Meditation within Photography and Nature

Hannah Varney expresses how important the collaboration between nature and photography is for your mental health, especially in this uncertain time in isolation, bringing her own series of images, ‘Inhale Exhale’ to showcase that.

Hannah Varney, Inhale Exhale — Hannah Varney, *Inhale Exhale*

This particular project ‘Inhale Exhale’ by Hannah explores the search for mindfulness, being able to slow down within nature and capture those beautiful moments of tranquillity. Exploring the mind, the body and overall feeling that mindfulness gives, putting you into an infinity, a trance, a state of mind. This series focuses on the natural world, creating a backdrop, using snapshots to guide your thoughts and visions, bringing a sense of stillness within meditation.

Hannah talks through her process, “Photographing the idea of feelings was difficult at first, making sure my images weren’t too literal within the landscape. My calm colour was blue, helping me to enhance a positive feeling. I then put myself into these calm and peaceful surroundings, like walking along the beach with the sea crashing on the shore, looking up at the sky, breathing with the trees and moving with the clouds. The imagery I was searching for became a lot clearer when exploring and mimicking the meditation process. The way I explained the series was; ‘The Infinite Peace, The Ocean Breath, The Search for Mindfulness’ and I felt that it summed it up quite nicely without giving too much away”

Meditation in particular highly improves your mental health and in isolation, we must do anything we can to look after it. Meditation videos in particular already often involve landscapes, connecting imagery and nature together to create peace for the eyes, ears and the breath. It also gives you a chance to stop and be in that particular moment with yourself and guiding your thoughts to a positive outlook. By doing these practices, it helps to reduce stress, anxiety and is also a practice that is used a lot in therapy. Hannah created a meditation video herself to accompany the imagery in her series and it ties in the beautiful feelings she describes and takes you away from the world for a couple of minutes and could give you a boost you might need in this stressful time at home.

Check out more of Hannah’s work on her Instagram

Environment, Lifestyle & CultureViridis Magazine25 April 2020