An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. – Ansel Adams
What the great nature photographer Ansel Adams knew and showed us in his haunting, elegant black and white photographs is that there is so much to be seen and experienced in the world if we only slow down and pay attention. Adams would often hike miles, laden with his heavy equipment and supplies, to get to the perfect place at the perfect time of day to capture the beauty before him.
There’s a lesson in that dedication for our lives of faith, surely. And, unlike Adams, we just need to carry a small compact camera or a cell phones with us when we go for a walk or hike. No heavy equipment and chemicals required.
As it is for many others, walking has become my exercise of choice for its physical, mental and spiritual benefits. I can put my head down and speed through a few laps around my neighborhood or the local park. But walking can also be more than mere exercise. It can be an opportunity to connect with God if we will only slow our pace and allow the world around us to seep into our eyes, brains and souls as we walk. A camera can help us do that.
In the midst of our busy lives, where we often wear busy-ness as a badge of honor, taking a “prayer walk” with our camera in hand can teach us to slow down, to focus, to pay attention to movement and color and light. When I walk and pray with my camera, I am reminded over and over that behind every image and every fleeting angle of light there is God who makes it all possible. I recall the words of the Dutch theologian Desiderius Erasmus, who wrote in Latin: “Vocatus Atque Non Vocatus Deus Aderit.” In English: “Bidden or not bidden, God is present.”
Whether we’re paying attention or not, God is present. So we might as well pay attention. As people of faith, we are called to look for that presence, and a camera can be a very helpful tool to slow us down, to make us stop and look. To take a picture and make a connection.
Here are multiple suggestions for prayerfully integrating photography into your times of walking and quiet reflection.
- Walk slower than you might usually. Or, at the very least, be prepared to stop more often when something catches your eye.
- Pay attention to the world around you. What shimmers and glows? What can be found hiding in the shadows? What’s moving? What are you seeing that you have never seen before? What surprises you?
- Walk with this question in mind: How and where is God present to me today?
- Try to shift your focus from ordinary seeing to an experience of beholding. Sense what is happening to you and shifting in you as you do. What’s happening in your heart?
- As you prepare to take a photo (and go ahead and take many!) stand reverently before the subject of your photo, as if it was (as it is) holy and created by God. Know that it is teeming and dripping with the glory of God. Take a few deep breaths. Offer a prayer of gratitude to the Maker for what is in front of you.
- Move on. Do it again. Be open to whatever and whoever arrives in your line of vision.
- When you arrive home, review the photos. Now what catches your eye? Now what moves in you? What’s the most powerful and beautiful image you captured? And what is God saying to you with this gift of an image?
The Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manley Hopkins famously wrote that, “the world is charged with the grandeur of God.”
What a shame if we were to miss that.
