“The Importance of the Tripod”
By John Diamond, M.D.
There are a number of reasons why I use a tripod for my “serious” – that is healing – photography. The obvious one is to improve the sharpness of the image.
More importantly, it is because I can accurately frame the subject just so to encapsulate a moment of order out of the apparent chaos of the totality before me. I have the time, the freedom, and the peace to feel the subject, and to feel what the subject is causing me to feel. To have an intense, intimate relationship. Spirit to Spirit, Knowing that all Spirits are One. This I can do handholding the camera, but never as passionately, as open-heartedly. In essence, the tripod helps me to meditate on – and with – the subject.
There is another reason, too – perhaps even more important; and this requires some explaining. The Highest chakra is situated between a half and one meter above the vertex of the head. This is the chakra of Aspiration: of us reaching up, rising up – Aspiring – to be one with the Spirit World. All great artistic Endeavor, all High Creativity, will have – must have – this Aspiration.
For This to be achieved with photography, a tripod is essential. There is a basic principle known to all who work intensively, intuitively, with body movement: to go up, you must first go down, and so it is with Aspiration. To Aspire up to the Highest chakra, the photographer must first go down to the lowest, which is situated about half a meter below his feet.
So to Aspire, the photographer must have the sense that he is deeply, securely, grounded. It is possible to be so grounded by one’s own meditative effort, as, say, a dancer may be, but difficult for the photographer who must keep his body still – and he must also feel that his camera is itself grounded. Hence the need for a tripod.
Now he and his camera can go down to Aspire up. The lowest chakra is the earth, and the Highest is the Spirit World. So it is with the aid of a tripod that the photographer can establish a link between the worlds of the physical and the Spirit. And this, I am led to believe, is the ultimate Purpose motivating all artistic Endeavor.
