The Creative Eye

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. 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. 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. Influenced by the close mentorship of legendary photographer Minor White, Ulrich also shares White’s influential teachings on awareness and perception with an intimacy and depth rarely available to readers. 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.