In my previous post I gave a brief introduction to the practice of Miksang Photography. In the comment section one person accused me of “photoshopping” the photos I shared in the diary, so I thought I might talk a little bit about post processing and Miksang, and also try to explain more clearly the difference between Miksang photos, and other contemplative photos.
First, though, I would like to request that people do not post photos in the comment section of this diary...I already confessed in the last post that I’m not that good at this, and y’all will post photos better than mine. :-) Seriously, there are some practical reasons for this, one being I scroll manually through the comments, and long comments with many photos make for way too much scrolling. I know I can collapse a comment, but that needs to be done every time the page is refreshed and when there are many comments with multiple photos that also becomes a distraction. Second, I am interested in talking about Miksang Photography; unless you are trained in Miksang photography your photos are not Miksang photos, and I’ll explain more about that in a bit; finally posting photographs in the comments turns the discussion away from Miksang to you and your photos, and hijacks the discussion so I’m asking you again, to please refrain from posting photos in the comments.
And I repeat my disclaimer, I’ve only been trained in levels 1 and 2 of Nalanda Miksang, I am not a teacher, so everything I say is only from my own level of understanding.
The practice of Miksang photography comes with a number of rules. My understanding is, as one moves through the different levels of training the some of the rules change as one is learning to see more, and some of the rules stay the same. Some people think the rules are no more than meaningless limits, but in truth the rules provide the structure on which we build our Miksang practice. The rules provide a commonality for practitioners, and make it more easy for us to communicate, simply, through our photographs. Without the rules the photos become nothing more than merely a pretty photo, or an edgy photo, or a clever photo...and so on.
Here is a wonderful quote from Miriam Hall’s pinned post at Fb Group Miksang Davis which explains this much better than I am able:
Miksang is a formal practice, not a bunch of images that look a particular way, or even feel a particular way. It is a formal practice, like meditation is, in which you learn to look and see freely, but with specific guidelines. Without the practice, the guidelines for images posted seem simply like a bunch of pointless rules. And without the practice, that's what the guidelines are: just rules.~Miriam Hall
When I took classes absolutely no post processing was allowed. One reason for this is the whole idea about Miksang is to see the world exactly as it is, and to that end we also need to think about the way the human eye sees. A while ago I noticed an ad for a Miksang Institute class in Colorado that stated participants needed to have a camera, a notebook computer and software for editing photos, and to know how to use them. In the Nalanda tradition, I’ve recently seen teachers say that cropping a bit or tweaking exposure is OK, but images that are overly post processed are not what Miksang is about. So it is clear Miksang photography is evolving, and some post processing is now allowed.
In order to clear up any lingering confusion about my photos, I do not have any powerful photo editing tools, and definitely no Adobe subscriptions. The guideline I set for myself is that anything I do to my image in software should be to make the image look more like what I saw. For example, I have a bad habit of forgetting to change the white balance setting on my camera, and I will sometimes shoot a number of photos on a cloudy day with the camera set for sunshine. That makes a significant difference in the appearance of the photos and what I actually saw, and adjusting white balance in software makes the photos look more like what I saw. It is not intended to enhance the image, or increase drama in any way. (It would still be better if I remembered to be aware of my white balance setting.) There is nothing inherently wrong with enhancing images, and editing for increased drama, stunning photos are created in that way, but it is simply a different art form and it is not Miksang.
A little bit of cropping also makes sense. We are taught to fill the frame with our perception, there should be no doubt for the viewer regarding exactly what you saw. However, sometimes perceptions don’t exactly fit the aspect ratios of the cameras we use, so sometimes cropping off the bit that was not included in the perception makes sense.
I have seen claims that the use of bokeh in Miksang photos is not allowed, it is true the human eye doesn’t necessarily see that way. However in class I was taught it was perfectly fine to use depth of field to isolate your perception.
In the photo above my perception was the spent lilac blooms framed by the twigs, and the background was not meant to be a part of that.
It so happens I belong to a number of groups devoted to sharing Miksang photos. Not everyone posting in these groups is trained in Miksang photography though, and last summer someone posted a controversial image in one of the groups of a waterfall that had clearly been altered so that the water was brilliant green. One of the things I love about Miksang photography is that if we are seeing deeply enough, many times we can produce images that look as if they must have been edited to create an effect, and yet were not.
I suppose it isn’t such a stretch for a person to think because they’ve never seen something in Nature like the images above, then it can’t be possible to produce such images without editing. And yet all it takes is a quiet mind with the ability to notice. :-)
The truth is we are walking through the world unconsciously without even seeing it. Most of the time we are on auto pilot, laser focused on what ever stimulus is “speaking” the loudest, so perhaps we are disgusted by whatever Congress is doing or not and that is absorbing our attention, or perhaps we are distracted by our smart phone’s entertainment functions and frequent “incoming” alerts, or perhaps we are distracted by all the things that need to be done to take care of our families. It’s fine to give attention to these things, what trips us up is when we become consumed by them. The potential for distraction is infinite, and if we don’t train our minds to slow down and pay attention to the quiet things that happen right in front of us the mind continually moves willy-nilly toward the most provocative distraction, either pleasant or unpleasant. Then we are missing out on a good part of the joy and beauty to be had in life.
The next two photos are very similar, the same “subject”, similar in tone and yet one is Miksang while the other is not. I know, WTF, right???
If you remember in the first post there was a quote by Nalanda Miksang instructor, Miriam Hall, that said among other things:
...images produced not from Miksang practice (again, it's a formal lineage, tradition and structure) are basically Miksang-like. Because the practice, the process is 3/4 of the actual point of Miksang. (Emphasis mine)
The first photo happened as I was walking across the street on the way to city hall to pay my taxes. The flash of perception grabbed me, the truck was parallel parked two spaces away, and this stopped me in my tracks. Fortunately I had a point and shoot camera in my purse, as my cellphone is so old it doesn’t have a camera.
The second photo, was taken later the same day in the evening after a heavy thunderstorm, I was taking photos of a street fair and I saw that same truck; remembering the stunning reflection I was treated to earlier in the day, I wandered over to see what I might find in the bumper.
So it is the first photo that is Miksang; that photo arose, when I wasn’t even intending to photograph something, through a flash of perception that completely bypassed the intellect; the second photo came about from an intellectual wondering what I might find in the bumper to photograph. How the photo came about, the process, is the difference. I like to say the difference between conventional photography and Miksang is the difference between taking photos and receiving photos.
There is something else to be learned here, in Miksang photography the “thing” photographed is frequently not what the photo is about. On one level you could say the photo subject in these two photos is a truck bumper, however the photos are not really about the bumper, are they? In this case it is what is reflected in the bumper. And this is true about both photos, yet one photo was taken, the other was received. And that makes all the difference.
You may notice the lack of titles, captions or descriptions with the photos I’ve been including, from the first post:
Miksang photographs are shot while totally present in the moment, from flashes of perception, then forming an equivalent and recording one’s perception totally without concepts. (For those who might be unfamiliar with Buddhist terminology, “beyond concepts” means without, or beyond, thought.)
The addition of captions, titles...words adds concept on to what is intended to be non-conceptual. As I mentioned above, we are meant to fill the frames with our perceptions, when the viewer looks at the photo there should be no doubt regarding what you saw, no words, thoughts or stories are necessary.
The practice of Miksang photography has helped me to learn how to photograph from a quiet mind, that in turn helps me to see more and more deeply into this beautiful world. That doesn’t mean everything in the world is beautiful, there is room for decay and grotesque in Miksang as well, after all they too are parts of this world, but that’s a topic for another day. And that’s quite enough of my rambling, here are a few more photos: