Thoughts on 10 years of photography retreats at 'Dhanakosa Buddhist Retreat Centre'

For the last 10 years we have a run a weeks photography and meditation retreat at Dhanakosa.

The first 4 retreats we set up a darkroom, printing our images and hanging them on the walls of the retreat centre. We also taught the basics of taking photographs, encouraging retreatants to develop an understanding of their cameras, taking them off auto and shooting images with the manual settings. We found however that the photography teaching was so full on that we tended to lose the meditative aspect of the retreats. So we decided to simplify the photography input by concentrating on slide film, removing the darkroom work from the retreat. We got the slides developed in Glasgow and returned the same day so we were able to review our work during the retreat. Meditation started to take more significance during the week as we began explore bringing a meditative mind into our photography. We carried on with slide film until 2 years ago when it became obvious we would have to cater for digital as well. On that retreat we had half film, half digital. This year we had only one dedicated film user. The challenge we’ve had with digital is the return of the darkroom in the form of digital processing on computers.

Last year you couldn’t move for tripping over laptop cables so we thought it was time to reassert the meditative aspect of the retreat.

This year for the first day we left our cameras in their bags and focused on the importance of seeing, on spending time coming into a relationship with the landscape (whether in the big views or more intimate details) before you photograph it. This I think set the tone for the retreat where the stillness and awareness of meditation could naturally feed into the photographic process. Its great when you see people beginning to understand the mechanics of the photographic process, getting their heads around depth of field etc. Much more satisfying however is when you see the quality of awareness appearing in people’s images.

In the spirit of the Buddhist text the Dhammapada you could say:

“Better than a thousand photographs snapped with 'little' awareness, is 'one' created with awareness and sensitivity.”

I’d like to finish by rejoicing in my fellow photography teachers on these retreats at Dhanakosa.

It all started with Vincent Stokes, without his encouragement, confidence and craft we would never have started. Vincent is a master of the craft of photography both in the darkroom and in the field. After the first 4 retreats Vincent moved on and my fellow teacher was Steve Knight who was with us from the start. Steve is a great teacher who brings wit, passion and a sure eye for what makes a good photograph to his teaching. 3 years ago we were joined by Hannah Phillips who brings a real creative awareness and a touch of Zen to the retreats. Its one of the highlights of the year working with these guys and we’ll be doing it again next year...Can’t wait!