Lens Zen! #1

Are you still trying to make Lens Zen happen?

Jul 30, 2025

Hi Friends!

As some of you know photography is one of my adjacent creative outlets. It’s both an art and practice that I truly love. I have no formal training and even less gear–iPhone and/or Cannon DSLR that I will be learning how to use until they lower me into the ground. Just kidding; I’ve already signed up to have my consciousness melded with Keith Richards, so pretty much on the immortality plan. I love making images–playing around with editing tools, doing weird things like lying down underneath a flower to capture something cool happening with the light, or bombing down a dirt road somewhere in New England because it’s fall and there’s an excellent chance you’ll come across the perfect red barn set against a storm of orange and yellow trees. Grazing horse sold separately.

But what I love most of all about photography is that it gives me permission to wander, explore, discover, look, observe, notice, and pay attention, pay attention, pay attention. And I don’t know about you, but I feel like my attention holding faculties are as robust as swiss cheese….left out in the sun. I am constantly running to one side of the boat or another: Look! A horrible thing the world just did! Over here! Someone funny doing funny things! Hey! Come back! IT’S A PRODUCT YOU HAVE TO HAVE RIGHT NOW! Photography is my personal antidote to a lot of the chatter out there. I have said this before, but it’s worth repeating; I have found doing photography takes both the obnoxious external and internal voices and squelches them sleeper hold style. Bliss. And I slide into the looking, seeing, noticing, figuring how to get a capture, tuning into the surroundings, the moment, whatever I’m encountering. I don’t mean it to sound goopy, like a living motivational poster, but sometimes you have to take your truth with a dose of woo-woo.

A while back I threw a feature into the mix here called Lens Zen. I gave it that designation because I was raised on Dr. Seuss and cannot resist a sweet, sweet rhyme. But I was really trying to get at the way photography made me feel–grounded and centered and capable of deeply appreciating the beautiful, regular stuff all around me. It makes me really happy to share these images, most of which I take in the course of my regular day. I’ve struggled to figure out how and where they might fit with this newsletter, and I think the simple answer is that they add uplift and levity in visual form–at least I hope!

So I’ve decided to approach it more like a photo journal, which is a good way to articulate my photo habit. You can look for a Lens Zen drop at the end of each month probably in addition to a regular weekly piece.

Thanks for sticking around–always!

As we turn the corner into the home stretch of the steamy season and brace ourselves for the early return of all things Pumpkin Spiced (Coming to your favorite McStarbucks starting August 26. The next great outrage to unite us since the Coldplay Kisscam!), here are some sights and scenes of summah around these here pahhhts.