Someone was kind enough to send me a link to an exhibit of the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton’s Zen Photography, a fascinating idea for me, and one which astonished me in the ways it related to my own ideas about photography – doors, windows, trucks, implements. He took photographs of the moment, I think, of small, reflective and spiritual things. This is the way I try and photograph my dogs sometimes and the way I see things that people do not consider beautiful – dead leaves, old cars and trucks, doors and windowframes – to be timelesss, and very evocative.

Merton’s photographs are on exhibit at the Thomas Merton Center at Bellarmine University in Ohio. Several people have written me suggesting a connection between his photos and mine, and I am humbled and flattered by that. I surely related to them powerfully.

In fact, I think I’ll grab my portrait lens and go shoot my idea of a Zen photograph right now. Seeing these photographs from a writer and man who has always inspired me are very meaningful and I am grateful for it. These are photo I try very hard to take. And will not try harder.