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.

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

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Creativity and the Heart of Contemplative Photography with John Barclay

Thursday, August 6, 2:00 p.m. CST

John Barclay has been the inspiration to the creation of Contemplative Photography Retreats held in Molokai, Hawaii over the past few years. These retreats brought together the participants in this series, Flint Sparks, Rikki Cooke, and Dewitt Jones, and formulated the principles that will be shared in this series. John lovingly uses the acronym “CPR for the Soul” for these Contemplative Photography Retreats — “ the restoration of vitality and joy in our lives through photography”. Flint will lay the foundation of contemplative practices and John will follow with his powerful presentation, Dream - Believe - Create.

In John’s words “as we dream about what we wish our photography (and our life) to look like, we need to first truly believe it can happen.“ He asks “Where do we find this kind of faith or trust? As we turn toward our own hearts and, mindfully, to the life around us, we may discover a spark of creativity from which everything begins to flow. When contemplative practices are incorporated into our process, photography becomes a spiritual path. This approach applies in everyday life even if your only camera is the one on your phone.”

John Barclay is an award-winning freelance photographer based in Bucks County, PA. John is a passionate photographer and enthusiastic workshop leader. He is also an inspirational speaker, presenting his programs to audiences around the world. You can see his work, and view his workshop and tour schedule, at johnbarclayphotography.com

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Seeing Simply - Simply Seeing with Rikki Cooke

Thursday, August 13, 2:00 p.m. CST

Zen practitioners speak of “beginner’s mind” as the grounded simplicity and full presence which allows us to see most clearly and receive the world most fully. In this presentation, we will return to this essential practice, the place of being a beginner, full of awe. Rikki states, “What I am curious about is: What turns my head? What grabs my attention? What takes me before I can identify it? I am interested in core vision: the level of seeing before words, categories, or response. Noticing what touches me, inspires me, allows me to see as a child, discovering the incredible wonder of the life around me for the first time.” These will be our questions as Rikki shares his imagery from his early days in India to his most recent moments on Molokai. These are elemental questions that each of us can ask as we look around us and find what calls, holds and awakens us.

Rikki Cooke has been a professional photographer for over 40 years, much of that time working as a freelance photographer for The National Geographic Society. He traveled the world on a variety of assignments, but his main interest has been focusing on the innate beauty of his subjects and honoring all that he encounters. Rikki and his wife, Bronwyn, are the authors of the award-winning book, Molokai, An Island in Time. Molokai was central to his childhood, and today he and Bronwyn live on lands that have been with his family for 100 years. They run the educational and arts center, Hui Ho’olana — a living sanctuary — which is dedicated to healing its lands as well as the students it helps to inspire www.rikkicooke.com.

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Visual Prayers and Celebrating What’s Right with Dewitt Jones

Thursday, August 20, 2:00 p.m. CST

We are constantly surrounded by beauty which is always unfolding from a ground of basic goodness. But there are moments when the ground seems to give way, goodness is hard to find, and beauty seems to fade. In the face of these realities, a dedicated practice of attending to beauty and celebrating what’s right become essential sources of encouragement and inspiration for the darker times.

This has been Dewitt’s work for his entire career. Here are his words: “I've been practicing with my cameras and without them, trying to let my eye resonate with the beauty of all I see around me, whether it's a photograph or not. Just delighting in the light and the line; no need to make a picture, just to say ‘thank you.’ The result, honestly, is that the world has become a lot more beautiful, and my photographs have become visual prayers. That's what they are, moments of gratitude and thanks for the beauty I see around me in the world. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.”

Dewitt Jones is one of America’s top professional photographers. Twenty years with National Geographic, photographing stories around the globe, has earned him the reputation as a world-class photojournalist. Dewitt has directed documentary films and published numerous books. He is recognized as a world-class lecturer and speaks to audiences around the world on creativity and vision. His genuine style and ability to communicate with audiences make his presentations truly outstanding. Dewitt makes his home on the Hawaiian island of Molokai. www.dewittjones.com