The Field and the Knower: Photography, Awareness, and the Art of Seeing

Photography and Awareness

Photography and Awareness

I’ve got something for you to think about today.

If you’re a photographer, it’s something you’ve been doing for years, although you may never have thought about it quite this way.

Photography teaches us to look. We notice light, shape, gesture, expression, distance, relationships between things. Over time, we hopefully get better at seeing what’s actually in front of us instead of only seeing what we expect to see.

But lately I’ve been thinking about something underneath all of that.

There’s what you see.

And then there’s the fact that you know you’re seeing it.

That may sound like a small distinction.

It isn’t.

What Are You Actually Seeing?

A photographer spends years learning to see.

There’s the subject. The light. The composition. The background. The things inside the frame and the things we decide to leave out.

All of this appears within our field of perception.

But other things appear there too.

Thoughts.

Feelings.

Sounds.

Physical sensations.

Memories.

They appear, hang around for a while, and disappear.

And through all of it, something knows they are there.

You don’t have to take my word for this. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t.

Try something.

Sit quietly for a moment and wait for a thought.

You probably won’t have to wait long. Our minds are very accommodating that way.

A thought appears.

Notice that you know the thought is there.

Then watch it disappear.

Another thought comes along.

You know that one too.

So here’s the interesting question:

If you can observe the thought, what is doing the observing?

The Photographer and the Field

Depending on what you photograph, you may have experienced this in different ways.

A nature photographer becomes quiet enough to notice light changing across a landscape, wind moving through trees, or an animal entering the scene.

A portrait photographer notices the smallest shift in someone’s expression — something real appearing for half a second between the poses.

A documentary photographer watches events unfold while simultaneously making decisions about what matters, where to stand, and what belongs inside the frame.

And sometimes something even stranger happens.

You see the photograph before you’ve had time to think about it.

Your attention moves.

Your hand raises the camera.

You press the shutter.

Then, about half a second later, the mind arrives with its press release explaining what you just did.

Photographers know this experience.

Sometimes the seeing seems to happen before the thinking.

The Field and the Knower

This is where an idea from the Bhagavad Gita really got my attention.

The Gita describes a distinction between the field and the knower of the field.

The field is everything that can be experienced: the body, sensations, thoughts, emotions, memories, perceptions — the entire changing show.

And then there is that which knows the show is happening.

The knower.

For me, this wasn’t something I needed to believe. It was something I could look at for myself.

Thoughts come and go.

Feelings come and go.

Attention moves from one thing to another.

The body acts.

Sometimes decisions and reactions seem to arise before the thinking mind has even caught up.

And yet something is aware of all of it.

The Gita goes even further and asks us to question an assumption most of us rarely question at all:

Am I really the doer of all of this?

That’s a much bigger conversation.

Photography and Awareness

I’m not going to try to solve it in a blog post.

You’re welcome.

But I do think it’s worth noticing.

The next time you’re out with your camera, pay attention not only to what you’re seeing.

Notice the seeing itself.

Notice thoughts appearing.

Notice your attention moving.

Notice those moments when the photograph seems to present itself before you’ve consciously figured anything out.

Then ask yourself one simple question:

What is aware of all of this?

Don’t rush to answer it.

Just notice.