How Photography Can Be a Mindfulness Practice

Photography is my most creative outlet because it allows me to express and share my unique vision of the world with others. Recently, I have also come to envision photography as a mindfulness practice. This connection between the act of photography and the moment itself is facilitated by the camera on my smartphone. Whenever something captures my attention, I reach for my iPhone and snap away!

My interest in photography began in the early 1970s when I took a creative photography class while attending St. Petersburg Junior College in Florida. One of the most challenging assignments in the class was to photograph a dream we had!  This assignment and others like it really expanded my view of photography as an art form and a creative outlet. Needless to say, this was the beginning of a most satisfying lifelong hobby.

In the early 1980s, my creative energy was fully engaged. I experimented with infrared film and various color filters. I also set up my own darkroom in our apartment. Carrying out each step of the photographic process was an extraordinary experience. I vividly remember watching each image slowly appear on a blank sheet of paper. It was so awe inspiring that I could almost forget about the horrid chemical smells! One of the real high points during this time was having my black & white photos accepted into the juried and prestigious Mainsail Art Festival in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1982.

After several decades of raising children & professional work, I re-engaged in photography in a substantial way. In June 2017, I joined Viewbug, an online international photo community of over 4 million members. Over the past 8 years, I have posted over 1,200 of my digitized photos on my Viewbug site (“profdup”).

If you visit my Viewbug site, you will see that I am particularly drawn to the beauty of nature- clouds, sunrises & sunsets, waterfalls & mountain streams, the colors of spring and fall, and the quiet beauty of winter (especially bare trees). Macro photography has become a new creative outlet for me. I really enjoyed taking extreme close-up photos that capture the amazing texture of tree bark & the patterns & textures of flowers.

It was during this time that I recognized that there was a strong connection between my daily morning meditation and the types of images that I found captivating. I wanted to share this exciting new approach to photography with others by developing a course through Sage-ing International entitled An Introduction to Contemplative Photography: A New Way of Taking Photographs and a New Way of Seeing.

Jon Kabat-Zinn stated, “Mindfulness applied to any activity turns it into a kind of meditation.” At a time of life when I want to engage in as many activities as possible that involve slowing down and being in the moment, contemplative photography has become another essential mindfulness practice in my life.