Below are some of my favorite quotes.
When I conduct my weekend retreats and workshops, I will often incorporate a number of these very inspiring thoughts! If any of them speak to you, why not try to go on a photo walk. Try to capture some images which reflect what you’re experiencing during that contemplative moment. You may be surprised by what you “see”!
Tao of painting
“The world is a canvas where art & spirit collide and become one”
Beaumont Newhall-“we are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually. When we separate our artistic activity from daily life, we cut ourselves off from our most valuable resource”.
Dorothea Lange-“the camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera”
Jewish prayer: “the lord is one” (Deut. 6:4).
“Perfect love casts out fear” (1 john 4:18)
John Berger: “the way we see things is affected by what we know or what we believe”
Henri Cartier-Bresson: (the decisive moment) “technique is important only insofar as you must master it in order to communicate what you see….in any case, people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing”.
Claude Debussy: “music is the space between the notes”.
Meister Eckert: “the eye with which I see god is the same eye with which god sees me”.
“That the eyes of your heart may be enlightened” (Ephesians 1:18)
Freeman Patterson: “letting go of yourself is an essential precondition of real seeing”.
Upanishads: “verily oneself is the eye, the endless eye”.
Martin Buber: “all actual life is encounter”
Michael Wood: ‘creativity is accessible to everyone”
Edward Weston: “when subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision”.
Andy Karr: “the more your mind rests in the present, the more you will see”.
Frederick Franke: (third eye) “our looking is perfected everyday—but we see less and less”.
“Open my eyes that I may see” (psalm 119:8)
Andre Kertesz: (visual integration) “I don’t look, I see…that’s two different things. It happens, it happens…I’m not looking for it. Then, you see, in any case, there is always something creating inside of you, something.”
Minor white: “photographs can be felt”.
Paul strand: (the creative moment) ‘I don’t chose the things I photograph, they chose me”.
Thomas Merton: “stop looking and begin seeing. Looking means you already have something in mind for your eyes to find. But seeing is being open and receptive to what comes to the eye; your vision total and non-targeted”.
Tolkien: “not everyone who wanders is lost”
Thoreau: “simplify, simplify, simplify”
William Wordsworth: “with an eye made quiet by the power of harmony, and the deep power of joy, we see into the life of things”.
T.S.Eliot: “we shall not cease from exploration. And the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time”.
Alfred Stieglitz: (equalivents) “art is the affirmation of life. And life, or its eternal evidence, is everywhere”.
Kisu: “if your eye is just a little clouded, flowering illusions are rampant”
Jesus: “I am the light of the world”
Buddha: “I am the eye of the world”
Frederick Franke: “not what the eye sees, but that which makes the eye see, that is the spirit”.
“There are different kinds of gifts, but the same spirit. There are different kinds of service, the same lord. There are different kinds of working, but the same god works all of them in all people” (1cor 12:4-6).
Claude Monet “in order to see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at”.