Adjusting Focus

A smartphone with all of its bells and whistles doesn’t exactly inspire a practice of mindfulness. In fact, it’s quite often the opposite, serving as a constant distraction in everyday life. For Joe Van Wyk ’87, however, his smartphone has been key to helping him find inner peace.

Van Wyk struggled with attaining inner peace for several years. Challenges with anxiety and depression led to spirals of negative thoughts and fear. During an especially dark time of his life, Van Wyk began exploring the idea of merging mindfulness with photography, an idea that culminated in The Mindful Photography Field Guide: 15 Smartphone Photography Practices for Inner Peace, which he published earlier this year. Through his book, Van Wyk hopes to inspire others to tap into the power of mindful photography so they can harness their innate creativity and overcome their inner demons.

Born and raised in Harlingen, Texas, Van Wyk describes himself as “a creative, smart, highly sensitive kid, very much leaning towards creativity in the arts,” but he did not feel like that was encouraged or nurtured at his high school. He ended up moving to Carbondale, Colorado, to finish high school at Colorado Rocky Mountain School, where he excelled. His father gave him a camera to use at the boarding school, marking the genesis of his love for photography.

“I started to get that feeling of losing time while I was out there practicing my photography. It was this magical sense of being lost in creation,” Van Wyk remembers.

Joe Van Wyk’s professional photography roots are in urban street photography. He studied well-known street photographers such as Thorsten Overgaard and Eric Kim before launching his own photography YouTube channel.

Upon graduating from Colorado Rocky Mountain School, Van Wyk decided to return to Texas to attend Trinity University. When he was researching colleges as a prospective student, Trinity impressed him with its academic excellence.

“I knew that Trinity was going to feed me on an intellectual level. I also recognized the beauty in the campus. I loved how it’s in the middle of a big city, but it still feels like it’s its own space,” Van Wyk recalls. “I really had a sense that the professors were going to be accessible and that there was a real community at Trinity.”

A couple of professors in particular became important mentors for Van Wyk. The late sociology and anthropology professor John Donahue was a father-like figure to Van Wyk and was always available to chat. Art professor Elizabeth Ridenhauer’s lessons are still fresh in Van Wyk’s mind, especially her insistence to stop matching, a practice that made it into The Mindful Photography Field Guide.

“She wanted us to throw out the conventional pairings and instead combine turquoise with fire engine red. I never forgot that,” Van Wyk says, smiling.

As Van Wyk neared the completion of his studies at Trinity, he began to doubt himself because he did not know what he was going to do for a career after he graduated.

“I really beat myself up a lot over that,” Van Wyk admits. “I almost had a minor in art, and that should have woken me up. Like, this is where I’m excelling, but I thought there was no stable career in art. Instead of following my heart, I looked at my dad as a businessman and tried modeling myself after him.”

Van Wyk ultimately graduated with his bachelor’s degree in international studies and sociology. He went on to earn his Master of Business Administration in international business from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in Arizona and moved back to San Antonio to begin his business career. It did not take long, however, for Van Wyk to realize that he was not happy because his work was so far removed from the creativity he longed to tap into. He walked away from his business career just as the holiday season was beginning and acquired a minimum-wage job at a Christian bookstore. While he was working there, he met a graphic designer. The more he learned about graphic design, the more convinced he became that this could be the fulfilling career he had been searching for. Eventually, Van Wyk started his own business.

“Unlike what I was doing after I got my MBA, I felt like I really loved this. So I really want to get this across,” Van Wyk stresses. “If you’re in college and clueless about what career you’re going to pursue or what degree you’re ultimately going to settle on, that’s good. You’re where you should be. Lean into that big time. Keep on being curious. Allow yourself to embrace a sense of perpetual discovery.”

Frankie the Doodle often accompanies Van Wyk when he is out practicing mindful photography.

Van Wyk enjoyed the work he was doing, but a move to Austin ushered in the darkest period of his life. Overcome with anxiety and depression, Van Wyk struggled with thoughts of suicide, and the medications he was prescribed did not work for him. He found relief and healing by discovering centering prayer at a Christian church in Austin and by starting dialectical behavior therapy. Created by American psychologist Marsha Linehan, it involves practicing mindfulness to understand how two things that seem opposite could both be true.

“This really helped me muster enough willpower to get out of the house and start doing street photography. It was a sort of niche I called Street Portraits. I would approach people on the street, tell them that I’m a professional photographer, and ask if I could practice by taking a few shots of them,” Van Wyk explains. “I noticed that when I was out practicing photography, I wasn’t thinking about my problems. I transcended them.”

Van Wyk’s Street Portraits are a body of work from 2015 to 2019, mainly in Austin, that culminated in an exhibit benefiting a local homeless rehabilitation community.

Emerging from the dark spiral he was trapped in, Van Wyk moved to Glenwood Springs, Colorado, where he currently lives with his dog, Frankie the Doodle. In addition to his roots in urban street photography, Van Wyk now enjoys mindful photo hikes through the pine trees and along roaring rivers.

Van Wyk never envisioned becoming an author, but The Mindful Photography Field Guide naturally flowed out because it was so personal. He designed the 15 practices in the book to be interventionary. If negative thoughts start to take over, these practices aim to quiet the mind and bring people back to the present moment.

“We’re talking about something that could be two or three minutes or two or three hours. However much time you need, these photography practices help unblock the dam of negativity that disrupts the flow of positivity in our lives,” Van Wyk says.

Each mindful photography practice uses the focus, capture, shine technique. This involves focusing on the body and surroundings, capturing the present moment, and blessing someone by sending them the photograph along with a heartfelt note.

“Each practice is kind of like a scavenger hunt, like chasing things that sparkle, but you have to be intentional with mindful photography,” Van Wyk advises. “It’s not about snapping hundreds of shots. It’s not about quantity. Mindful photography is about presence, not likes, so this is not about posting the best photographs on social media.”

Colorado Rocky Mountain School’s focus on nature and mountain adventures stoked Van Wyk’s love for the outdoors during high school. Today, he enjoys soaking up the beautiful scenery of his home of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, surrounded by the White River National Forest, Rocky Mountains, and the world’s largest outdoor mineral hot springs pool.

Van Wyk hopes his book can help others like him who are desperate to find relief from chronic dark thoughts. Through the intentional act of turning a smartphone purely into a camera by switching on airplane mode, Van Wyk believes that smartphone photography can become an ever-present and powerful tool for inner peace, shifting away from ego-centered photography to actively seeking to mindfully capture the present moment.

Van Wyk will be selling his book at the Authors and Artisans Fair during Alumni Weekend on Friday, October 25. He is looking forward to revisiting some of the places on campus that brought him peace as a student, including Margarite B. Parker Chapel and the Jim and Janet Dicke Art Building. His mindful photography vlogs and other helpful resources can be found at JoeVanWyk.com and MindfulPhotography.org. Van Wyk also has his own photography YouTube channel.