Photo meditation

On July 4th I grabbed my notebook and JP's camera and headed to the Peace Pagoda in Leverett, MA. I've been there a few times before with traveling buddies, but this was my first solo trip.


A few weeks ago I did a walking meditation there with a friend. We walked up to the crest of the hill together in silence, stopping to pick up rocks or examine tree branches or sunlight or shadows along the way, and then parted to explore the temple and gardens for a while. It was powerful to share that quiet time with someone else.

This time, I shared silence with a Nikon D70 SLR. I appreciated my journey's treasures in a new way by capturing them with photographs.


Some say photography gets in the way of being really present. And sometimes it does. But snapping photos on my slow, playful walk up the hill made my heart full this time.

My first official photo shoot!

Meg is a good friend of mine from grad school. She and her partner, Sara, are farming in Maine for the summer, so they invited me up for a visit.

These two lovebirds are getting married in August (woohoo!) and asked me to be their photographer. I'm super excited, and super nervous, too. This will be my first wedding!

Lucky for me, my good friend and photo mentor JP is loaning me his awesome DSLR so that I can get used to it by August, and Meg and Sara agreed to let me do a practice shoot with them on the beach. As you can see, they're a lot of fun to work with!

One thing I learned from that evening was that I need to think up some clever stuff to say while shooting. Apparently "Uhh... ok guys... do a thing..." doesn't really work.

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.