A small group of us meet once a month in a process called "creative accountability," AKA "What have you done to justify your continued expenditure of time, effort and money on photography?"

This month, we decided to take up the Contact Sheet Challenge, to wit: shoot 12 images in a row and gather them into a digital contact sheet. No skipping images, no deleting the ones you don't like, and no post-processing at all. It's a good exercise in returning to the constraints of the film era, when you got what you shot and since each exposure cost money, you tried to make each shutter release count.

I'm also beginning an online course in mindfulness and photography (not quite the same as mindfulness photography), so I thought I would combine the two in order to, you know, save time. This is so at odds with how I should have been proceeding that the red flag it raised could have been seen from space. Did I stop to consider this? Two double-espressos shouted a resounding NO!

First thing I need to explain is that the Mindfulness and Photography course - more of a guide to self-discovery than a course (and then again, once you leave middle school say, doesn't this describe most academic courses?) - is very attuned to the Miksang approach to photography, wherein the aim is to be with the subject for a while, to really look at it, and then, in the words of someone who is not me, "receive the image, rather than take it." No thought to creating something wonderful, no attempt at making a beautiful image. Just really looking, and then recording faithfully the experience.

With that in mind, I attached my 50mm lens, set the shoot mode to Program, the ISO to Auto and ventured outside. It was 11:30 am, with a very hot mid-August sun and lots of small, persistent bugs hovering around my face. I was barely out the door when I changed the mode back to Aperture, thinking that my Contact Sheet Challenge says I should pick a theme, and I had a notion that my theme would be "space," as in objects with a lot of space around them, and the more-open aperture would heighten that sense. Already, I was planning, pre-conceiving, thinking about results.

As for being present with the subjects of my images, I failed utterly. I could blame the heat, and the bugs, but the truth is, shooting has short-circuited my ability to look. Ironic, isn't it? But with the camera in my hand, I'm fighting, and so often losing, the impulse to frame what I am looking at. To compose.

I thought I might mitigate this some by committing to using the live screen rather than the standard viewfinder, short-circuiting the muscle memory, as it were, but the compulsion was still there. So after looking at a dying sunflower for maybe 20 seconds, I ignored the lessons it so generously offed me from its hospice: of transience, of beauty, of the nature of nature, of strength and fragility and even light and shadow. I simply aimed, composed, clicked.

And now I was committed to some sort of . . . theme? Was the subject of this photo really space - or the death of something once vibrant and beautiful? Was I now shooting wabi-sabi? Yellow? What was I bringing to this process?

Moving on, I accidentally touched the LED screen, which is set to release the shutter. Capture #002.

On to #003, and my confusion is in full shine, a full quarter into the game. What is the subject here? I think I was thinking about contrasting colors - a completely new thought since I left the front door not two minutes prior.

I caught myself a little and decided to slow down, though I don't think such resolve lasted more than a breath or two. Capture # 004 is about . . . something. Frustration. Shyness. Standing tall, even when your number is not called. Who cares about theme?

I walked up the drive to another dying sunflower, this one lurking in the shadows with an undeniable hangdog look to it. Touched the LED screen and watched the camera take an unfocused image. So I abandoned that resolve as well, consciously aware that I was violating the rules by changing my rules mid-stream - but hey, at this point a full 40% of my meager 12 exposures were already mistakes.

All of them, actually.

I moved on, sticking, more or less, to the theme of dying flowers, even as brilliant, vibrant and gorgeous beds were all around. (My wife is the gardener - I just take photos of her amazing handiwork.) Capture 007 is a quick aside to that journey, something about the little lantern's pattern which reminded me of the flowers. Or maybe it was because that lantern has long since stopped lighting, and so joins the flowers and, to a lesser degree, me, in our end-of-life phase.

What did I learn, besides the obvious reflections of my own impatience? Aside from a good dose of humility?

One, that if my aim is to really look at something, I need to leave the camera aside. And maybe my phone as well, since that too is a camera, and my impulse, when seeing something compelling, is to take a photo. I do like street photography, where shooting can be impulsive, reacting to an unfolding, constantly changing environment. This requires something very different.

Upon further reflection, I realized as well that the deeper aim of the two challenges were at odds with one another: one required a theme to a set of photos, which asks of the photographer some intention to the set, while the other specifically asks to avoid this kind of construction. Clearly, I could use practice at both of these; just not at the same time.

And then there is the inner critic, constantly second-guessing my framing, my choice of subject, should I shoot more like Rinko Kawauchi, or even Michael Kenna?

Perhaps the biggest lesson, for me, is how fast my interior life moves. I can ascribe some of this to having consumed double my usual ration of coffee (circumstantial), but that only lets me off the hook to some degree. Other factors include computers, social media, the pace of life, the aging process, my deep discontent with my early childhood - who knows? The causes ultimately are irrelevant: I've been trying to move through my days in a more thoughtful manner for some time now, and while I have made progress, I clearly have a ways to go.

The photographic evidence is irrefutable.

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Side note: the Contact Sheet challenge instructs us to create the sheet with images "straight out of the camera," with "no post-processing." This seems impossible to me, since Lightroom Classic applies its own algorithm to the photos when it imports, boosting the contrast and the midtones to make a more pleasing image. So I opted to import them with the same two "fixes" applied that I always do - I apply the two lens corrections LR offers, and I also apply what's known as a "linear profile." This tends to flatten a raw file's already somewhat flat and muddied look, but offers, in my opinion, much more control over the editing process.