October 12, 2024
How I learned to enjoy taking photos more
Over my nearly 20 years as a commercial photographer, I refined my technique and grew in many aspects of my craft. Yet there was something that became more and more challenging over time. On long shoots, by the end of the day I would find myself exhausted, my whole body aching. I wondered: how could I feel like this just from pressing a button and composing a few images? It was a real mystery.
With everything I knew about the Alexander Technique, I already suspected I was doing something with my body-mind that led to that extreme fatigue. Maybe something similar happens to you after a day at the computer, or after cooking for a long while, or after some other everyday activity?
The mystery began to clear up when I started taking classes with Peter Nobes in England (Peter is coming to Uruguay in November to give workshops!). Working with him helped me notice that I was slipping into a kind of “photo-making mode”. I concentrated so hard on my goal — the image I wanted to create — that I disconnected from everything else. I wasn’t thinking, for example, about how I was holding the camera, or the tension building in my body. Do I bring the camera to my eye, or my eye to the camera? Is it necessary to scrunch my face to close one eye, or can I do it gently?
From Peter Nobes’s book: the relationship with the camera
My attention would contract and go to the vision of the image I wanted to make. The rest of the information disappeared from my field of awareness. I didn’t realise everything I was excluding: my body, my surroundings, and sometimes — incredibly — even the person I was photographing!
The Alexander Technique showed me it was possible to free myself from the unnecessary effort of staying upright. Using my body in a new way let me conserve energy so I wouldn’t feel defeated after a day of shooting. But that’s not all. The most revealing part was learning that I had choices about the use of my field of awareness. It was striking to realise how disconnected I sometimes was, lost in my thoughts and ideas, and how that influenced my relationship with the world and with the person in front of my camera.
Peter calls his approach “Mindfulness in 3D”: being present, aware, in relation to our surroundings and our inner landscape at every moment. And that presence opens us to something essential: the possibility of choosing.
Now when I take photos I can make choices about my attention, and also about the qualities I want to tune into. I can connect more with my curiosity, my explorer side, and less with the critical part that is constantly evaluating whether I’m doing the photos right or wrong. I discovered many things by living this question: what influence does my attitude or my intention have on the final result of my images?
These questions gave me space and allowed me to be available and spontaneous when creating. These days, after a full day of shooting, I feel no fatigue at all. But the important thing is that by being in the here-and-now, as Peter proposes, I enjoy the process and feel more creative and flexible in meeting my clients’ briefs.
If you’d like to hear Peter and his approach in his own words, you can watch this short interview I did with him (with Spanish subtitles):
I also translated his book, Mindfulness in 3D: Alexander Technique for the 21st Century, into Spanish, and copies are for sale — write here if you’d like one: hola.auta@gmail.com
Would you like to know more about Peter, or attend one of the workshops he’ll be giving in Uruguay? All the information is at this link: