Master photographers Flint Sparks, John Barclay, Rikki Cooke, and Dewitt Jones share personal experiences and passion for their art.
About this Event
Awakened by Beauty: Intimate Conversations about Contemplative Photography
An Online Series Hosted by Threshold: A Place for Community, Creativity and Well-Being & Led by Flint Sparks, PhD
Series Dates:
July 30, August 6, 13 and 20
2:00-3:30 p.m. CST
Tickets for the entire series*:
$150/$125/$100 Seasoned & Pro Photographer tiered rates. Proceeds support the artists, Threshold, and cultivate Inspired Seers.
$50/$25/$10 Inspired Seer tiered rates. Pay what you can. Proceeds support the artists, Threshold, and an Inspired Seeing Community.
Recordings of all the conversations will be made available to those who purchase the series.
Click here for tickets.
The Series:
We have so many reasons why we photograph. Our desires often go far beyond simply making good images. Photography can ignite our deepest longing for a direct connection with the beauty and magic of life. In this series of presentations and intimate conversations among friends, we will speak to our personal experiences as photographers, including the passion which called us to this path as well as what opened to us as we followed it. In this four-part series, we will share some of our images and also discuss what this way of seeing and living has taught us.
This offering, however, is not about photographic technique and is not simply for photographers. We will be speaking about all of life, the light and the shadow, and what it means to dive below the surface of everyday experience using our cameras. We hope to inspire all of us to see image-making as a practice of connecting to life in a deeper and richer way.
While our beautiful building on Atwood Ave in Madison, WI is currently closed, our Threshold Wheelhouse captures and re-envisions an online hosting platform for events featuring exceptional performers and presenters, artists, and makers. Help us support these masterful artists as well as helping us sustain and grow our venue which offers them a home and a platform.
If you have any questions, please contact info@atthreshold.com.
*Tickets are priced in two categories that reflect what, we feel, offers more equitable access to this very special series. The higher price range is for photographers who are paying a professional fee. The reduced price is for the non-professional who is curious about ways of deepening their ability to see and to capture images as a contemplative practice. The three price tiers within each of the two categories offer a base price plus added opportunities for generosity towards the artists and organizers and future projects in contemplative photography. Please choose the category and tier that best reflects your ability and considerations. Much gratitude.
The Conversations:
Photography as Spiritual Practice with Flint Sparks
Thursday, July 30, 2:00 p.m. CST
A spiritual path, when practiced in a wholesome and wholehearted manner, opens us to the magnificent fullness of experience, what I call “the embodied inconceivable.” Life can be felt, lived, shared, and celebrated as an awe-filled mystery. We often realize this most fully in those moments when we are awakened by beauty. In this initial session, I will lay the groundwork for a contemplative approach to photography as an everyday practice available to anyone. Whether we discipline ourselves to the most sophisticated technical aspects of photography or just love that we have an amazing camera with us at all times in our phone, we can enjoy this kind of practice. But learning to truly see is a deeper calling, and through it, we are transformed. This is the path we have set out in these presentations.
Each of the accomplished photographers who will participate in the three following conversations has become my dear friends and mentors. They have shown me things which I have found surprising and often thrilling. Through our enduring friendships over the years, they have demonstrated what it is like to be changed and liberated through the lens of a camera. This has been an incredible gift to me. I sincerely hope you will find these presentations and intimate conversations inspiring, and even transformational, for your own life.
Flint Sparks, PhD. is a former psychologist and an ordained Zen Buddhist priest. He is the guiding teacher for the Open Door Zen Community in Madison, WI and the Appamada community of Austin, Texas. His engaging and wholehearted presence provides an anchor and a guide for attending to life's challenges and opportunities.
Residing now in Molokai, Hawaii, his teaching and consulting activities bridge the fields of health psychology, the psychology of contemplative practices, and traditional Zen Buddhist practice. www.flintsparks.org