First level · Forms of perception
“Fire-engine red, not a red fire engine.” (Miksang teaching phrase)
This is your first real assignment. Photograph color on its own, separate from the object it belongs to and from what you think about it.
Background
Both Miksang schools start with color, because it grabs your attention on its own and it’s easier to photograph than light or texture.
It’s also where you first feel how hard the mind pulls toward objects. You’ll see a red car, a blue door and a yellow sign, and the assignment is to see the red, the blue and the yellow.
Background
The first level splits what you see into a handful of forms: color, light, texture and pattern, space, and a simple form in open space.
Think of them as scales for a musician, which are basic on purpose. McQuade and Hall admit the color assignment “can feel like primary school,” and that’s the idea.
Why it matters
When you see color as color, your likes and dislikes drop away. You stop thinking “my favorite blue” or “an ugly orange,” and you just see this orange, right now.
That’s a small, real taste of the seeing this whole practice is about.
Other voices
“Color does not care about your state of mind.”
He meant it kindly. Color cuts through your mood, and it keeps showing up whatever state you’re in.
Why it matters
What you’re really photographing is your experience of the color, the moment it filled your eye and mind.
Your picture should give whoever looks at it that same moment.
Warm-up · 5 minutes
Stand in one spot and turn a full circle in about a minute, looking only for color. Touch each one with your eyes and move on.
Go round again at eye level, then looking high, then looking low.
Afterwards, ask yourself how it felt each time a color arrived, and whether subtler colors showed up on later turns. (This one comes from Karr and Wood.)
The assignment · about an hour
The assignment · continued
What counts
What to skip this week
What counts
Karr and Wood don’t count black, white, grey or beige as colors for this exercise. McQuade and Hall allow a neutral background as long as color is what you saw.
If you’re new to this, the stricter rule is good discipline.
When nothing comes
McQuade describes his first color outing in 1983. He spent an hour walking in the heat, getting more and more frustrated and seeing only colored things, so he gave up and bought a cold drink.
As he stepped out of the shop, a dot of white on green across the street hit him. Then a gold pattern on blue, and then color all the way down the street.
When nothing comes
If a session is a struggle, trying harder makes it worse. Get a coffee, sit and watch the street, and go back when something catches your eye.
Karr and Wood suggest a break every 45 to 60 minutes anyway.
Some sessions just don’t work. Let that one go without judging yourself.
Back home
Take your time with the session. For each frame, ask:
Back home
Throwing out 3 of every 4 frames is normal early on, and Karr and Wood say “the delete key is your friend.”
Ulrich keeps nearly everything, because an odd frame may be ahead of where your understanding is.
Try both approaches and see which one teaches you more.
Between sessions
Keep tuning in to color. Take the camera to the corner store, and if a picture shows up, take it.
Watch that you don’t start shooting everything in sight. Trungpa called that spiritual materialism, meaning you’ve turned the practice into collecting. If you catch yourself doing it, go back to looking without the camera.
Other voices
DuBose pours milk over her cereal and finds a celery leaf among the yellow flakes, a small green against the yellow, fragile and stubborn at once. It moves her before the milk covers it, and the only special thing about the moment is that she saw it.
Other voices
Michael Wood’s young son found a maple leaf coated in spilled gasoline. Wood saw pollution, and the boy saw a shimmer of rainbow colors.
Other voices
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
Other voices
Merton photographed paint-spattered cans, peeling paint and stacked wood exactly as he found them, and let each one be what it was.
Checking in
Camera settings
Where to shoot · Dallas & Frisco
Between shoots
Pick a color in the morning, and notice it wherever it shows up all day, as color only.