The Creative Eye: On the Art of Seeing and the Power of Attention
Reclaim the art of deep perception with over 35 guided explorations, prompts, and contemplations designed to awaken your creativity and reclaim the full power of your attention.
The Creative Eye is about learning to see and reclaiming the power of attention. Attentive seeing can be taught and can inform, enhance, and guide our lives in numerous ways that are outlined in the book. It is written as an accessible guidebook on the art of seeing designed for the general reader, especially creative individuals, as a remedy for the crisis of attention promulgated by the modern technological era.
After losing sight in one eye, photographer David Ulrich had to train himself to see again. Through that arduous journey, he discovered the profound difference between simply looking and truly seeing.
Influenced by the close mentorship of legendary photographer Minor White, Ulrich comprehensively shares White’s influential teachings on awareness and perception with an intimacy and depth rarely available to readers.
In The Creative Eye, Ulrich draws on this formative experience plus five decades of creative practice, contemplative study, and teaching photography to show how deep perception can become a doorway to unlocking creativity, developing self-understanding, and opening a path to spiritual awakening.
He blends this lineage of spiritual insight with practical guidance to offer precise, grounded instruction in more than 35 creative exercises and mindfulness practices—many designed as long-term explorations—that train attention, heighten awareness, and cultivate lasting presence. These are interwoven with Ulrich’s captivating personal narrative and photographs by Ulrich, White, and others.
For photographers, artists, meditators, and anyone seeking to refine their creative energy, this book reveals perception as a dynamic doorway and offers practical tools to walk through it—into richer creativity, deeper awareness, and more genuine connection with the world.
TO PREORDER BOOK
(Follow link to your favorite bookseller)Publication Date: Print release, April 6, 2027. Shambhala Publications.
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Advance Praise for The Creative Eye
“David Ulrich reminds us that seeing is not passive but a discipline of attention, one that can be shattered by the loss of an eye, and rebuilt, more deeply, through practice. Part memoir, part lifetime of teaching distilled into practical guidance, The Creative Eye is a companion for anyone who wishes to look at the world, and at themselves, with greater clarity.”
—Buddhist Monk and Author Matthieu Ricard
“The Creative Eye” is an invitation to engage in photography and seeing as a transformative act. David Ulrich studied with Minor White and the legacy of his teacher and other luminaries lives on in the pages of this important book. It’s like attending a workshop with a master photographer, exploring the mysteries of attention with a suite of exercises, stories and insights. A must-read for photographers, seekers and anyone who wishes to rediscover the gift of seeing."
— Jim Metzner, Producer, Pulse of the Planet podcast
Fulbright Specialist in Media & Communication
“The most important lesson I learned was in a photography class with David Ulrich, who taught me that I had something to say. It was life changing. I’ll never forget David’s generosity of spirit and how it transformed the course of my life.”
— Photographer Lydia Panas, author of Sleeping Beauty