title: The Zen of Photography: How to Take Pictures With Your Mind's Camera
author: Paul Lester PhD
description: Paul Martin Lester is a Professor of Communications at California State University, Fullerton. After as undergraduate degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin and employment as a photojournalist for The Times-Picayune in New Orleans. Lester received a Master's from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. from Indiana University in mass communications. He is the author and editor of seven books.
zlib_text: Photography is a wonderful thing.
  From a purely practical point, it allows us to capture the world 
  around us so that we may recall that moment at a later time. But 
  describing it that way is so clinical… it takes all the soul out of 
  photography, and of course soul is what makes an image special.
  Looking at it from an emotional, soulful point of view, photography is 
  all about you. It shows the viewer (even if the only viewer to ever see 
  the image is you yourself) what you were seeing, experiencing, 
  possibly even feeling and thinking at the time the image was made.
  And that’s powerful stuﬀ! It allows us to look back at places we’ve 
  visited, people we’ve met, foods we’ve eaten… to recall unrepeatable 
  moments in time (your baby’s ﬁrst steps… your ﬁrst dinner in 
  Paris… the ﬁrst day with your new car) and see it all again as clearly 
  as the day we were there. At least, that’s the hope, right?
  But what happens when the picture isn’t so good? It’s out of focus, 
  or crooked, or poorly l