The Art of Relaxation

I would say that I’ve been a photographer for most of my life – starting with my grandmother’s Brownie box camera in 1965. I started college wanting to be a photojournalist. After realizing how difficult it might be to support myself and a family, I decided to switch my studies to Computer Science – and simultaneously made my father very happy.

Jumping ahead many years… I have to repeat myself and say that I’ve been a photographer for most of my life. My career choice in college didn’t change what I am or what I love – it merely changed the way I would support myself and make a living. It also allowed me to enjoy photography without it being my main “job”. If it were my “job” it may have changed from being art and relaxation to just being another thing to do each day. For the past 50 years, photography has been my relaxation, my joy. It has been the way I unwind and exercise the other side of my brain.

One of the reasons I enjoy film photography is that it forces me to slow down. I love my medium format cameras with waist level finders because I can see an image in the viewfinder with both eyes. I can slowly compose an image – moving the camera around to see different angles. I can actually see how the scene might look framed. Looking though an eye level finder almost makes it too easy to take my eye away from the finder and see the whole scene, which looking down into a waist level finder prevents. Interesting how this calms me down, how it forces me to think differently.

I’ve been talking to people in my local photography club about some of these ideas. It bothers me a little that photography is a business, but it bothers me more when people think of it only as a way to make money. I know artists have to live too, but there’s something backwards about thinking of if that way. I sell some of my images and that’s always nice, but I was a photographer and I loved photography long before I ever sold anything. I would still do it if I never sold another image because I love the process of making images. I love the creative part of the art of photography!

There’s also something about film photography that happens when you process your own negatives. It’s almost like a therapeutic process that extends what you do with the camera into one final step, the process of completing the images. Now some would say the process isn’t complete until you produce some final image, but this is the final analog step for me. After this I can scan the negatives if I want or have someone else produce a print for me (with whatever process they have). I generally scan my negatives and share them here, or in some cases I will have a physical print made (I don’t have space for a darkroom, so I always have others make prints for me).

Whether I’m visiting a national park, or sitting on my patio, I love just looking at the world through the viewfinder. I’m old enough to realize that I can never do true justice to nature in my photographs. I realize that my images are not a replacement for walking in Yosemite Valley, or standing on the edge of the Grand Canyon, or seeing a great mountain range for the first time or even just sitting with the flowers on my patio. They are great reminders of views I once saw in person – of the beauty of God’s creation – even if they are nothing compared to the real thing.

Maybe I’m all wrong in my views about photography, what art really is or should be – but for me, it truly is a way to relax. For me the whole process of making an image and using the other side of my brain is art! It is the art of relaxation.

I hope you have good experiences with your photography, and I hope you love making images as much as I do. If you’ve never tried film photography, remember it is an alternative process, an alternative to digital. There’s more than one way to make a photograph!