IN THE REAL IS THE BEAUTIFUL.
IN THE TRUTH IS MAGIC.
LET’S SPEND A DAY RETURNING TO WHAT IS REAL AND ESSENTIAL ABOUT OURSELVES, OUR WORK, AND OUR SUBJECTS.
IN CLASS LEARNING
* evening photo experience
* practicing presence
* connect with light and environment both inside and outside of the home
* make ultimate space of subject and photographer
* individual attention on your work and process (in the form of a 40 minute creative counsel with me via video chat prior to the workshop)
* practical tips and tools for how to clear space for authentic beauty to unfold no matter what or who you are photographing
* guidance on how to find ease with your subjects and yourself as you shoot
* instructions on the four components of finding your unique voice
* one hour Q&A I will answer on any subject
Every human being’s brain is exquisitely, uniquely assembled by their biology and life experiences. And so, every human engages with the world in their own specific way. What is beautiful to one person may not be experienced in the same way by someone else. Beauty manifests itself differently in each of our lives and enters our consciousness through varying sensory pathways. Only then do we begin to make meaning out of it, which is the real work of beauty.
By intentionally incorporating beautiful elements that encompass all five senses, A Return to Beauty Workshop will more deeply engage every attendee. My aim is to activate beauty in each one of your senses to involve more of your body in the beauty sensing & making experience. This practice will cultivate your attention to beauty and help you create the photographs you see in your mind.
We will soak in beauty, dip our hands in the mess of it, feel it any way we can. Beauty doesn't ask of us to show up perfectly or prettily. It can be gritty, sorrowful, and full of paradox, and it only asks that we show up honestly, including every part of us we assume beauty would dismiss. That is precisely when beauty can do its alchemy—when our limits begin to clear into windows for our essence to shine through.
A BEAUTY OF THE SENSES
sight
May we be attentive to each other and to the natural world.
May we examine the shapes and colors and lines that surround us.
May we acknowledge the light that moves between us and how by it we are all illuminated.
sound
May we learn when to speak and when to stay silent.
May we hear the resonant beauty of our own voices and the music composed in their joining.
May we lean our ears down to the earth and listen to its hum.
taste
May we join hands around the table and break bread together.
May we wet our mouths with water.
May we taste the salt of the earth on our tongues.
smell
May we draw close enough to inhale each other’s sweetness.
May we experience the freshness of morning and smell rain wet the dry earth.
touch
May we reach across the spaces between and again discover the truth of human skin.
May we touch the soft parts of each other and hold the faces of the ones we love in our palms.
May we feel the ground beneath our feet and the wind kiss our faces.
“Here is my secret. It is very simple: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
Our bodies and brains work to perceive beauty, but our hearts (and minds and spirits) translate it and find its meaning. The beauty of the senses, of embodied beauty, reveals a greater infinite truth when examined.
Real beauty can be difficult to witness. At the heart of it lies what is real and true. Beauty can act as a window into the life of another or a mirror reflecting a truth about yourself.
If we are attentive to it, the universe will open up and reveal its beauty to us.
beauty of the heart
“Where woundedness can be refined into beauty a wonderful transfiguration takes place.”
John O’Donohue
“To be alive: not just the carcass But the spark.
That’s crudely put, but...
If we’re not supposed to dance, Why all this music?”
Gregory Orr
beauty of the mind
“Beauty spins and the mind moves. To catch beauty would be to understand how the impertinent stability in vertigo is possible. But no, delight need not reach so far. To be running breathlessly, but not yet arrived, is itself delightful, a suspended moment of living hope.”
Anne Carson
beauty of the spirit
“Beauty is the harvest of presence.”
David Whyte
“The texture of the world, its filigree and scrollwork, means that there is the possibility for beauty here, a beauty inexhaustible in its complexity, which opens to my knock, which answers in me a call I do not remember calling, and which trains me to the wild and extravagant nature of the spirit I seek.”
Annie Dillard
Click below if you want to experience the magic of A Return to Beauty workshop