MARK EDWARD HARRIS: The Beauty of SHINRIN-YOKU
Lens Magazine|February 2021
The pandemic has forced all of us to look within our own borders for both photo opportunities and mental health breaks.
MARK EDWARD HARRIS: The Beauty of SHINRIN-YOKU
My first much-needed outing beyond the Los Angeles city limits was Joshua Tree for a night under the stars. There are few better medicines than a good dose of nature, and the National Park Service is perhaps the best pharmacy for this natural, life-enhancing, awe-inspiring drug.

The Japanese have a label for this magic potion that reduces stress and promotes a sense of well-being, “Shinrin-Yoku,” which translates as “forest bathing.” Japanese-American landscape painter Chiura Obata described his experience in the High Sierra:

“In the evening, it gets very cold; the coyotes howl in the distance; in the mid sky, the moon is arching; all the trees are standing here and there, and it is very quiet. You can learn from the teachings within this quietness.”

I experienced this magnificent quietude in the Sierras exploring Mammoth Lakes and doing long night exposures of the tufa (porous rocks composed of calcium carbonate deposits) outcroppings of Mono Lake.

The image that best conveyed the experience was taken by combining a Schneider SoftEdge Graduated Neutral Density 0.9 filter for the sky with a Schneider Neutral Density 4-stop Circular Polarizer, which reduced the light for the overall image to smooth out the water.

This story is from the February 2021 edition of Lens Magazine.

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This story is from the February 2021 edition of Lens Magazine.

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