An attentional tripod

… vision, breath, body.
No additional equipment to carry.

I have noticed something peculiar when using the close-up lens handheld.

At these distances, very little movement is little.

A slight movement of the camera moves the plane of focus. Breathing is enough. Swaying slightly forward or backward is enough.

So I look more carefully.

And somewhere in the process, without really deciding to, I begin to breathe differently.

The hands become quieter.

The body finds a position.

The eye watches the image and the body responds.

I have started thinking of this as a kind of attentional tripod.

Not three legs standing on the ground, but:

vision — breath — body

Vision notices where the image is.

The body follows.

Breathing becomes part of the movement, and then part of the stillness.

None of these seem quite separate anymore.

There is a small moment when they agree.

And something else happens which I only noticed afterward:

I am not thinking about anything else.

Not because I tried to clear my mind.

There simply wasn’t much room left.

The image had become demanding enough that seeing it required participation from more than the eye.

Perhaps this is one of the peculiar qualities of looking closely.

The lens magnifies the subject.

But it also magnifies the relationship between seeing and being physically present.

A normal tripod stabilizes the camera by removing some of the body from the equation.

This seems to work the other way around.

The body becomes part of the optical system.

Inhale.

Exhale. (Careful with the snowflakes.)

Look.

For a moment, everything holds.

^^^ Image taken with Fujifilm X100VI @ f5.6 and OP7, AF-C (quite cropped here: exploring that 40MP sensor and ISO 2000 artifacts if any, shot as "jpg")

In. Out. Return. (Slightly changed.)