Taking pictures is a spiritual experience for me.  It is a raw point of contact between something within and a moment in the flow of life out in the world.  That contact is brief, often in the range of 1/1000th to perhaps two seconds.

A friend of mine and I will go out to shoot and if you give us two acres in which to roam, we will bring back very different sets of images.  Why do we point our cameras in different directions?  We are different people and that which is within each of us is different and those differences guide our creative rudders in different directions.

After a long period of slow awakening, I have come to understand that spirituality is at the core of my photography.  My personal definition of spirituality is a seeking of contact with God coupled with an awareness of God’s hand in creation.  Going out with a camera encourages me to look at the world while spirituality guides what I see.  If the life experiences of my friend and I are different and our spiritualalities are not the same, it is not surprising that our creative rudders point us in different directions.

The spiritual framework is always present but something I see or hear is often useful for me to become aware of it.  For example, going out early in the morning of a beautiful day might bring to mind the first verse of a hymn known to many:

When morning gilds the skies my heart awaking cries:
May Jesus Christ be praised!

Being as fully present to the moment as possible is essential.  “Multitasking”, that peculiar human penchant for doing more than one thing more or less simultaneously and always almost competently, doesn’t work here.  The most intense spiritual awareness often comes in a brief period of time and there isn’t time to switch attention.  For example, the good lighting for this island in the mist was there for well under a minute.

This backlit spider web and leaf was “good” for only a few seconds.

One is not likely to hear the “still small voice” when juggling tasks.

I think it is no accident that light is a metaphor for God and God’s teaching (e.g. “It is you who light my lamp; the Lord, my God, lights up my darkness” Psalm 18:28) while it is often light that makes or breaks the image in photography.  The two are connected for me.  God’s presence is especially noticeable in the viewfinder when the light is good.

But photography also nourishes spirituality.  I am not good at prayer, my prayers are stale.  A breakthrough came when Barbara Brown Taylor, in her “An Altar in the World”, pointed out that just about any activity could be a prayer if God is at the center of it.  One of those activities for me is photography.  So going out to shoot can be a communion with God.  This doesn’t always happen and I’ve found that the best preparation for it is to simply be there and nowhere else.  My camera is not also a telephone.  It does one thing and it does it well.  It points and when I am fully present, God’s creation is there in the viewfinder.

I’ll bet that you have a camera too.  If what is written here is of interest to you, a camera-aided spiritual experience can also be there for you.  Practice the photography and know what the buttons do.  Then go out and greet God.