idealawg

Living with SIN: Using photos to track our shifts and changes over time

Last week, I gave a presentation in Baltimore on conflict resolution; one focus was detecting your inner mediator. We looked at six tips or clues for that path of inner clarity. One of the six was: "Look at people and disputes through SIN (Situational, Individual, Now)." Our discussion included the benfits of being wary of assumptions about one size fitting all, and of remembering that behavior, preferences, values, other states and traits can vary significantly with context.

In looking at SIN, I included some photos in the handouts which I will post below. I recommended that photos be used in such a way that we can see how we change from day to day. This exercise was not created by me; I have seen it in various forms a number of times. Let's look at how Stephanie Calabrese Roberts, author of The Art of iPhoneography, describes it.

She gives these instructions:

Scan through your image library and select a handful of your favorites. Study each image and ask yourself these questions:

• What were you doing moments before you made the image?
• What inspired you to make the image?
• How did you feel at that moment?
• How did the time of day, season, or weather impact the moment?
• How does the image make you feel now?
• If you could return to the scene now, how might you see it differently?

Since most people in my session would not have brought photos with them, I provided those below. Attendees were asked to write some reactions, observations, feelings, or descriptive words below each of the photos. I urged them to then revisit the photos a week later, preferably even further in the future, and again respond to them (not looking at the previous responses). Typically responses will shift and change.

Roberts writes in her book:

Upcoming seminar—Snap to Attention: Increasing Self-Awareness with Your Smartphone’s Camera

We have set the date for the Snap to Attention™ retreat to be held at the beautiful Spirit Mountain Retreat in Idyllwild, CA (nearest airport is Palm Springs). The two-day program will be held on the first weekend in November. Check here at this post for more details soon, email me to be notified when they are added, or join the Spirit Mountain mailing list.

This a short description of the program:

Snap to Attention™: Increasing Self-Awareness with Your Smartphone’s Camera

Brain science has proven what wise people have always known: Two critical components of resolving conflict, achieving career satisfaction, serving clients, and excelling at many other personal and professional endeavors are sharp and sensitive self-awareness and awake and aware attention. Many of us have in our pocket a tool to increase those skills of awareness and attention: our phone camera. We will look at how the camera’s filters, frames, and focus are metaphors for how we see the world, and ways to use our camera to increase our moment-to-moment mindfulness. Bring your smartphone and mind to increase in-sight and out-sight.

We will of course have time for contemplative activities, including photo snapping, on Spirit Mountain's beautiful grounds.

Click to read previous posts about photography.



Image credit: Spirit Mountain.

Another app for creating photos for training programs and presentations

I recently learned of an app that allows me impose one photo on another. It's called Superimpose. Below is my debut attempt. As you can see, I have lots to learn but the app is definitely master-able. In my research, I learned that this may be the easiest app of those that combine photos.

As a demo of how the app works, I decided to play with a very old photo of my Springer Spaniel Scipio looking at a friend. (Both the dog and the friend are long dead.)

Below I have posted the original photo, then the version on which I used another app called Popsicolor, and finally a floating photo made with Superimpose. You will need to click the last photo to see the full version or you will miss part of the effect.

What apps do you recommend for photos?

The friend holding the food which is of such great interest to my dog is Mike Sparrow. Click to read his obituary.



Be sure to cllck to see the entire photo or, because of Typepad sizing, you will only see a view that is incomplete.

For a friend, I wrote this caption about the last photo: I think Scipio may be somewhere still, coveting someone's hamburger and fries.

Filters and frames revisited: Do you see what I see, witness what I witness, picture what I picture?

We each have our own individual, unique filters and frames. This individuality results in our seeing the world—and people, situations, and circumstances in the world—in very different ways. I don't always attend to, construe, or notice what you do. Of course, as most of us probably know well, these differences can lead to conflict.

I recently posted about filters and frames at Brains on Purpose, and included a number of photos using various filters, frames, and apps to illustrate how one scene can have many versions or interpretations. That post at Brains on Purpose received a positive response from readers so I decided to post another series of shots, this time here at idealawg.

Take a look below at the various portrayals of garbage containers waiting on the street for the disposal truck. (Click on photos for larger versions.) Do the different renderings cause you to focus on varying places in the photo; imagine a different story; shift your responses, attitudes, or feelings?

Before taking a look, I hope you read the post at Brains on Purpose.

Do you need to meditate to be mindful? Of course not

Not everyone who is mindful achieves that state (or trait) through meditation. If you take a look at the questions on the Mindfulness Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS), Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), or Kentucky Inventory of Mindfulness Skills (KIMS)*, you will probably note that some, if not many, people you know who would likely score high are not meditators.

While meditation can facilitate mindfulness, it sure doesn't always, and mindful people are not always those who meditate. That's why I have long appreciated the work of Dr. Ellen Langer who looks at mindfulness without meditation. She writes:

Mindfulness as we study it, however, is achieved without meditation. It is the simple process of noticing new things. When we notice new things about people or ideas that we think we know, we come to see that we didn't know them as well as we thought we did, and they become interesting again in the present. Everything is always changing and looks different from different perspectives. Since uncertainty is the rule, when we think we know, our mindlessness is in charge.

A very practical, everyday, approachable definition of mindfulness: noticing what is new.

Since I have become an iPhoneographer, I have been, using this definition, more mindful. Everyday I watch the sky, shadows, light, people, colors, plants, and much more to see what has changed. The shifts that occur throughout the day, each hour, even each minute, are seen by me, and I marvel.

I take photos, too. Some people think I take too many photos. When I asked someone if he wanted to see my shots of the mailman's footprints in the snow, he said, "You've lost your mind." I just smiled and said, "Nope, not at all."

What's new in your world today? Seen the mail carrier? Any prints left behind?

Click for other posts about Ellen Langer. Click for posts about mindfulness and photography.

*Other mindfulness assessments are described in this paper.

Image: My mailman's footprints.

Lovely meditation on the listening benefits of photography

Last evening Jill Breslau (writer of this piece on mindfulness, attention, and photography) sent me an email that contained "A Day at Wilder Ranch." I was so taken with the essay's message that I contacted its author Juanita Benedicto and told her I would like to share what she had written with you. She kindly sent me a link to "A Day at Wilder Ranch."

Excerpt:

Not long ago, I drove to Wilder Ranch with the intention of appreciating the outdoors while walking around with my camera. Taking photos has become a favorite past-time. When I'm exploring with a photographer's eyes, I'm completely in the moment. Everything becomes still.  I become still.  I begin to listen.

Click to read the rest. Thanks, Jill! Thanks, Juanita!

Notes: More about mindfulness and photography here. More about Wilder Ranch here.

Image credit: Juanita Benedicto.

Filters and frames: Developing mindfulness and photos in high and low (conflict) resolution

 

Maps of my past and present

Just as a map is guide to a certain area’s geography, similarly, photographs give an in-depth perspective to the landscape of human interactions, both past and present.-VSCO

In learning to use my smart phone for photography, I have begun to see how much taking photos is like conflict resolution. In fact, I have been telling colleagues that I will begin using photography in mediation because the two processes are so aligned; one informs the other.

From The Practice of Contemplative Photography: Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes:

Generally we are unaware of ... currents of mental activity, and it is hard to distinguish what we see from what we think about. For example, when we are in a restaurant or on a bus with a bunch of strangers, we might look around and think, “He looks unpleasant; that person over there looks nice; she looks disagreeable.” We imagine that we see these people the way they really are, that we are seeing their real characteristics, but unpleasant, nice, and disagreeable are not things that can be seen like green blouses or gray hats. They are the projections of our thoughts. Thinking mind is working all the time, projecting, labeling, categorizing. ...

Photography can be used to help distinguish the seen from the imagined, since the camera registers only what is seen. It does not record mental fabrications. as the photographer Aaron Siskind said, “We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there, [what] we have been conditioned to expect... but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs.”

More of an excerpt from the book here, including: "The practice of contemplative photography...doesn’t just change the way we take pictures. It changes the way we see the world."

Taking photos, or vividly imagining life snapshots, can shift our perspective. To facilitate shifts in how we see maybe not the world, but at least a conflict, I have been developing many, many questions that can be asked through the lens of photography and which may bring

Attention: Photography as Meditation

Click to read a paper by attorney Jill Breslau about attention, meditation, and photography. (Unfortunately, the pdf does not allow me to copy and paste so I won't include an excerpt here.) Click now for your reading pleasure.

Note (added March 1, 2013): This paper was written by Jill when she was earning a Masters degree at California Institute of Integral Studies, in the mid '90s.