Forms of life, forms of mind

My favorite type of meditation happens in the morning, in the Golden Hour before sunrise, with a camera (some of these are also from sunset or moonrise). I walk around, take pictures of what I see, and do a mix of thinking about specific things on my agenda vs. letting my mind and attention just wander and float. For me, taking pictures is just the right mix of distracting the body a little but not too much – I don’t spend a lot of time fiddling with manual settings, I tend to shoot and keep walking, a couple miles total usually. I also don’t post-process – the colors you see are basically what I saw at the time – sunrise over water can make for some amazing hues. The ones below are local; there will be some coming later that are from other locations. Sometimes when I am out taking photos, I think of my grandfather – he was an avid photographer, which is amazing given the conditions he was living in – fought in 2 fronts in WW2, somehow survived his job as mine detector (i.e., walking in front of a tank with a stick and poking into the ground), came back to post-war Russia in total poverty and somehow learned to take and develop pictures, building all his own equipment.