Walking Meditation (8 of 8)

Welcome to an 8 day series of photography I took while on meditative walks.

This photo is special to me. On my way to the park, I walked past these three potholes in a row. I lingered and slowly walked past them, unsure if I was noticing a delightful urge to photograph it. Probably. But unsure. I’ll see how I feel when I double back and walk past it again. Returning, I noticed that delight again. So I knelt down in the middle of the street and lined up the shot, unsure what I was going for, just knowing that I wanted to grab the image that I saw when I felt that delight. But then this car turned the corner and started driving towards me. In that moment, I noticed a fear. A fear that they would judge me and think I’m a weird, eccentric, photographer hippy taking pictures of potholes. I noticed an urge to jump to my feet and keep walking so that they wouldn’t be able to rubber neck my artistic adventure any further. However, given this was a meditative walk, I just simply noticed all these urges. And I stayed planted where I was, getting the shot that I wanted. I’ve been trying to protect myself from being judged for a LONG time. I’m beginning to release it in favor of the delight of being myself and following my heart. In editing, I was disappointed because I thought the stones in the image would be in focus, but apparently not. So I looked for another way to give the image some life. I ended up masking the water in the pot holes and changing the hue. I experimented with a few colors but eventually landed on this rich blue, a color that’s been calling my name for the last week or so.