Calm the Mind

Have you ever noticed how photography can calm the mind? I am thinking about this this week as I’m dealing with some issues in my personal life that has left me stressed, exhausted, anxious and a bit crazy.  Sorry this isn’t as much a post about photography as it as post about life and how photography can fit in to life to help calm the mind.

A week ago I was driving my son home and we were rear-ended by a drunk driver while stopped at a red light.  They were traveling around 50mph and I barely had time to register that we were about to be hit, only enough time to think “this is going to hurt” before the impact.  And yep, it did hurt.  The most violent crash I’ve ever been in.  Thankfully both my son and I are physically OK.   Our almost brand new SUV was severely damaged, though it did a fantastic job of protecting us.   The other driver was physically OK, but their car was totaled and they were arrested.  I have some pity for the other driver, myself having made some poor choices in my life in years past. Still, I am angry and frustrated and upset that we now have to deal with “another thing” so soon after getting back in to our house after the tree fell on it.  Yet, here we are again.    I find that even though I am physically OK, it has taken a toll on me mentally.  I keep reliving the crash, debating if I could have done anything to prevent it, wondering about the timing and if we had just sped up or delayed our overall trip we wouldn’t have been in that place at that exact time.  Not to mention, getting back behind the wheel has been a bit nerve wracking!

Over past week I’ve had to deal with a myriad of insurance people, the police and our medical folks getting the process started.  Photography was not something that was high on my list of “must do” activities.  But since I make my living in photography and creative output, I needed to get back to work.  I was not “feeling” any sort of creativity or inspiration and I didn’t see how I could make any progress whatsoever.  Still, I sat down in front of my computer and opened up my image catalog.  My mind was elsewhere as I scrolled through images I needed to work on and I couldn’t concentrate enough to continue writing on two draft articles.  I felt pressure to produce something, yet nothing inspired me nor could I focus long enough to make any meaningful headway.  I was feeling frustrated and being self-critical that the wreck (I won’t say “accident”) affected me as much as it did.  I had a brief conversation about this with my wife during her work day to vent about how I was feeling.  Her wonderful advice to me was to “let go” of the pressure and just do something easy, like clean up/delete old files, keyword images, or some other mindless task that was still photography related, but didn’t have the pressure involved to produce meaningful output.  I immediately took her advice and started cleaning up images so I could feel like I was working and getting at least something done.

As I worked through my back catalog, I soon realized that my mind was beginning come back to being in focus.  I beginning to calm the mind. I continued this activity for a day and a half and little by little I noticed that I was feeling better about myself and the situation we found ourselves in.  Very soon I started working on processing a few “easy” images, working with the beautiful landscapes of Iceland that captured a couple months ago.  It was a noticeable change in me that I could actually feel.  I was feeling more like myself and could sense some of my optimism coming back.  It all started with my ability to calm my mind and put everything in perspective so that I could begin to come out from under the cloud caused by the wreck.

I am sharing this experience with you because I received numerous responses to my last post, Why Do You Photograph? in which people described some of their reasons for photographing. One prominent reason was for the enjoyment, the calming effect and the connection with nature while on location and then afterwards reviewing images and reliving the moment. I have long been a believer in the positive impact nature can have on our mental and physical well-being and as landscape photographers, we immerse ourselves in nature, capture it, and revisit it each time we look at our images.  We are natural creatures after all and our connection with nature is as old as humankind itself.  Just because we’ve moved in to cities and sheltered ourselves from the natural environment doesn’t mean that we as a species have lost our connection with nature. It’s still there and I value this connection with nature and have recognized within myself how it can have a positive effect on my mental well-being.

In 2010, scientists analyzed and reported a summary of over 100 studies focusing on the effects of art on physical and psychological health in The Connection Between Art, Healing, and Public Health: A Review of Current Literature. The findings were unequivocal. Not only does photography allow you to express yourself, but it also helps bring focus to positive life experiences, enhances your self-worth, and even reduces the stress hormone cortisol. It turns out that being a shutter bug gives you a perspective in more ways than one. Photography can have a positive effect on mental health and wellbeing. It can boost self-esteem, confidence, memory, and decision making. It can be a form of mindfulness which can help people suffering from depression, anxiety and even PTSD.  Plus, the very nature of the subject matter of landscape photography can add a calming influence to our hectic, crazy life.  There is enough evidence in the scientific community, and my own anecdotal experience, that photography can be used to calm the mind.

As much as I had no creative energy for photography in the past week, I still recognized that if I would even just look at my images, I could start to have a positive effect on my attitude and start to climb out of the mental hole I was in.  Now a week later, I’ve just about gotten back to my “normal” level of happiness and optimism, all thanks to a bit of time and a lot of “pretty pictures”. I didn’t do any heavy-lifting creatively, I kept most of my work easy and superficial, such as catalog clean up or organizing collections. Similarly over the years, I’ve often used music as a tool to boost, enhance or alter my mental state…energetic music to pump me up, quiet jazz to calm me down, lighthearted music when I’m not wanting to think too much, or deep music when I’m feeling introspective. Another of the creative arts being used to promote mental states.

All of this to say that photography can be more than just pretty pictures, it can be a tool to alter or enrich our lives in ways that we wouldn’t normally expect.  What’s interesting is I often strive to be a “storyteller” of sorts with my photographs, conveying a message or having an emotional impact to those who view my images.  I’ve now experienced how that same technique can be used on myself to alter and improve my own mental well-being.  At some point in the future, I hope that you may try this technique for yourself when you are faced with a stressful or trying time.