Hilton Head, South Carolina – Beach Time!

August 19, 2014 by Jenna Filia Canty

I recently got back from a family vacation in Hilton Head, South Carolina. There are more pictures to come; I shared a few iPhone shots below and added a quote that I found fitting. It is said that we learn something from every experience we have. In this case, I learned how to win $100 in black jack and memorable answers to “what would you change about the world if you could change absolutely anything, of any magnitude.” Do you have an answer? Share it […]

Categories: Photography, Traveling • Tags: Bobbi Brown every little step, Dr Seuss, family, good company, gratitude, Hilton Head, Mother teresa, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rumi, South Carolina, travel photography, vacation

A Family Project: Inspiration Boards from Cincinnati, Ohio

January 8, 2014 by Jenna Filia Canty

So what’s the point of having magazine subscriptions if you aren’t tearing out pictures you love, cutting out inspirational messages, and even mailing something to a loved one that made you think of them? I got started on this at a young age because my Pap (seen here) used to cut out newspaper clips and send them to me in the mail. Following his example, I keep a folder of tear outs and would never throw out a magazine without […]

Categories: Good Company, Photography • Tags: better oneself, family, goals, good company, gratitude, healthy living, human spirit, inspiration boards, looking forward, magazine subscriptions, meditation, mental health, mood boards, new year, reflection, self reflection, setting goals, travel photography, vision boards, yoga

Nepal: Evenings of hot lemon water, honey and fresh ginger

November 21, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

I close my eyes and remember Nepal: I like the evenings of hot lemon water, honey and fresh ginger. I like the orange bursting from the woman’s cloth wrapped around her neck. I like the man and his family who welcomed us for lunch everyday. I like the patterned umbrellas floating around the Stupa. I like the dogs in the streets and want to take care of them. I like the doorways and the strangers that sit in them. I […]

Categories: Photography, Traveling, Writers & Writing • Tags: Buddhism, finding meaning, good company, gratitude, hot lemon water, human spirit, kathmandu, love, Nepal, Photography, Portrait Photography, Stupa, travel photography

Virginia Woolf, “Let me sit here for ever with bare things”

October 31, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

You may remember my Nepal:Shop Ladies post from June 7th. I was so proud of my blog that day when I received the Congratulations! email and learned it would be promoted on the WordPress Freshly Pressed site. I knew my photographs and poems would reach thousands of people. Visitors were so kind with their words and I was elated the Shop Ladies touched the blogging community in such a way. How lovely the image below would have been with the […]

Categories: Photography, Writers & Writing • Tags: bodha, Buddhism, buddhist prayer, fabric shop, Freshly Pressed, full frame, gratitude, human spirit, kathmandu, mantra, monastery, Nepal, nepalese shop, Photography, prayer beads, reflection, Shop Ladies, solitary, solitary moments, travel photography, virginia woolf, woman, woman with beads, wordpress

Two parts: finding the sublime in Nepal & van Gogh’s quest

September 4, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

  I am certainly no artist (which was confirmed by a teacher who once described my images as “lacking any charge”), but I do love this image. On my last day in Nepal, we walked for miles up through the mountains to get to Kopan, a beautiful monastery overlooking all of Kathmandu. When we arrived, we couldn’t believe how far away our journey’s starting point was in the distance. As we traversed up the winding roads, each twist and turn revealed […]

Categories: Art, Photography, Traveling • Tags: aesthetics, beauty in art, emotion in art, express myself forcefully, expressive art, good company, gratitude, human spirit, kathmandu, kopan monastery, letter to theo, letter writing, mountains, nature, nature photography, Nepal, peasant study, Photography, post impressionism, spiritual in art, sublime, sublime in art, sublime landscape, Theo van gogh, travel photography, Vincent van Gogh

“Keep going, keep going, come what may” – Vincent van Gogh

August 29, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it — keep going, keep going, come what may. But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the […]

Categories: Photography, Traveling • Tags: better oneself, challenges, healthy living, human spirit, kathmandu, meditation, meditation challenge, Nepal, Nepal countryside, Nepalese farms, nepalese woman, Portrait Photography, self reflection, travel photography, Vincent van Gogh, vincent van gogh quotes, yoga

Nepal: Doors and Doorways (continued)

July 23, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

“Re-examine all you have been told. Dismiss what insults your soul.” ― Walt Whitman

Categories: Photography, Traveling • Tags: doors, kathmandu, Nepal, Photography, travel photography, walt whitman

Nepal: Windowsills & Doorways

July 10, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

“So I wait for you like a lonely house till you will see me again and live in me. Till then my windows ache.” — Pablo Neruda “At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face against mine. Breathe into me. Close the language-door and open the love-window. The moon won’t use the door, only the window.” — Rumi “But sometimes illumination comes to our rescue at the very moment when all seems […]

Categories: Photography, Traveling, Writers & Writing • Tags: colleen hoover, creative writing, czeslaw milosz, deeper meaning, depth, doorways, finding meaning, gratitude, illumination, love, make a change, man in doorway, marcel proust, Nepal, old man, old woman, open doors, Pablo Neruda, Portrait Photography, Rainer Maria Rilke, reflection, Rumi, shadows, Sharon Salzberg, soul, the human spirit, Thich Nhat Hanh, travel photography, windows, woman in doorway, woman in window

Rilke: “Life is Right, In Any Case”

July 2, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

“It is always what I have already said: the wish that you may find patience enough in yourself to endure, and simplicity enough to believe; that you may acquire more and more confidence in that which is difficult, and in your solitude among others. And for the rest, let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke

Categories: Photography, Traveling, Writers & Writing • Tags: believe, countryside, creative writing, find patience, human spirit, kathmandu, nature, Nepal, nepalese woman, Photography, poetry, quotes on living, Rainer Maria Rilke, travel photography, writers

Nepal: “The best things can’t be told” & Polaroid Photography

June 27, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

There was something about Nepal that I haven’t been able to capture with words, so I have relied on my photography to tell an unspoken story. Heinrich Zimmer said, “the best things can’t be told” and sometimes I can’t help but agree. Words can be powerful, stirring, inspiring, and provocative, but let’s be honest: sometimes they fall on their face, get up, shrug their shoulders and proclaim they don’t have anything left to give. Good old writer’s block!  What a […]

Categories: Photography, Traveling • Tags: creative writing, describing events that are meaningful, heinrich zimmer, hindu temple, kathmandu, kopan monastery, Nepal, offering, Photography, Stupa, the best things, travel photography, travel writing, welcome home, writer's block, writing

Nepal: Soulful Sadhus in Pashupati

June 12, 2013 by Jenna Filia Canty

Having learned my grandfather passed away the previous night, I was forced to make a decision. And it needed to be a quick one. I had one final day to explore Nepal and hadn’t visited the place I was most eager to experience and photograph: Pashupatinath. Situated outside Kathmandu on the banks of the Bagmati River, this is where the sadhus reside. Coincidentally, it is also where people go to honor and release the soul of those who have passed […]

Categories: Good Company, Photography, Traveling • Tags: after death, bhagavad gita, Buddhism, death, dying, gratitude, Hinduism, holy sites, kathmandu, love, Nepal, pashupati, pashupatinath, Photography, Portrait Photography, sadhus, travel photography