Book review: Click! Choosing Love One Frame at a Time by Carl Studna

 

Part 2: How a picture conveys 10,000 words, trust or not to trust, beige or beauty?

When you enter world renowned photographer Carl Studna’s book:  Click! Choosing Love One Frame at a Time, you also gain a second delicacy regarding spirituality.

 

What do you feel when you take a picture of someone else?  What do they feel when you take a picture of them?  How does the lens react to the texture of the light, the foreground and the framing of the picture?  Where does creative spirit come into play while a photographer snaps a picture?

 

Studna travels one step further on “how” to take a photograph.  He guides you into the spiritual essence of photography. 

 

Studna asks, “What if you saw the camera lens as your beloved reflecting back to you the fullness of love, praise and devotion?  This might sound like a stretch, but what better way than through the practice of being in front of a camera to empower the reminder that you are always whole and perfect?  Now is the opportune time to be seen—really seen—in front of the camera.”

 

This book takes you on a more amazing ride than a day at Disney World. You enjoy so many different rides while you leave with a greater sense of the journey being inward, outward and spiritually centered.  You will feel a unique connection to yourself.

 

In the book, Carol Ratcliffe Alm, “From Beige to Beautiful” wrote about herself feeling “plain” as a person.  So often, women in America and around the world, find they cannot measure up to the “Cosmo girl” on the latest issue of that slick magazine.  Let me tell you, no man could measure up to a girl with pouty lips, amazing body and unreal outfits. 

 

Who could compare with air brushing, perfect skin, sensual make-up and alluring outfits?  No wonder teen girls all the way to middle-aged women find themselves “beige” with the onslaught of cover girls at the checkout counters of every grocery store in America.

 

Fact: we all radiate our own “beauty” with the acceptance of our inner and outer selves.  

 

Studna exercises his spiritual understanding of “beauty” to create the same understanding in Ms. Alm.  No small achievement!   One of the items you will draw from reading this book: your own worth, your own beauty and your own appreciation of yourself.

 

Out of all the exceptional lines in this book, you will find this one a gem, “I feel 100 percent certain that when I am fully anchored in a sphere of trusting energy, the camera has the opportunity to serve as a scared reflection of one’s pure radiance, the true wholeness that cuts through all doubts, fears and preconceived notions…life constantly offers countless situations to practice living in a state of trust.”

 

Notwithstanding, Studna utilizes his experiences with Elton John to help you understand “trust” and how it operates in your life.  How do you attract trust?  How do you believe it?  With every world personality he photographs, in the end, they and you remain as one with humanity. 

 

“What is the essential moment?” Studna asks.  “Whenever I click the camera’s shutter, I am making a choice to document something…how will it be of any value to others or myself?

 

Most of us take a picture because we think it’s a special moment: perhaps our son’s first birthday or daughter’s first steps or a pool splash.  In this chapter, Studna takes you on a very romantic moment with a couple splashing about in a waterfall and under the water—in their birthday outfits.  Very scintillating!  Very natural!

 

“How do you become finely attuned to those essential moments in your life?” asks Studna.  “They’re easiest to see when involved with something that inspires or ignites you.”

 

You, as a reader of this book, whether young or old,  cannot help but be affected by Studna’s picture of  the former Beatle Paul McCartney starring at you across a grand piano.   The reason:  McCartney, Harrison, Lennon and Starr affect our lives in the music we enjoy in 2013.  Timeless, penetrating, spiritual and deeply moving!  To this day, the Dr. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album speaks to me.  Lennon’s song “Imagine” writes his words across my soul of possibilities for world peace and human understanding.

 

Pages later, you meet the Dali Lama face to face with his ubiquitous smile, his evolving spiritual message and his unique human bliss.  All captured in a single moment by Studna’s lens.

 

From that chapter, Studna’s incorporates a famous actress turned church minister by the name of Cynthia James who evokes a unique spiritual message, “Today, as an author, speaker, singer, composer and teacher, the practice of moving into the silence is an integral component in my preparation for any event and class.”

 

She may be one of the most distinctive preachers in the world today in that she writes, composes and sings songs to fit her sermons. She belts out those songs with the voice of an angel to cement the knowledge she bestows on her congregation.  She says, “…to fulfill her [my] first calling; to express fully…I am here to shine my light.”

 

As you move through the pages of Studna’s book, you cannot help but feel a shift in your spirit, your knowledge base and your personal regard for yourself and each moment in your life. 

 

Part 3: Now you see it, now you don’t, the outer reflecting the inner

 

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