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Digital Camera World
Digital Camera World
Tom May

The art of doing nothing: what Michael Kenna can teach every photographer about composition and taking it slow

Left: A solitary, crooked tree with sparse branches leans sharply over a pristine, white snow-covered bank. Right: A large bronze Buddha statue sits in serene meditation against a dramatic, swirling sky filled with white clouds.

Michael Kenna has been making photographs for 50 years. In that time he has stood in the dark, often alone, often in the cold, often for hours... waiting. Not for something to happen, but for everything to stop happening.

His camera sits on a tripod. The shutter stays open. The world blurs and dissolves. And what remains, stripped of its noise and clutter, is something closer to feeling than fact. This is not how most of us shoot. And that, largely, is why most of us don't shoot like Kenna.

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