At the Brian Kest work­shop at Thrive Yoga a month ago, I took it upon myself to be the offi­cial pho­tog­ra­pher of the event. I took my Nixon D40 and kept it near my mat. A cou­ple of times a ses­sion, I got up and took some pho­tos, as many as I could because so many uncon­trol­lable fac­tors (and my own inex­pe­ri­ence) can cross up a photo. You can see a selec­tion of the shots at the Thrive Yoga Face­book photo gallery

Kest was cool with the dis­trac­tion of a flash and shut­ter going off. Susan told the peo­ple that if they objected to any of their pho­tos that showed up on Face­book, they could drop her an e-​​mail and we would remove it. I made a point of tak­ing lots of shots of stu­dent greet­ing Kest after class. Sev­eral peo­ple specif­i­cally requested pho­tos as memen­tos. Sat­ur­day class was more packed and it was really hard to move around. For the work­shop week­end, I posi­tioned my mat in a spot in the cor­ner that allowed me a lit­tle more lee­way because it was “left­over space” — no one could fit another mat in there. On Sat­ur­day and Sun­day morn­ings, it became so hot and humid that the lens started fog­ging up and every­thing took on a halo-​​like glow. I caught it on Sun­day and could wipe it clean with a towel, but I was afraid that I would scratch the lens.

There were times when I did not feel com­fort­able tak­ing pix. For instance, dur­ing the Long, Slow and Deep (LSD, get it!) ses­sion on Sat­ur­day after­noon. Peo­ple were really zoned into their expe­ri­ence. Besides, by the time, we had actu­ally tun­neled into the sequence and deep restora­tive poses, I didn’t know if I could get up. And if I got up, whether I would be able to get back down again and in the same mind and body set. I decided that med­i­ta­tive sets were off base (well, the whole prac­tice is med­i­ta­tive, but you know what I mean).

I don’t have any other lenses so I had no way to get around the lim­ited anlges and focus depth. Susan had com­mented that I tend to show panoramic views of the whole (really a large seg­ment of) class. I tried to focus in on indi­vid­u­als or smaller groups. As evi­dent in this blog, I am work­ing on a series of pho­tos that con­cen­trate on iso­lated shots, a hand, a foot, clasped hands in a bind. Rather than look­ing at the whole pose and the full prac­ti­tioner, I am focus­ing on a small slice of prac­tice — a kind of drishti.

There is this obses­sive idea of the per­fect pose in much of the West­ern prac­tice of yoga, that you have to get the align­ment just right, find your edge with ease and grace. So we want to see lanky mod­els pose with per­fect light­ing. That’s why I like the iso­la­tion shots because there is no pre­sump­tion of per­fec­tion. The foot of a novice on the mat is just as elo­quent as the foot of a mas­ter. It tells a lot of things. My daugh­ter, for instance, saw a pic­ture of a foot and hand on a mat and imme­di­ately noted that the ball of the foot was slightly raised, putting more weight on the outer edge of the foot. In yoga, you’re sup­posed to dis­trib­ute the weight over all “four cor­ners” of the foot.

I find myself really draw to this sub­ject mat­ter. In part, I am grap­pling with words to describe the expe­ri­ence and fre­quently com­ing up short. Pho­tog­ra­phy offers another approach, more spon­ta­neous, direct, suc­cinct. But you’re only work­ing with the sur­face, which is only the first layer of the senses.

Tak­ing pic­tures is a great excuse for stop­ping in the mid­dle of a demand­ing vinyasa and tak­ing a breather. It was a demand­ing prac­tice so I wel­comed the oppor­tu­nity to get out of more hard stuff. I also wel­comed the chance to get around and look at other people’s prac­tices more closely. It was enrich­ing to see the diver­sity of expe­ri­ence and ease on display.