The Empty Mirror
By Janwillem van de Wetering
Published 1973

Jan-san, as he is called in the book, is a Dutchman who traveled to
Kyoto Japan via a circuitous route. Once there he set about as a
volunteer Zen student and compiled this book to chronicle his
adventures. He later became a writer of popular mystery novels but this
book and two others are biographical accounts of his Zen trainings and
adventures. This book was recommended to me as an example of Zen
literature applied to everyday life. The Empty Mirror is the first of
three books Jan-san wrote. The second was written in 1975, which I’m
reading know and the third was written many years later and is titled
After Zen. The title of that third book is quite provocative.

Jan-san creates through his writing a montage of Zen practice, the
monastery and the people in the monastery. The story is not sugar
coated, there are highs and a lot of lows. After reading this book and
going on a short Zen retreat, I can know see a little bit clearer the
reasons for the structure and group dynamics in the zendo. I can
recommend this book to anyone new to the formal practice of Zen in
America.

Below is the obligatory snippet from the book. Jan-san has a motor
scooter and is being chastised by the head monk because of his driving.

The scooter disturbed the head monk.
“Koan study,” he said, “leads to understanding that all things are
connected. All beings are bound to each other by strong invisible
threads. Anyone who has realized this truth will be careful, will try to
be aware of what he is doing. You aren’t.”
“No?” I asked politely.
“No,” the head monk said and looked at me discontentedly. “I saw you
turn a corner the other day and you didn’t hold out your hand. Because
of your carelessness a truck driver, who happened to be driving behind
you, got into trouble and had to drive his truck on the sidewalk where a
lady pushing her pram hit a director of a large trading company. The
man, who was in a bad mood already, fired an employee that day who might
have stayed on. That employee got drunk that night and killed a young
man who could have become a Zen master.”
“Come off it,” I said.
“Perhaps it will be better if you hold out your hand in future when you
turn a corner,” the head monk said.

And so the chapter “A Zen master will be murdered” ends. One feel the
Jan-san misses the lesson but it is a good one for me.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen Covey
First published in 1989

National Geographic has a great feature on Buddhism in the West on their interactive website. I especially liked the slideshow and the video interview with the author. Well worth checking out.

A different take on shooting Christmas lights.

Sometimes we should think outside the box. The town I work in has a big display of lights. Frankly, I’m unimpressed. The display is made up of lights draped over the trees and various wire structures. Maybe if I stopped and got out I’d have a different experience of the lights.

Last year I started experimenting with shooting these lights. I drive by this display when I travel both to and from work. The days are much shorter now, there is plenty of opportunity for this type of shooting.

Here’s how it is done. Find a safe section of road near a Christmas light display. Have someone else drive so you can concentrate on the images. The most important thing to remember is set the camera so the flash will NOT fire. If it fires the picture will be ruined by the reflection of the closed car window and you and your driver or any other drivers around might be temporarily be blinded by the flash. Not a good thing to have happen while driving.

Set your camera to aperture priority and the shutter speed to something below 1/10 of a sec. I choose 1/2 sec. for this exposure. But I have others that are just as interesting but taken with shorter and longer exposure times. Point the camera generally towards the lights and shot away. Don’t bother looking through the view finder just shoot as many exposures as I can. Experiment with panning and holding the camera in different positions.

This section of the road has a 35 mph speed limit and is only a block long so I can get 10 -15 images per pass.

Today’s photographic link points to delicious wallpapers. These are some tasty still life images!

Shoot the moon!

Calculating the exposure for shooting the moon is easy. The moon is in direct sunlight so we can use the “Sunny 16 rule”. If you are not familiar with this rule of thumb, the digital equivalent goes like this: set camera’s time to one over the sensor’s speed and aperture to 16 using manual mode. Check this against what you in camera light meter suggest and you might be very surprised.

Here is an example.

Shutter Speed: 1/100
Aperture: F16
Sensor ISO Equiv: 100

Now it will be hard to hold a camera steady, especially with a telephoto lens on it and use such a slow shutter speed. We can make adjustments to the aperture and the ISO to increase the shutter speed while maintaining the same overall exposure value (EV). Link to article with detail exposure calculation information in it.

Same exposure (EV) as above.

Shutter Speed: 1/2000
Aperture: F8
Sensor ISO Equiv: 400

These two different exposures are the same. You may have wondered why your camera has the various values for the shutter speed, aperture, ISO. The reason is to make this type of calculation easy. One click of the aperture ring doubles or halves the light, one click of the shutter speed dial doubles or halves the light, and one level increase in the ISO doubles or halves the light. If you want more speed, you’ll have to increase the light (Aperture) or increase the light sensitivity (ISO). Each increase is roughly equivalent to 2 clicks on the Aperture and 2 levels on the ISO equals 4 clicks on the shutter speed. Cool ah.

Of course with life there are compromises and here is no different. Higher ISO means more grain (noise in digital terms) and with a wider aperture, the depth of field narrows. So watch out for the extremes of any of these settings.

Have fun with this and by using digital you can check your success in the field and bracket several exposures to ensure you capture what you envision. Just remember that the moon is in full sun even at night!

Today’s photography link is the fantastic “Astronomy Picture of the Day” sponsored by NASA. “The universe is really big and contains stuff. No really! I seen da pictures!”

It is snowing and I’m headed out to go snowshoeing on the mountain. I hope to come up with a good photo tip for you.