Seeing vs. Looking

Taking more notice to see more deeply

“Merely looking at the world around us is immensely different from seeing it”. –Frederick Franck

There never was a better quote to talk about how important it is to see the world deeply. Yet what does that really mean?

We look at things all the time. Yet are we really noticing them? Frederick Franck’s book The Zen of Seeing is where I first became more aware of the different. In it he states “We do a lot of looking: we look through lenses, telescopes, television tubes… Our looking is perfected every day, but we see less and less. Never has it been more urgent to speak of SEEING. Ever more gadgets…conspire to take over our thinking, our feeling, our experiencing, our seeing. Onlookers we are, spectators…’Subjects’ we are, that look at ‘objects’. Quickly we stick labels on all that is, labels that stick once and for all. By these labels we recognize everything but no longer SEE anything…”

He goes on (and on!) about this, and discusses his practice of drawing what the Chinese call ‘The Ten Thousand Things’ around him. For him, drawing is the discipline by which he constantly rediscovers the world around him.

It’s a deep read, made slower by the fact that he hand writes the entire book! Yet at a photo workshop led by renowned photographer Dewitt Jones, back in 1991, he had us draw something we were looking at, as a way to see it more deeply. Our results may not have looked like the object we were observing, but with practice they would have. The insight of course was that by attempting to draw the object (without the pen leaving the paper), we were learning to see more deeply. In fact, he called the workshop “Seeing Deeply”.

I’m not suggesting that we all have to draw the things we notice, although that is not a bad idea to slow yourself down and get into that space of seeing more deeply. I believe we can do that with our cameras, just by being mindful and paying attention to what we look at.

How often in our rush to get things done in our daily lives do we not see deeply - do we not notice the nuances of light, or of shadows, colors? I know for a fact that when I am ‘getting things done’, I am not seeing as deeply as I could – or should. Once it awhile it ‘hits’ me, though, like when I got in the camper van and saw this leaf with water drops around it and the autumn colors behind.

Once on a quick walk around the neighborhood, on an errand, I noticed these succulents that had a lovely pattern of autumn leaves all over them. Pattern on pattern! I made the image with my phone, as I had that ‘camera’ with me, and as they say, the best camera is the one you have with you so that was it. Had I been so absorbed in getting my errand done, or listening to the news on my AirPods, I may have missed this one. Yet the day was warm and sunny and I wasn’t on a deadline, and perhaps that allowed me to stay more open and notice more deeply things around me.

Walking around a lake in Acadia, I was looking up and ahead, for potential photographs. If it hadn’t been for seeing one of my students working in this area, I might have missed this! I noticed the intertwined roots of these trees, and I thought about ‘survival’; by wrapping their roots up and over each other, they created a stronger anchor to the shore; or at least that’s how I interpreted it.

When the redbud are blooming, it’s a riot of fiery magenta-purple color, depending on the light. It’s easy to miss the story in the bigger picture, the story of last year’s pods still hanging on. We have to remind ourselves to see more, to see beyond ‘the redbud tree’ and notice more details.

Do we ‘label’ things like these bare trees as ‘spent, past peak’ – or do we really take notice of the beauty of a hillside of bare trunks and branches, and the textured landscape they create?

I would venture to say that as creative photographers, we do notice more, see more, than the average person on the path. Where most people might walk around a drying puddle, or simply walk past it without noticing much, many of us photographers will yelp with delight - at the pattern and visual movement in drying mud!!

When at the market - do we notice the wonderful, sensual and colorful shapes and textures of our produce? Maybe you do notice, and it’s not an appropriate time to pull out your phone or camera and make a photo, but then again, maybe it’s the perfect time to record what you are seeing!

Once, at my sister’s cottage in Maine on the coast, I walked in - and somehow noticed the droplets of fog on the porch screen. I yelled ‘stop’ before she opened the door. My brain had ‘seen’ the potential here - the droplets and the screen providing a unique texture overlay to the porch scene beyond it. It’s not always that I am seeing deeply like this, but I do try, everyday, to notice more and more. It makes my day joyful, interesting, and that is something invaluable.

It all comes down to developing a habit of noticing. Mindfulness, paying attention to everything around us. When we do, we begin to see more deeply. I owe that initial awareness to my friend Dewitt, and I continue to work on paying more attention.

Thanks for being here!