Enlightenment Through Photography: by Marc Sadowski

Photography has always been a strong presence in my life. There were many moments where my path would point towards photography as my career, but I never went down that road. Instead, I became a reporter, I became a support employee, I became a web master, I became a graphic designer. It wasn’t until my life took a turn for the worse before I was able to follow my bliss.

Many, many years ago I was diagnosed with something called Meniere’s Disease. What is it? It’s a nasty bugger where your inner ear basically goes nuts and makes you dizzy. I had it pretty bad. How did I feel? As one comedian put it: “I had to hold on to the ground to keep from falling off the Earth.” That’s how I felt. The dizziness was intense and unbearable. The dizziness would happen at any moment and always unexpected.

My life – as I was experiencing it – felt like everything came to a standstill. It’s a weird limbo where time just kind of stands still. I was unemployed living with my folks and I had no idea how I was going to recover.

So I picked up my camera
I don’t want to say that photography was my escape from the illness. It’s not accurate. But when I was able to photograph, there were no expectations and when I held the camera my illness did not own me.

It was this picture that made me want to do photography full time:

It was frightening to try to take something that I only did for fun into a career. But photography saved my sanity, and I knew in my heart that I could not let it go.

Eventually, I “recovered” from Meniere’s. By that, I mean I had to have my left ear surgically turned off by removing the vestibular part of the ear canal. It was a last resort, but one that I am not regretting. During my recovering, I discovered something about photography that I never experienced before, nor could I really explain.

To put it bluntly, photography – to me – was a form of enlightenment. When I say “enlightenment” I will refer to the definition given by The Buddha: Enlightenment is the end of suffering. Let me try to explain:

The Art of Photography is in the Now
You hear Eckhart Tolle speak of this. It’s mentioned in the Bible, it’s part of Zen teachings. It’s core in a lot of spiritual practices and this very concept is the core of photography. Photography is all about the Now.

I find that when I place the viewfinder up to my eye, the way I see the world instantly changes. I see the world as it is. I’m not judging, just observing. I become one with that moment when my finger touches the shutter button.

The Art of Photography Expands your Consciousness
When I observe a scene I feel a strong connection to the location I’m photographing. When I’m directing a model, I feel the setting and emotion. This isn’t something I want to come off as supernatural. It really isn’t. The best I can compare it to is a very strong familiarity. It’s an expansion of yourself just as the camera becomes an extenuation of your eyes.

The Art of Photography comes at a Cost…
kind of…
I use this term very, very loosely because I don’t feel as though I lose anything. What do I leave behind? Judgement.

When I was sick, I honestly didn’t care, and as a result, I did not judge a scene. I did not judge the moment. We are all in the habit of labeling everything around us, trying to make sense of this and that. It’s what we learned as children. It’s so ingrained into our psyche that we don’t even know we do this.

As a result, I do not needlessly worry if a shot comes out good or bad. This frees me to focus and allows me to be in the moment and get that perfect shot.

When I’ve explained this all to fellow photographers, the first thing I hear from them is something along this line: “That’s all well and good for creative photography, but when you’re photographing a (wedding, portrait, display, insert profession here) this can’t be useful.

And to that, I say it’s no. This is perfect for professional work
Perhaps I only know neurotic photographers, but a lot of them get so caught up in trying to get that perfect shot, that they become tired just on their thoughts alone. I’m afraid of missing the shot. I’m afraid of my gear breaking, I’m afraid that my client won’t like the end product.

That’s a lot of stuff to be afraid of. And I think: If I wasn’t afraid of all those things, would I still be a good photographer?

I find that the very nature of the photography craft can be very liberating. Reconnecting with it helped me through some of my most trying times in my life, but as a result, it opened my eyes to so much more. How much? I went from f/10 to f/1.2… okay, bad joke, but you get the point.

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Marc Sadowski is a wedding photographer as well as the managing editor to The Lens Wipe (www.lens-wipe.com), a site dedicated to the love and fun of photographer and other visual arts. You can also tune into The Lens Wipe Podcast every week. You can find The Lens Wipe Podcast on iTunes as well as the web site.

Webiste: http://www.lens-wipe.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/thelenswipe
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Photo Credits: © 2010 Marc Sadowski

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