{"id":27,"date":"2008-03-09T09:39:05","date_gmt":"2008-03-09T09:39:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flowermandalas\/2008\/03\/flower-mandala-pink-hibiscus-i.html"},"modified":"2008-03-09T09:39:05","modified_gmt":"2008-03-09T09:39:05","slug":"flower-mandala-pink-hibiscus-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/2008\/03\/flower-mandala-pink-hibiscus-i.html","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;Black and White Thinking&#8217; in Shades of Gray"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Pink%20Hibiscus%20II_bw_sepia.jpg\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/82\/import\/imgs\/Pink%20Hibiscus%20II_bw_sepia.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"500\" \/><br \/>\n<strong>Pink Hibiscus II (sepia)<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flowermandalas\/imgs\/Hibiscus%20I.html\"><em>Click here to pop up the original Pink Hibiscus II<\/em><\/a><br \/>\nI&#8217;ve been experimenting with applying old photographic techniques to new, digitally created images and am curious to know how they compare, from your points of view. My own sense is that the architecture of the image is clearer, and there is a kind of quietness to the image that comes from the faded-brown look, but I&#8217;m interested in your responses, either here or in the <A href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/flowermandalas\">Flower Mandalas Project group<\/A>.<br \/>\nThen I got to thinking about how black-and-white photography can sometimes enable us to see more clearly the composition and feel the emotion of a scene. It distracts us from what we most immediately know about the subject &#8212; that blur of color &#8212; and forces us to look at what else is there. And I got to wondering how the clarity that can come from removing the color from an image might apply to other aspects of our lives. &#8220;Black and White Thinking&#8221; gets a bad rap because it implies we think only of one extreme or the other. But what about &#8220;Shades of Gray Thinking,&#8221; where we omit the most obvious and see the underlying structure of our lives and our world?<br \/>\nHow do you, out there, practice &#8220;Shades of Gray Thinking&#8221;? Let us know, either as a comment to this post or in the discussion thread of the same name in the <A href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/ArtandTransformation\">Art, Healing, and Transformation group<\/A><br \/>\nThanks!<br \/>\n&#8211; David<br \/>\n<strong>Discussion:<\/strong><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/index.php?page_id=4&amp;cat_id=323&amp;thread_id=33&amp;post_type=5&amp;plmt=\">&#8216;Black and White Thinking&#8217; in Shades of Gray<\/a><br \/>\n<A href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/ArtandTransformation\">Art, Healing, and Transformation group<\/A><br \/>\n<A href=\"http:\/\/community.beliefnet.com\/flowermandalas\">Flower Mandalas Project group<\/A><\/P><br \/>\n<strong>Request a flower mandala screensaver<\/strong>: <a href=\"mailto:phototransformations@verizon.net?subject=flower mandalas screensaver\">Fifteen Flower Mandalas<\/a><br \/>\n<em>\u00a9 2008, David J. Bookbinder<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Pink Hibiscus II (sepia) Click here to pop up the original Pink Hibiscus II I&#8217;ve been experimenting with applying old photographic techniques to new, digitally created images and am curious to know how they compare, from your points of view. My own sense is that the architecture of the image is clearer, and there is&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,2,5,4],"tags":[105,158,62],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-flower-mandalas","category-mandalas","category-transformation","tag-black-and-white-thinking","tag-flower-mandalas","tag-photography"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>&#039;Black and White Thinking&#039; in Shades of Gray - Flower Mandalas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/2008\/03\/flower-mandala-pink-hibiscus-i.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&#039;Black and White Thinking&#039; in Shades of Gray - Flower Mandalas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Pink Hibiscus II (sepia) Click here to pop up the original Pink Hibiscus II I&#8217;ve been experimenting with applying old photographic techniques to new, digitally created images and am curious to know how they compare, from your points of view. My own sense is that the architecture of the image is clearer, and there is&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/2008\/03\/flower-mandala-pink-hibiscus-i.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Flower Mandalas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-03-09T09:39:05+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flowermandalas\/files\/import\/imgs\/Pink%20Hibiscus%20II_bw_sepia.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"David J. Bookbinder\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"'Black and White Thinking' in Shades of Gray - Flower Mandalas","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/2008\/03\/flower-mandala-pink-hibiscus-i.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"'Black and White Thinking' in Shades of Gray - Flower Mandalas","og_description":"Pink Hibiscus II (sepia) Click here to pop up the original Pink Hibiscus II I&#8217;ve been experimenting with applying old photographic techniques to new, digitally created images and am curious to know how they compare, from your points of view. 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Bookbinder"},"description":"I am a psychotherapist, photographer, digital artist, and writer living near Boston, Massachusetts. As a therapist, I work primarily with artists, children and families, and people with addictive behaviors. Like Carl Jung, one of the fathers of modern psychology, I believe art can be a pathway to the essential Self and foster personal and global transformation.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.flowermandalas.org"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/author\/dbookbinder"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}