Throughout history, people have gone to wild places hoping to see life, themselves, and their surroundings anew. As photographers, we strive to create images that capture the underlying mystery of a seemingly ordinary place. The goal of this workshop is to learn to observe more deeply, and to find and capture such images in the landscape through a combination of intuition and perception.

The Contemplative Landscape Workshop essence seeks to capture both the known and the unknown aspects of a landscape by combining awareness and perceptual skills. Its end product seeks a wholeness out of which we can photograph and express truly what we feel about the fundamental reality that exists in front of us. We have seen, over the years, people’s lives and photography change in the course of the workshop. It often broadens a person’s spiritual life, although each one brings their own beliefs to the workshop, and all are welcome.

The Contemplative Landscape begins with awareness exercises in photography that we have developed over the past 40 years. The awareness skills include sitting, standing and walking mindfulness that put you in the moment. Perceptual skills offer primary access to the actual visual working of the human eye-brain system, the tool with which we create our images. The perceptual exercises pull you away from the process of copying landscape images made by others and help you concentrate on what you see.

Digital cameras are preferred. We will not be using computers as such, but students are encouraged to bring their laptops to download, store, view, edit, and transfer their images. Contemplative Landscape is for beginners through advanced photographers.

Skills learned in the workshop are: Mindfulness, Negative Space, Seeing Through, and Hidden Wholeness. Presentations include Contemplative Landscape, and Western and Chinese Landscape painting and photography history and structure. We expect to photograph at the ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest, Eureka Dunes in Death Valley, Mono Lake and the Eastern Sierra lakes.