There is a brief section in Ansel Adams’ book, The Print, where he writes about visualization in photography. Out of his Photographer Series this is a very small addition to the texts, but it makes a huge impact on photographers like me who notice this section. He says, “Visualise the final print in your mind’s eye.” I probably first read this when I started photography, but only until recently when I read Hegel’s, Intorlduction to Aesthetics did I start to really understand what visualization really is. And that Ansel Adams probably knew in his mind what true visualation was, but didn’t have the vocabulary or the awareness of how to share it with others. Like Ansel Adams, we all have a sense of what visualization is, but I will talk about what it means to me and lets see if we can discover any new about ourslelf and the world we live in.

I’m going to ask you, what is visualization? How do you visualize? Why is it important? This is definately not the same for everyone, as we all experience life differentlly, but we also share common things among those differences that we can talk about. When I think about the steps it takes to brush my teeth for instance. I can visualize what steps I need to take in order to achieve the goal of completing this task. So, I’ve already brought up a few things here and I’m going to seperate them here for clearification:

  • I have a goal I want to achieve (brush my teeth)

  • I can break it down into steps (1. Get up off the couch, 2. Walk to the bathroom, 3. Grab my toothbrush, 4. Put toothpaste on my toothbrush, 5. Move toothbrush against teeth, 6. Rub bristles back and forth to begin the brushing.)

  • Visualize a mental picture of me performing an action for each step that I wrote down.

Brushing my teeth is a simple goal that is easily obtainable and easy to visualize because I’ve done it probably a million times. But for tasks that are difficult or never before achieved, visualization plays a critical role in how we achieve these goals we set. From brushing our teeth to winning gold at the Olympics. Athletes report to use this technique early and often to find major success. I’ll even bet you visualized moving the toothbrush back and forth while I listed my example above. That is the power of visualization and sharing the experience of how we felt it.

Now I have not heard or read anywhere else about how to feel visualization. It might be mentioned here or there, but that isn’t the purpose of the article or story. How do we feel things? Emotional feelings are complex, but physical feelings are (not as) complex. Again we happen to share the experince of all being human beings with the 5 major senses:

  1. Touch (

  2. Taste (

  3. Sight (

  4. Smell (

  5. Hearing (

Exhibitions, Recognition, & Print Media:

2023:
The Alternative Issue, #6 - Fall 2023, Pamplemousse Magazine
Where Have You Been?, Photoworks SF, San Francisco, CA
Camera Work: Landscape and Architecture, Black Box Gallery, Portland, OR
2022:
Untitled, Photoworks SF, San Francisco, CA
2020:
2020, SFSU Undergraduate Alumni Zine
2019:
2019 Annual Photo Exhibit, Harvey Milk Photo Center, CA