Seeing vs. Looking a.k.a. Put the camera down!

Do you see what others miss, or miss what others see?

So that we don’t miss those once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunities, it’s often engrained in us to have our camera at the ready at all times.  This blog post may seem a bit unusual coming from a photography instructor, but I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that you:

PUT THE CAMERA DOWN!

I often say that I guarantee you’ll miss 100 percent of photo opportunities when you don’t have your camera with you, and I’ll stand by that.  However, please read on for an explanation of why I’m recommending that, at least every once in a while, you don’t be afraid to smell, better yet, see the proverbial roses.

The images included here are from a rather infamous church in the small town of Chamula, in the state of Chiapas, Mexico, just a few quick miles outside of San Cristobal de las Casas.

As I always do, I’d looked into the background of this location before arriving, and my research warned that photographing inside this church is absolutely forbidden, and strictly enforced.  Our guide reiterated this and told us to put our cameras away, and not just at our side with the lens cap on, but inside our camera bags so that there’d be no temptations.  He pointed out that even reaching into our pockets and looking at our cell phones to answer a call or to see what time it was could be construed as an attempt to shoot the church’s interior with the phone’s camera, so I put my phone on vibrate and tried to forget about it.

We took advantage of an opportunity to shoot the church’s exterior after purchasing our tickets to enter (yes, we had to pay to get inside, although our guide and other Mexican nationals don’t have to pay, which is a practice we found throughout Mexico at many sites).  This part of Mexico, still reeling from the Zapatista uprising of 1994, is filled with indigenous people dressed in wonderful clothes that are distinctive to their culture.  Of course I wanted to capture images of the locals dressed in their traditional garments, but this is extremely looked down upon as the majority of people did not want their pictures taken at all.  I even had an older woman, a vendor at the local market in San Cristobal, get very angry at me for taking a single picture of her vegetable display – not of her – and she yelled and raised her hand, acting as if she was going to throw a tomato at me.  Of course I apologized and moved on.

So back to seeing vs. looking…

Although the church is the main attraction in Chamula, it’s also famous for an elaborate Sunday market, but unfortunately our itinerary didn’t coincide with being there on the weekend.  So I made several images as we walked from the ticket office across the street to the church.  These weren’t much more than record shots to document the area and add to the Landmark category of the shot list I was working from, but what I was really interested in was what lay beyond that door, framed by three hand-painted arches of green and blue with a variety of detail.  As we approached, a gentleman cracked open the door and peeked out.  He then checked our hands for cameras, took our tickets, and gingerly let us in.

What lay beyond that door was perhaps the most amazing site I’d ever seen, and I really wonder if I experienced it as such, at least in part, because I wasn’t looking at it through my camera’s viewfinder.  With my camera snuggly in its bag, and knowing that I wasn’t going to be able to relive these memories by looking at my images later, I consciously made an effort to really see and experience this site before me, not just look at it.

I’m going to make an attempt to describe what was on the other side of that door, but surely it will pale in comparison to what I actually saw, and felt, being there.  Below is the only picture I encountered of the interior anywhere in Chiapas, and it was a tattered image, as if from a newspaper, that was hanging on the wall of an upstairs bar off the San Cristobal central square.  I grabbed a quick shot of the photo with my iPhone, still thinking I might get reprimanded for even taking a picture of a picture of the inside of the church (how sad is that?).  If I knew the original photographer’s name I’d give him or her credit for the image.

It was very dark inside, except for the light filtering through a few filthy windows and from literally thousands of candles arranged throughout the interior.  Like many churches in Mexico there were no pews, but a wide open space in the middle where small groups of people were lighting and arranging candles on the church floor, which, by the way, was thickly covered with pine needles (there are actually young boys and men at the church whose job it is to put out the small fires that can ignite from this combination, but this was more prevalent before, when straw was used).  The air was thick with smoke from the candles and burning incense, the smell further adding to the eerie feeling I had.

People were not only lighting dozens of candles and quickly arranging them on the floor, but to my amazement, they also perform a ritual that involves drinking Coca-Cola.  Why?  Because they believe that when they burp from the carbonation it releases the evil spirits within them.  And all around the perimeter were very old and dusty statues of saints housed in wood and glass cases, many of which, according to our guide, were gifts from neighboring churches over the centuries.

It’s my understanding that there are no formal masses held in these churches, that it’s all up to the people how they want to worship.  In fact, people were walking all over the altar, and I even saw one lady holding a live chicken by its legs, swinging it around in circles, mumbling to herself incomprehensibly.

Seven very large, thick and colorful “banners” aligned the ceiling of the church, as if repeating arches, very similar to in the picture above.  Other than the sheer amount of candles, these banners were probably the most impressive part of the interior.

Although I certainly wanted to introduce you to an extremely interesting part of Mexico, in the state of Chiapas, as well as a fascinating site to see, that of the Church of San Juan de Chamula, my main point here is to encourage you to go ahead and put the camera down once in a while, and soak in your surroundings, without looking through the viewfinder or staring at the LCD screen.  Really make an effort to see, not just look at the environment around you, and if your experience is anything like mine, you just might find that you’ll be taken to a whole other level of appreciation.

However, my memory is already fading and I sure do wish I had some quality time to get some quality images inside that church!

I’ll leave you with a quote I often use in my classes, which are mostly about developing your photographic eye:

“It’s not what you look at that matters, but what you see.”

~ Henry David Thoreau

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