Beautiful Light

I've been thinking a lot about beauty. Lately, I've been working through some great books with the support of a reading group seminar, and the concept of beauty often comes up. Many works of art (maybe all?...) exist solely around the cultivation or search for beauty, and so many of the questions I've been pondering about these works also centers on beauty. What is it? Is there a difference between beauty and good? And how can we go find it?

Well, this last question seems easier to me. To me, beauty is everywhere. It can be found in the dingiest city alley, and the most splendid natural landscape. Often, I find this simply comes from the quality of light in any given space.

This is not to say that all light is beautiful. But beautiful light can be found almost everywhere. Once you start to see it, you'll see it everywhere.

Often when I make a picture without really knowing why, it's due to the quality of light.

But how do you see it? I've often said that I wished everyone would take up the practice of photography, because it teaches you to recognize beautiful light.

There's a lot of things that go into photography. Moment and timing, for one. Composition. Color. But for me, everything comes back to light. Of course, that's where the name comes from: "drawing" (graphé) with "light" (phōtós). That's all we're doing when we're making a photograph. We're capturing the light into a more permanent medium than our eyes. But light has to reflect off something into our eyes, into our camera to be able to capture it in the first place.

The seminar is raising fascinating questions, deepening my appreciation for certain works of art, and hopefully, forming some connections with people whom I've found a shared interest. But beyond anything specific it's taught me, through it I've learned a practice. Before, I'd avoided some books out of fear. I had little formal philosophy training, so despite my confidence on reading in general, I often set books aside for some indefinite time down the road when I'd be prepared to read them; the time is now. It's taught me to read towards questions, to sit with something perhaps longer than is comfortable, to question what I think I know about a text.

Beautiful light can be found almost everywhere. Once you start to see it, you'll see it everywhere.

Reading feels like a perfect panacea for our age. When I feel myself reaching for my phone too quickly, I try and pick up a book instead. The amount of focused attention a book demands of you reminds me to slow down, to not get caught up in distractions. But, of course, this sort of attention is available to us at any moment. In meditation, by focusing on your breath, you can learn to hone your attention, deepen your focus, and achieve insight with something that is always at hand.

And just as the Buddhist through the practice of meditation hones their attention by focusing on the breath, through the practice of photography, the photographer can learn to recognize beauty wherever she may be.

I believe this is something best learned on your own, through careful and intentional practice, but perhaps it would be helpful to have some idea what to look for. Light may seem like a boundless subject, but it actually has a limited set of characteristics by which we can assess it. Some of these include quality, quantity, color, and direction.

Light I often find beautiful might involve a mixing of qualities, that is to say, both hard and soft light. It might be color, such as the deep amber of a sunset. It might be the direction, like low light (or sheen lighting) that skims along the surface of an object. Or it might be the quantity of light, like a dim lamp in a dark room.

These are just my definitions, some of the things that I look for. But often when I make a picture without really knowing why, it's due to the quality of light.

Photography isn't quite as readily accessible to us as our breath. But with smartphones, nearly everyone has a capable camera in their pockets. And just like the seminar, like meditation, it's about learning the practice as much as anything else. I try and have a camera in hand whenever possible, but even when I don't, I can see the frame in my mind.

Beauty is not only in the realm of art. Actually, the realm of art is the realm of life. And like inquiry, beauty is at hand—wherever you are.

Are there any things that often catch your eye? Do you make snapshots out in the world? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below.