Finding Quiet In The Wild

I'm starting a wee hashtag on Instagram--my first sort of "please join me" thing that calls for a bit of participation, which is a bit daunting. What if no one participates? It would be like planning a party and then having no one come. But let's push the fears aside and go for it anyway, let's find #quietinthewild together this year. So what is "quiet in the wild?" It's when you find a moment of calm in nature. When you manage to briefly escape the cacophony and storms of life and find that hush in the middle of the woods, or ease in your heart when you stand in the windy dunes above the ocean. Visually this translates to majestic pictures of nature--empty landscapes free of crowds and cities that give one a sense of awe or serenity. Photographs can include a person experiencing that quiet for themselves, or shots that let the landscape speak for itself. Morning mist-filled fields as the sun rises, or a silhouetted figure against the backdrop of the night sky and a thousand constellations. The wild will change with the seasons, but feeling will be the same. If it sounds like something you'd like to join in, then just add the hashtag #quietinthewild to your quiet photographs this year on Instagram. I'd love to share my favorites on my IG account and here as well...if anyone joins me!


Finding quiet in the wild is a phrase I came up with when trying to think about my blog and my favorite images. It's supposed to be a direction forward for 2017, an idea to guide my images, but in a lot of ways it's just a phrase that describes what I've been doing since the beginning. It takes me back to when I first started blogging in 2007 and I'd escape my classes and "real" job to go take pictures by myself in the woods and fields around my university. It was a little escape from my routine and a fun exercise in creativity. Back then I used to long to live in a city and wished my photography didn't center on empty forests, but now shooting outdoors, in quiet bits of nature feels like coming home. These are my favorite spots; where I feel most myself and creatively inspired and very little, but in a good way. Small in the vastness of the universe, but not insignificant.