Zen of Creativity Chapter 8

[Cooperix]

Hello,
Jishin, I especially like the image of the emu (or ostrich?) with that quote. quite perfect.
And the lion and leopard. Do they each have a blue and a brown eye?
And those dogs! what fine portraits. thanks for posting. dogness.

Jinyo, glad you joined in and I am intrigued by your noting the lack of a human presence in the images. That should be a challenge to someone.
Also, I agree if we put too much pressure on ourselves to get whatever we are doing JUST RIGHT, then we lose so much of the freshness. I guess its best to approach our artwork with no mind/ no judgement, complete freshness and maybe that's how suchness arrives? that's what JDL advises anyway.

Any writers/poets musicians out there, we'd enjoy hearing from you as well. A different perspective.

deep bows
Anne

~lahst~

[Jishin]

Thanks Anne!

I was just playing with the eyes. I made one blue. Kinda of fun. :-)

I am not sure if its an emu or ostrich but its cool looking.

I am lucky to have 6 fine models (3 german shepherds, 1 dobbie, 1 aussie and one mut) at my disposal for portraits.

Gassho, Jishin, ST

[Kokuu]

Hello all

It has taken me time to reply to this because of Ango but I really enjoyed this chapter. Suchness is such a pivotal idea to Zen and stands against the often negative perception of emptiness (sunyata). Although all things are empty of self, they also contain the suchness of the hear and now and capturing that moment is a very beautiful thing. We try and do exactly that in haiku writing, and again in photography.

In looking through JDL's own photography and verse collection Making Love With Light, his ability to capture that suchness is immediately apparent from pond ripples to a decaying tree. These are moments in time which demonstrate the impermanence and beauty of life.

My dog, although totally daft and willing to do almost anything for a rawhide bone, is so completely herself it is noticeable. She is 100% filling the essence of dog in her own way with no preconceptions standing between her and her suchness of being.

I really like the line 'If in the land of the Buddha there remains the distinction between the beautiful and the ugly, I do not desire to be a Buddha in such a land.' and this is my take on it: https://postimg.cc/8J2Rr37s.

This is a poem hopefully reflecting a constantly moving landscape:

coastal mudflat
the ebb and flow
of sandpipers

(Blithe Spirit 28(3))

It seems to me that the Japanese idea of wabi sabi includes space for both what we might term the ugly and beautiful in a conventional way and, in fact, almost requires it. Beauty becomes even more precious when we become aware of the slight fading around the edges due to impermanence, and is only there because of the processes that are forever ongoing and we can halt for just a moment through an attempt to portray it in art.

Thank you to Anne and Meitou for continuing to run this beautiful conversation and exploration. In the sometimes frenzied activity of Ango (at least from the organisational side!) it is a lovely resting place just to be and enjoy everyone's artistic expression.

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

[Jishin]

Just a bird.

Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

[Jinyo]

What could be more human than this fellow?





Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

So much more than human Jishin - love him !

[Kotei]

Thank you for your kind words for the water drops.

Jishin, I needed some time with your pictures for seeing beyond the impressive "black-background / sharp foreground" effect.
I especially like your apes and monkeys and lions. What a presence.
I like your b/w excursions, too.

Beautiful merging sandpipers and wave flow, Kokuu.

Gassho,
Kotei sat/lah today.

[Jishin]

Zen of Creativity Chapter 8

That’s an awesome umbrella Kotei!



Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

[Jishin]

Count Dracula.





Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

[Jishin]

Another pretty bird.



Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

[Kokuu]

Vulture?

How do you get the amazing contrast on your pictures, Jishin? Is it a filter?

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

[Cooperix]

coastal mudflat
the ebb and flow
of sandpipers
Kokuu


Hello, me again.

So many thoughts on the images (the color drop Kotei!! count Dracula, Jishin!!), that finely stated haiku, the discussion that I will probably only get to only a couple.

Wabi sabi is that place between perfection and imperfection that is perfect and complete. The concept is of course brilliant, because nothing is completely one or the other. Thanks for bringing that into the discussion, Kokuu.

Beauty becomes even more precious when we become aware of the slight fading around the edges due to impermanence

For years I could not look at a beautiful rose knowing its ephemeral nature and until I realized that beauty is always in the moment I denied myself that gift of seeing. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the dead flower rotting and going back to the earth to be reborn as another rose. I learned from him. That even in death there is beauty and perfection.

Good art deals with these issues, beauty, truth, life and death. My favorite haiku poet, Santoka Taneda, had a way of encapsulating all these.

In the heat of the day
crying or laughing-
only one

or

Wet with evening dew,
I slept.

Gassho

Anne

~lahst~

[Meitou]

So many beautiful images here, all of them expressing how we see the suchness of something.
Kokuu, your remark about your dog and her being her absolute self really ties in with Jishin's glorious portraits of animals and birds, which in turn echo the quotes from Anne. I really like the photo of your plant - life and death and everything in between contained in that one image.

Jinyo this is intriguing to reflect on

I think its interesting that so far we haven't taken the human presence as a focal subject but are inspired (perhaps more) by the natural world?

I wonder why that is, is it perhaps because we find it so difficult to step outside of ourselves? Can we ever see the suchness in ourselves or would that need to be left to someone else to portray us? Even then any portrait would be bound to reflect the other person's opinion of us, tempered perhaps by affection or other feelings. This is so interesting to me and something perhaps we could all think about some more - maybe accompanies by an image of ourselves or someone we are close to? I don't know that I could convey any kind of essence of myself in a photo - in a drawing perhaps.

This has also got me thinking about how hard it is to remove ourselves from the act of creating. I've been thinking a lot about the Jundo posted in the thread about Kyonin's visit to Japan regarding the monastery at Antaiji and how Muho Nolke described his battle with sitting very long sessions of zazen which he found agonising- he knew he had to decide whether to continue sitting or leave, and I felt he meant leave his vocation, not just the monastery. He decided he would continue to sit even if it killed him - and at that point, the decision made, he realised the struggle was done, he need not be involved, the sitting would be the sitting. I admit I've been thinking about this all day. When in the process of creating something, I'd like to be able to somehow to remove big ego driven judgemental 'Me' from the process and in a way I think this is what we've been getting to in all of these prompts. I think this is why I express myself better in photography - there is a subject which presents itself and a mechanism which captures and reproduces the subject - I do very little except act as go between and push the button. I'd like to be able to bring this same ethos into a painting, where there is a subject and materials with which to reproduce the subject - my hand and arm being required as the physical enabler of the the materials. My paintings are non-figurative however, so is this possible? Lots to think about here.

These are just some random wandering thoughts but it's surprising how productive they can be for me. Thanks for bearing with me, I have a couple of photos to put up which I'll do tomorrow, if my computer is on better behaviour than it is at the moment.
Gassho
Meitou
sattodaylah

video

[Jishin]

Zen of Creativity Chapter 8

Vulture?

How do you get the amazing contrast on your pictures, Jishin? Is it a filter?

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

I use Adobe Lightroom. Lightroom does not damage the image after you mess with it like photoshop and you can always go back to it and start from scratch again or pick up where you left off. I shoot in raw mode and this saves a lot more info than jpeg format. Then it’s a lot of editing. Each picture is different. I like black background portraits and I use gradients. I like to paint the subject then make the exposure as bright as possible. Then I make the picture as dark as possible and the subject Pops. I then use gradients to blend the foreground subject and dark background. This is the general editing technique I use. There is a whole lot more to it thought. In the case of the vulture I didn’t think that the 100 % black background would work because of the birds feet. I solved the problem by lightning up the plants in front of him and voila! A pretty vulture!

Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

[Jishin]

I wish I could find people for models but it gets pretty messy. Need to get permission to post pictures from the model. But....

IMG_0545.jpg

Wife, son and a pug! No legal paperwork needed.



Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__

[Jishin]

Zen of Creativity Chapter 8

Vulture?

How do you get the amazing contrast on your pictures, Jishin? Is it a filter?

Gassho
Kokuu
-sattoday/lah-

Before and after.




The lion I struggled a lot with. He was very far away and I could not get a very good shot. I had to crop a lot and lost a lot of pixels. I had to shoot through very thick glass and this did not help either. I am not happy with him but I don't have a lot of lion pictures to choose from.

The Zebra worked out nice. I like pure black backgrounds and it was easy in this case. The Zebra was close and I had a lot of Pixels to begin with. In both cases I shot with a full frame but a crop camera would have worked just as well. The Zebra came out pretty cool since the black stripes blended in with the background.

The technique with both is to paint the animals first then overexpose them. Then darken the whole picture and the subject pops. Lots of other techniques like gradients and all of the other sliders such as color, texture, clarity, etc. Sometimes I will start with a filter then adjust but I just prefer to begin from scratch and adjust each slider because each picture is different.

Gassho, Jishin, __/stlah\__