Exploring With a Light-Seeking Lens: Mindfulness Activities for College Students

During the pandemic, spending time in my home has become a constant that weighs down on me and my motivation to do art. However, this time has also forced me to inwardly think about light shining through windows and how it plays in different rooms throughout the day. This exploration of light has progressed to work exterior to the confines of my home as well, and I hope that some of these pictures may inspire you to explore your home or other spaces with this light-seeking lens as well!

Railing

This picture was taken during the early part of the pandemic. I was walking up the stairs to my room, and I noticed the layering of shadows on the stairwell. This is one of the first light pictures I took this year.

Corner of stairwell

After taking the stairwell picture, I started exploring light elsewhere in the house. This is the corner on that stairwell and the second floor of my house.

Light shining through windows

This was light that shone through the windows in my room late in the afternoon. The lens caught a strange flare on light as well, which added more for the eye to explore in this picture.

Christmas-Saucon Hall

Moving my interest in light photography outside, this is one of Lehigh’s oldest buildings, Christmas-Saucon Hall, which I was taking pictures of on a sunny day during the fall term at Lehigh.

Light shining on stairwell

During a time when students were allowed on campus, this was a picture taken inside Christmas-Saucon in a stairwell that is surrounded by a lot of windows. I played heavily with contrast in this photo to only allow for minimal context in the image.

Ladder in ceiling

This was also taken during my time in Christmas-Saucon. The image is not as contrasted as the previous one, but the picture contains several different shaded regions because of the lighting at the time which I really like alongside the monochromatic feel of the image.

Inside elevator

This was taken in an elevator on the mountaintop campus at Lehigh. I liked how the light of the arrow reflected off the ceiling as well, adding a floating arrow pointing right back at the original one.

Phone on wall

Sometimes playing with light on a camera is hard when not much light is available. I had that worry with this picture but the noise in the picture actually doesn’t take anything out of it.

Restroom sign

I like how the source of light in the picture gives a shift in color from the bottom left to top left of the image, exploring light sources is just another fun thing to do when photographing images like this.

Pipes

The light here tries to explain the depth of the image, yet it almost struggles to do so because of how soft the tones are. That is something I really enjoyed with light as well. This picture has shapes and edges, but none of it fully gives you the context of spaces that only I could grasp when taking the picture.

This post was loosely inspired by InSTALLments, a health education publication for Lehigh students, faculty and staff and published by Health Advancement and Prevention Strategies.

The August/September 2020 InSTALLments focused on welcoming the Class of 2024 and promoted practicing mindfulness.   

“Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention to what is happening in the present moment. By staying in the present moment, you let go of focusing on things that happened in the past and things that have not yet happened in the future. This technique can help you re-center, especially when you are at risk of or in the midst of feeling overwhelmed,” according to Jenna Papaz, Director, Health Advancement and Prevention Strategies, in the August/September 2020 issue of Installments.