Northern Wildflower // New Website
Hey Everyone!
wowza, what a crazy year it's been thus far! It's brought upon so many changes in my life that I couldn't have even imagined a couple years ago. From getting to know Soren, to 5 months of backpacking around Asia, to getting my yoga teacher certification in India, to teaching yoga every Thursday in Toronto, to completely re-branding my website - it's truly been a year of change and courage.
Change... a word many of us are scared of: It brings out a sense of vulnerability; it drops us right inside the world of the unknown; it brings us to a state of un-ease, as if we're hopping on a pogo stick, unable to stand still. Yep - change is scary, but it is also extremely rewarding.
Have you ever thought about doing something you were scared of doing, but KNEW that if you DID IT, it could change you? That was me - about a year ago. I decided to listen to that voice of intuition and start the journey back to myself. After travelling for 5 months and doing a month long intensive yoga teacher training, I came home feeling refreshed, more mindful and more in-tune with who I am. Luckily, Soren was supportive of my solo journey (although it challenged both of us at times... maybe it did a lot... but we both learned and grew from it).
I came home, looked at my website and cringed at it. I wanted it to reflect more of my personality and the personality of everyone and everything I wanted to photograph. With lots of brainstorming and help from those around me, I came up with Northern Wildflower. The term wildflower became synonymous to "our true self" and it was a term that resonated with me a lot while travelling solo. I liked it so much that I was in contact with a minimalist tattoo artist in Thailand, deciding what kind of wildflowers to put on my forearm. After quite a few exchanges and lots of patience on his part, I couldn't settle on any of the designs so I never ended up getting one (just didn't feel right, yet). When Soren found out I wanted a tattoo of wildflowers, he panicked a bit (tattoos are for life after all) and asked why wildflowers? So I wrote him a pretty detailed email:
“I am a wildflower.
We are all wildflowers.
Wildflowers get overlooked. You don’t see the beauty in them until you take the time to REALLY look at them. That’s how people are sometimes. We are conditioned by society to judge quickly based on appearance and don’t take the time to really get to know someone.
The definition of a wild flower is: a flower growing freely without human intervention. I LOVE that! Growing freely without human intervention. I want to grow freely as a person - free from societal pressures, free of my ego, free of the past and the worries of the future, free of my debilitating thoughts... This is exactly what yoga is - it is the journey and the end of reducing Avidya so that the veil of truth can surface and our true nature shines through. We are all wildflowers - not cultivated roses that are unflawed.
Picking wildflowers in the summertime is also a form of meditation for me - when I take time out of my day to really look at the beautiful world around us, making me more in-tune with myself and the world around me.
we are also constantly changing, whether we like it or not, and what I love about wildflowers is that they adapt to their environment as best they can. They are strong and do whatever it takes to survive. They symbolize an adaptive nature that we all have. Like us, wildflowers go with where the wind takes them; adapting accordingly.
In essence, I wanted my tattoo to encompass many things in my life that are important - freedom, truthfulness, yoga, the breath, and I just couldn’t think of anything better then wildflowers. Reminding me to be ME, in whatever situation, staying true to myself.
Hopefully this makes sense. I am still trying to gather my thoughts to explain it all in a coherent way. ”
There it is - that's me - a wildflower from the north wanting to photograph other northern wildflowers.
I am so excited to focus my intention on capturing only the truest forms of who you are. Whether its who you two are as a couple , who you are as a family, who you are in your business ect... I love the natural shots, of you doing what you love, of you interacting with eachother or the enivironment. Just pretend I am not there! (okay, I know that is a hard one) - but you get it, right?
Stay tuned for more photo sessions and travel blogs!
Thanks for reading, Namaste <3
Why do I Travel?
As I sit in this Tibetan Café in Dharamshala (India) drinking my butter tea (which literally tastes like you’re drinking butter - not a fan), I have once again started asking myself “why do many of us have this undeniable urge to travel and explore and some dont?”
I’ve always been an inquisitive and reflective individual – curious about the world – curious about the people that reside in this world – and curious about the minds that reside in these people. What underlies our actions? Why are some of us happier than others? How can we open ourselves up to the love of others? How can we become more compassionate to one another?
We come into this world with no ego and only through our life experiences do we start developing one. This Ego is necessary for us to live in this functional world, but can also be detrimental to our personal growth. It creates Neurosis. It puts blame on others. It closes us off to love. It entraps us!
Being more aware of your body and mind will start to lessen the power of your ego, and your bliss starts shining – your true nature starts to surface. You start to weed out the bullshit in your life and find out what’s truly important to you; I find that traveling expedites this process. You start realizing that you’re nobody special in this world (in the best way possible) – what you are back home is a baggage of stuff and titles that make you feel entitled to a certain extent; traveling allows you to become ONE with humanity.
Where the robotic routine nature of our lives back at home make us feel uninspired whereas traveling makes you feel alive again. The senses are heightened and you become more aware of the surroundings; the mind opens itself up to different cultures and other ways of living; the comfort zone we’ve kept so near starts expanding; Fear starts to dissipate; You amaze yourself with what you’re capable of, gaining confidence with every obstacle that comes in your way; You start letting go of attachment to your emotions and realize that they are fleeting; You meet incredible people along the way that can change your views about life; You realize more of what is important to you and what makes you happy; Traveling is all encompassing and all consuming.
Not to mention the obvious beauty that the world is equipped with – the beautiful natural landscapes, witnessing the history of humanities past, the fascinating wildlife you come into contact with ect.ect.ect. School, documentaries and movies can only provide you with knowledge – but it can’t provide you with wisdom – the wisdom comes through experience. This world is FULL of experiences and it’s ours to explore and indulge in. A child doesn’t look into the future or the past; It lives in the present moment, looking at everything with such wonderment and curiosity. We have lost that childlike nature and need to discover it again.
Surrender yourself to the journey and the world. Be aware. Strengthen your intuition. And let it guide you ॐ h-OM-e ॐ
Thanksgiving 2014
Once again my family comes together to celebrate Thanksgiving; the day of giving thanks to everything we're grateful for in our lives. Every year we would each have a turn to stand up at the dinner table and announce what we were grateful for. When it was my turn, I mustered only a few words before I started tearing up - these kinds of things get me super emotional. But what I wanted to say was that I was thankful for a number of things:
- First and foremost my friends and family - The support I get from the people in my life is incredible and I will constantly be there for each and every one of them.
- My health - I am incredibly grateful to be healthy and because of this, I will take care of my body, mind and soul to the best of my abilities through eating healthy, keeping my heart active through constant learning and keeping my heart healthy through yoga!
- Living in Canada - I am so privileged to live in a country where I have freedom of expression. I take this for granted much too often.
- Time for myself - I have spent the past summer doing things I love - I had the summer off and it has taught me SO much about who I am, who I want to become and my next big step in life.
At every holiday occasion, I try my luck at preparing a dish for the table. This year I made Creamed Kale (which literally consists of cream and Kale) and Acorn Squash Soup; the soup was a massive hit! I got the recipe from the October Chatelaine Magazine edition
Although I do see my family quite often, there's always something special about when we get together on a holiday such as this one. We tend to be more present and appreciative of our time together. Th day was nothing short of awesome - hot cocoa, beating Michael in chess, amazing food, great weather, pie galore, wine and family.
Double Exposure in DSLR
Double exposure is the super-positioning of 2 pictures into 1 image. In analog cameras you do this by exposing the same film twice (I got the opportunity to do this in my highschool darkroom and it was awesome). In some Digital SLR cameras, there is a "multiple exposures" option wherein it essentially does the same thing (without the film of course); this was the technique I used to take my images. Some people can take regular photos and manipulate them in photoshop to get a similar effect. Last week I went to Edwards Gardens in Toronto and tried my luck at some double exposure photos and was ecstatic about the result. I spent the next 5 hours trying to understand the technique and the relationship between the shadows and sunlight in both exposures. For a great image, one photo should be a silhouette (or partial silhouette with some facial features still being shown) and the next photo should be of a textured object with a bright/blown out background (i.e. tree with the sky in the background). What I also found worked really well is taking a picture of your shadow on a bright concrete floor as your first silhouette image.
Here are some of the photos I took from the day.
Manifestation.
I've been reading a lot of Ram Dass lately and thought I would share an insight I got from him. There are various planes of reality. With each plane of awakening, you start to transcend dualism and realize that we are all one. You are me and I am you. Social responsibility comes into play when you realize that because of this oneness, if you are suffering then I am suffering and when I suffer, you suffer. We need to work on our inner journey and project love into the universe so that we gain self-love and become a vehicle for others to grow in our presence. What do you want to manifest in your life to help you grow into the person you want to become? By opening up your heart to the world and following your intuitive mind, you can start to see the answers that were right in front of you all along.