About Inner Soul Reflections
Hello! My name is Saundra Pawlak and I love photography! Photography has always been my way of communicating with the world by allowing me to express myself with creativity. There are a few reasons why I love photography.
I find a person’s soul can be expressed through a powerful photograph and I love capturing people when they are least expecting it. When I was living in Missoula, I was at a coffee shop with another fellow photography friend and we were photographing people going about their every day lives. I captured a beautiful photo of a woman talking to one of her friends. Afterward,
I approached her to show her the beautiful image, and she was astonished at how beautiful she looked as well as appreciated me sharing that moment. It’s moments similar to this that make me love being a photographer. Sometimes you just never know what emotion is going to present itself when a person is being photographed and how you end up making an impact on that same person.
The second reason why I love photography is that it gets me out of my comfort zone of talking to people. I am very much an introverted person, but photography challenges me to communicate how I want a person to stand and create what I envision in my mind. When I was taking my first pictures, I was in middle school photographing plants, landscapes, and animals. I was afraid of taking pictures of people because I thought they might think I was staring at them. As I got older, I moved to Missoula and took the Summer Intensive program at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography; it was there where I was pushed out of my comfort zone a lot by confronting people and ask them if I could take their picture. After being pushed out of that comfort zone, the more I love photographing people!
Another thing that I feel has helped me immensely with other anxieties I have with photography has been the journey of learning Reiki. Reiki helps a person relax and look into their inner soul to find their own strength from within. At first, when I started my journey as a photographer, I had no idea what kind of photographer I was or wanted to be which made me feel uncertain about where my life was going. Reiki has helped me calm that unknown thought and allow me to take my time to figure it out. After Summer Intensive, I took a long break from taking photos because I felt burnt out with everything that I had learned. Once I started exploring more with Reiki, I started photographing again. Through that experience, I met a lot of wonderful lifelong friends in Missoula and my creativity started climbing.
My parents had a house fire a few years ago, and my mom said, “I didn’t really care that all the material things burnt up. I was more heartbroken that all my photographs burnt up. All of those memories that were captured are gone.” There are many more reasons I can give expressing how much I love photography; so in a nutshell, I love photographing people and would love the opportunity to help you capture the reflection of your life to cherish forever.