Mindful Photography Workshop, The Art House, Sheffield 5th July 2019

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2nd July 2019

Before I started Photography 3 I considered investigating Photography and Mindfulness (or wellbeing, or both). The Art House in Sheffield are promoting a 3 hour session so I'm off to find out more....



Mindful Photography Workshop, The Art House, Sheffield 5th July 2019


Don and Heather ran an afternoon taster workshop on Mindful Photography in Sheffield’s city centre. It is an area of photography that interests me but I didn’t really know enough about it to hold a discussion with anyone.

Midfulness photography is also known as contemplative photography or “Miksang”. The practice came from a Tibetan monk and concerns photography as a way of reflecting a state of mind.

After introductions from Don and Heather, we were encouraged to participate in a mindfulness (relaxation) exercise. As a way of slowing ourselves down, we had to choose a nature object from a tray and hold it for several minutes, rotating, touching and looking at it from different angles, considering if / how the light bounced off it, the shapes etc.

The next exercise introduced us to “the flash of perception”, closing our eyes and looking at the first thing we noticed when we opened them, whether it was colour, shape, space etc.
We rotated through 360 degrees over 5 minutes, looking straight ahead and maintaining a wide peripheral vision watching the world in detail. The amount of detail visible was interesting as the session was held in a white painted room ready for an exhibition.

A 10-minute slow aimless wander on the streets of Sheffield saw us noticing much more then we had on the way to The Art House. During this walk we were not allowed to take photographs or earmark anything for the photo walk.

We regrouped and were given an assignment for a 30-minute photo walk. “Finding beauty in unexpected places”. We could take 5 photographs and had to practice relaxation to make the flash of perception happen. Once we had seen it, we had to frame it and once back, send one to Don for group discussion.

I used my camera phone for this exercise to keep things simple. The image I presented was the first one I saw. The 4th image (chain) looked different in my eyes to when I reviewed the photo.
We all presented one image and had to say one word about how we felt or what we saw with other peoples photos. They were all completely different; from abstract to identifiable images.

Don showed us a couple of books on contemplative photography and discussed ideas for further courses. He may organise an exhibition in the Art House to display work from students of his courses.


Further reading:

Karr, A and Wood, M. (2011) The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes. Colorado: Shambala publications

Zehr, H. (2005) Little Book of Contemplative Photography: Seeing With Wonder, Respect And Humility, Little Books of Justice & Peacebuilding New York: Good Books

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