Today is supposed to be a “Picture It” day. I had planned to talk about photography, editing, and such. I like to use photography as a contemplateive practice, a kind of meditation. I think about the opening verses of Psalm 8, in which the psalmat pracises God for the magnificience of creation. How magnificient that creation is, and how magnificent is the Creator God who made it all!

The idea behind contemplative photography is to make images of things that catch the photographer’s attention by simply being open to what is before one without judgment. Of course, there are some considerations–lighting, camera settings, point of view and perspective, composition, framing, focal points, etc. But the idea is not to judge the scene or object for “beauty.” After all, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Photography gives me a chance to study the scene/subject, to think about the essence of it, and to convey to the viewer what it “means” to me in that moment.

I’m taking fewer photos as a result. Or maybe I’m taking more photos of fewer subjects. It’s a toss-up.

The image at the top includes five images from my last walk. All were edited in Lightroom Classic (newest update) with minimal adjustments. I usually adjust white balance, use the “auto” adjustments for exposure, contrast, whites, highlights, shadows, and blacks, and then do some tweaking. I increase the contrast and make further adjustments to texture, clarity, and dehaze sliders. A tip I learned from David du Chemin, a Canadian photographer I follow, is to use the medium tone curve preset and then tweak. I am learning to use masks to make surther adjustments.

After that, I like to make collages. The easiest tool I’ve found is the online version of BeFunky. It has some photo editing tools and a whole mess of templates for creating grids, layouts, Facebook banners, and more. I print out my collages for my journals using my Canon Selphy C1200 photo printer. This little printer prints photos the size of postcards. Depending on what I want to do with the photos, I will tape the photo in my memory planner or bullet journal whole, or I will cut the print apart and glue the individual images in “scarpbook” bashion. I like to print out my images. I can go back to look at them in my planners and journals easier than I can locate them on the computer!

My goal is to use my camera often during the week to document the world around me.