West Palm Beach, FL

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Throughout human history, people have traveled to natural places hoping to see and restore their lives in new ways. For many it is a spiritual quest. As photographers and artists on such quests, we strive to create images that capture the underlying mystery of a seemingly ordinary place. The goal of this workshop is to learn to observe more deeply, and to find and capture such images in the landscape through a combination of awareness and perception.

The Contemplative Landscape seeks to capture both the known and the unknown aspects of a landscape by combining awareness and perception. It allows photographers to engage the mystery of the world and their authenticity. Its end product seeks a wholeness out of which we can photograph and express truly what we feel about the fundamental reality that exists in front of us. We have seen, over the years, people's lives and photography change in the course of the workshop. It often broadens a person's spiritual life, although each one brings their own beliefs to the workshop, and all are welcome. For many people, continuing friendships made here are an important source of personal and creative affirmation.

The Contemplative Landscape begins with awareness exercises in photography that we have developed over the past 40 years. These skills include mindfulness that helps put you in the moment and perceptual skills that offer primary access to the visual working of the human eye-brain system with which we create our images. The perceptual exercises pull you away from the defeating process of copying landscape images made by others and help you develop your own authenticity.

The Contemplative Landscape workshop seeks simplicity, wholeness, peace, and grace. It attempts to make a clean break from the accepted conventional world where we usually live and casts us into the "spiritual desert" of ourselves.