The Mindful Photographer

Camera Practice

Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, Hawai‘i, David Ulrich

In learning to write with clarity and force, “keep your hand moving” across the page, advises Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones. For photographers, it’s important to stay active with seeing and sketching ideas. For most of my career, I used a large 5×7-inch view camera, which sits upon a tripod and uses individual sheets of film. At best, I could carry 10, two-sided film holders into the field; that’s 20 exposures for a day’s work. I needed to do the sketching of my ideas in my head, with my eyes and brain by cupping my hand around my eye to visualize an image. Working ...