you head out should ideally be a relatively sunny day. Having a wide range of light significantly enhances this activity. It can certainly be done indoors if needed, but a sunny day provides more light from which to choose.
3. Go to a relatively quiet and calm location away from where you live, such as a park or out in the country. You’re aiming for a change in scenery that also aids in reducing distraction. Once you get to where you want to be, find a comfortable place to wait for an extended period of time, whether sitting or standing, and then simply stay put and visually scan the area for a while, patiently and intentionally. Take time to pause and notice everything in your immediate surrounding. Notice the curves and recesses in architecture, the patterns and textures in nature, and the rich, vibrant color and contrast all around you.
4. Then, select an object close to you. It could be architectural, such as a building or an interesting component of that building. It could be natural, such as a tree or an interesting rock outcropping. It could be man-made, such as a car or other machine. Ideally, it will be something that remains still while you examine it. As you begin exploring the object, look at it in various ways and angles. Cross your eyes, tilt your head, and even look upside-down at it if you have to, but your goal is to extract interesting abstract patterns or textures from what you are examining.
5. Begin taking pictures at varied angles and zooms. These pictures should represent many different ways of seeing the object or merely small sections of the object. If you have the capability of taking a macro, do so, and see how the object’s texture changes under higher magnification. As you take pictures, step a little closer or a little further away, tilt the camera ever so slightly from one side to the other, and change the way you stand or hold the camera. Play with the available light (i.e., get the object between you and the light to take a silhouette and then get between the object and the light to snap a fully lit picture), and you could even take pictures of your shadow cast upon the object somehow. Take shots that seem like they might appeal to you, but do so without judgment of whether they are right or wrong; just keep shooting.
6. Then, locate another object nearby and repeat the same steps as before until you have about 30-40 shots in total between the two subjects.
7. Connect the device to a computer (or develop the film if doing it the old-school way), and examine each of the shots carefully. If possible, scroll through the shots in a grid format in addition to clicking through each one. Try going fast and identify what catches your eye quickest. Then, slow down and go back through them again, either front-to-back or back-to-front, with the same idea of careful, intentional selection in mind. Narrow the shots down to your top four pictures.
8. Print out the pictures and paste them into the end of this chapter as a reminder of what you will eventually take away from this brief section of the book, but also, flip forward to the pics once in a while as you make your way through, and we’ll discuss this activity more later.
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