Learning to see all over again

"While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see." - Dorothea Lange


There are some things that become part of the fabric of life once you have grasped them. I remember, vaguely, learning to ride a bike as a child. Wobbly beginnings, in which balance required intense concentration, eventually gave way to a more fluid motion, at least in a straight line. Repetition, and learning to stay upright as I took a corner, eventually gave me a skill that has remained for life. Admittedly it’s not a skill I’ve put to great use until now, but at least I didn’t have to start from scratch when I got to Missoula and bought a second hand bike.

Seeing is even more fundamental as a life skill; you can see from the moment you are born.  As you go trough life you learn to recognise shapes and colours and textures and tones, you learn to give them names, you learn which things you like to look at and which things you don’t. At school you learn to translate what you see to pictures on paper. Your trees may look like green lollipops and your people may look like they belong on a Lowry painting, but they are recognisable. Vision becomes part of the fabric of life.

Two life skills; riding a bike and seeing. Over the past week I’ve started to perfect the one and, in some ways, relearn the other. Fortunately for me Missoula is a very bike friendly town. Wide, flat roads with plentiful bike lanes, and a so far very considerate motoring public have meant I can get to school and back quickly, in one piece, and enjoy the experience. The skills I learned as a child are still there, the skills I’m learning as a cyclist of busy streets build on them. Learning to see again is quite another adventure.

I see in colour. Red is red, blue is blue. Perhaps my interest in art over the years has helped me appreciate some of the subtleties of colour, but it’s still colour. This week I’ve begun to learn to see again - in monochrome. I won’t go into the details but cameras also see the world in monochrome even though the pictures you get from them are typically in colour. Learning to see as a camera sees is an interesting experience, not to mention a very useful one if you are a photographer.  That yellow flower isn’t just a yellow flower, it’s a particular shade of grey according to my camera.  I’m getting to understand my camera. I’m also learning which of the bells and whistles on it are really needed and which ones are not, and there are surprisingly few that will be in regular use, though some of them are buried deep in the manual until you discover them. 

I’m also learning to see in another way.  A background in what have been largely left brain activities has given me over the years a particular way of seeing things. In recent months I’ve discovered the joys of sketching using the simplest of equipment - pen and brush - and I generally carry these and a small sketchbook with me. It’s a freeing style, unlike my attempts at drawing many years ago which were very laboured. I’ve just started to learn the same kind of freedom with the camera. It’s early days yet but it promises to be just as freeing and just as much fun.

I’ll end with another quote from the photographer Dorothea Lange.

"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera."
— Dorothea Lange