Light Is Light
By Michael Erlewine
For reasons not always clear to me I feel it is not appropriate at this time to write about the more advanced forms of meditation, as I have been doing for years. These times are perhaps too distracting, and I believe we all need something more immediately useful and practical.
Even at my best, writing about the ineffable Dharma that traditionally cannot be put into words, seemed perhaps a step removed from practical, yet I feel something like this needs to be available, and I addressed what I felt was that need.
Yet, today I feel our lives are under siege by all of the ongoing world and political events, each demanding some part of our attention, with the result that, by perhaps an order of magnitude, we are distanced from the more subtle concepts. We are busy enough just keeping up with events that tax our focus and concentration.
Yes, after saying that, it’s still the middle of the night and I wake, as usual, and do something for a number of hours before heading back asleep. Yet, as mentioned, these days I don’t seem to be guided by an urge to talk about the more advanced and nondual forms of meditation, like non-meditation. And so, here I sit.
And I have been working and concentrating on, as of late, photography, a visual medium. Of course, I have always, and for good reason, claimed that ‘Liberation Through Hearing’ as we see in the Bardo Teachings is not the only View available to us. I have long been an advocate of ‘Liberation Through Seeing’, liberation through the eyes and the visual arts, like graphics and photography.
And for many years I have been a ‘nature’ photographer, working with natural light and natural subjects, like flowers, plants, and Mother Nature’s critters. I saw no need to use special lighting in my work, as I felt that such lighting was perhaps non ‘organic’ enough. I’ve got organic on the brain.
Well, kiss those thoughts goodbye. Suddenly, I realized that light is light, and natural daylight at some 5600 Kelvin is no different than 5600 Kelvin light produced in my studio. That statement is easy to say and rolls off the tongue, but I found it mind boggling when I tried creating natural light in the studio and saw the results. I could see no difference. None. Shows what a prejudice can do.
And so, this realization precipitated me into learning to use natural daylight temperatures in the studio and not only from the light coming in from my windows with a southern exposure. I can mix the two and there is no difference that I can see. And seeing is what we are talking about here. Visual.
Therefore, in the last month or so (especially since it is winter out) I find myself exploring lighting my photographic subjects indoors and, in the studio, and realize that I have ignored these lighting considerations all along, so to speak. And they are considerable and consequential.
Anyway, I’m on a learning curve, one that is affecting my photographic work and I have been leaning back into that medium recently and for the time being. It is not that I can’t work with words. I can and continue to do so, writing things like these articles.
However, I continue to find (and always have) a certain liberation in the visual realm through photography. Certainly, as the old saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” I realize this in fact and through experience.
And so, although I have known by label and equipment about photographic lighting techniques, I can’t say that I have actually mastered all of that, as mentioned, perhaps because I considered it artificial and not natural enough. I ignored it.
Against that view, I have recently reconsidered, and I realized that light is light and that since photography is all about light, I have only mastered one half of the equation, so to speak. I am rectifying that and exploring how to use light itself to paint images more than I have to date. And as I look at Mother Nature and ‘natural’ light, it is clear to me that all of the techniques of lighting exist in nature and that I have just ignored them up until now.
And so, as Robert Blake in “Baretta” used to say, “That’s the name of that tune.” And with that, I am writing. I will have to follow this thread for a while. At least I’m talking to myself again. So much to learn. LOL.
[Photo by me.]
EMAIL Michael@Erlewine.net
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“As Bodhicitta is so precious,
May those without it now create it,
May those who have it not destroy it,
And may it ever grow and flourish.”
