Photo Essay Submissions for Beyond the Cushion

Beyond the Cushion is a long-form documentary project exploring how Buddhist practice is lived, embodied, and integrated into the modern world. Through photography, storytelling, and personal reflection, the project looks beyond formal teachings and idealized images of spirituality to ask a simpler, more intimate question:

How does the Dharma actually show up in real life?

We invite photographers to submit photo essays that illuminate a specific Buddhist practice, community, place, ritual, object, or lived experience. The submission does not need to be grand or exotic. In fact, some of the most meaningful stories may come from the quietest places: a home altar, a morning meditation space, a community gathering, a teacher-student relationship, a ritual object, a local sangha, or the way practice reshapes how you perceive reality through the lens.

The key is to ground the essay in personal experience.

We are not looking for detached photojournalism alone. We are looking for work that carries a sense of relationship, sincerity, and direct encounter. Your essay should help viewers feel why this practice, person, place, or moment matters.

What You Can Submit

Photographers may submit a photo essay focused on one clear theme or subject. Possible approaches include:

• A specific Buddhist practice, such as meditation, chanting, prostrations, retreat, altar practice, walking meditation, bowing, offering, ritual, study, or service.
• A powerful community gathering, such as a sangha event, retreat, teaching, ceremony, festival, pilgrimage, or volunteer effort.
• A meaningful place of practice, such as a meditation hall, monastery, retreat center, home shrine room, natural landscape, or urban space where practice unfolds.
• A personal view of home practice, including your altar, your daily ritual, your meditation space, or the quiet ways Dharma is woven into your ordinary life.
• A visual reflection on perception itself: how Buddhist practice changes the way you see impermanence, interdependence, suffering, beauty, compassion, or the ordinary world.
• A short interview-based photo essay with a local sangha member, teacher, practitioner, or community elder, documenting their journey, practice, challenges, and relationship to the Dharma.

Your essay can be intimate and personal, or it can be outward-facing and community-based. What matters most is that it reveals something honest about practice as it is lived.

Goals of the Photo Essay

The goal of each submission is to help expand the visual and narrative language of Beyond the Cushion. We hope these essays will help illuminate the diversity of Buddhist practice in the modern world, especially through the eyes of people who are living the path in ordinary, sincere, and sometimes unexpected ways.

Your submission should aim to:

• Show how Buddhist practice takes shape in daily life.
• Reveal the human side of Dharma practice, including struggle, devotion, doubt, joy, discipline, community, and transformation.
• Highlight practices, places, or communities that may otherwise go unseen.
• Explore how the teachings are embodied, not just discussed.
• Offer viewers a grounded, personal doorway into the living Dharma.
• Contribute to a wider archive of contemporary Buddhist life and practice.

Selected submissions may be considered for inclusion in the second Beyond the Cushion book, as well as possible website, editorial, or social media features connected to the project.

Suggested Photo Essay Structure

A strong submission will usually include:

• A working title.
• A short written introduction of 300–700 words explaining the subject of the essay and your personal connection to it.
• A series of 8–20 photographs that work together as a visual narrative.
• Captions for each image, especially where context is needed.
• A short reflection on why this subject matters to you and how it relates to Buddhist practice.
• Optional: a short interview transcript or selected quotes from the person you documented.

The essay does not need to explain Buddhism in a formal or academic way. It should tell a story. Let the viewer enter through real people, real spaces, real gestures, and real experience.

Key Questions to Guide Your Submission

• As you develop your photo essay, consider the following questions:
• What is the central practice, place, person, object, or experience I am documenting?
• Why does this subject matter to me personally?
• How does this story reveal the Dharma in lived experience?
• What is visible on the surface, and what deeper meaning is present underneath?
• How does this practice shape perception, behavior, community, or daily life?
• What tension, challenge, or transformation is present in the story?
• What might someone unfamiliar with this practice misunderstand at first glance?
• What small details reveal the heart of the practice?
• How does this subject connect the ancient teachings to modern life?
• What do I hope viewers feel, question, or understand after seeing this essay?

If You Are Interviewing a Sangha Member

Photographers may also create a short photo essay around a local practitioner’s journey. This can be especially powerful when the images are paired with the practitioner’s own words.

Possible interview questions include:

• How did you first encounter Buddhism or this specific practice?
• What drew you to this path?
• What does your daily or weekly practice look like?
• What has been difficult about sustaining practice?
• How has the Dharma changed the way you relate to yourself, others, or the world?
• What role has sangha or community played in your journey?
• Is there a particular ritual, object, teaching, or place that carries deep meaning for you?
• How has practice changed the way you experience ordinary life?
• What misconception do people have about Buddhist practice?
• What would you say to someone beginning their own path?

Please approach interviews with care, humility, and consent. Many people’s spiritual lives are deeply personal. The strongest work often comes from trust, patience, and allowing the subject to speak in their own voice.

Photography Guidelines

We are looking for images that feel honest, attentive, and grounded. The work does not need to be overly polished or stylized, but it should show care in composition, light, sequencing, and emotional tone.

Strong submissions may include:

• Environmental portraits.
• Details of altars, ritual objects, hands, offerings, books, cushions, robes, bells, incense, or personal spaces.
• Images of practice in action.
• Quiet moments before or after formal practice.
• Community interactions.
• Landscapes or spaces that hold spiritual meaning.
• Visual metaphors for impermanence, interdependence, devotion, or awareness.

Avoid images that feel extractive, sensationalized, overly staged, or disconnected from the lived experience of the subject. The goal is not to make Buddhism look exotic. The goal is to reveal the depth, humanity, and sincerity of practice.

Written Reflection

Alongside the images, please include a short written reflection. This is an important part of the submission.

Your reflection should answer:

• What did you photograph?
• Why did you choose this subject?
• What is your personal relationship to the story?
• What did the process of photographing it reveal to you?
• How does this essay connect to the larger theme of bringing practice beyond the cushion?

This reflection does not need to be perfect or overly formal. A sincere, grounded voice is preferred over polished language that feels distant from the experience.

Submission Requirements

Please include:

• Your name and contact information.
• A short photographer bio of 100–200 words.
• A working title for the essay.
• A written introduction or reflection.
• 8–20 edited images.
• Captions for each image.
• Confirmation that you have permission from any identifiable subjects.
• Link to your website/sangha if appropriate. 
• Optional: selected interview quotes or a short transcript.
• Optional: location, sangha name, lineage, or practice tradition, where appropriate and with permission.

Images should be submitted as high-quality JPEG files. If selected for publication, high-resolution files may be requested later.

Selection Considerations

Submissions will be reviewed based on their alignment with the spirit of Beyond the Cushion. We are especially interested in work that is personal, sincere, visually thoughtful, and rooted in direct experience.

Selection will consider:

• Strength and clarity of the story.
• Connection to Buddhist practice or Dharma themes.
• Emotional honesty and depth.
• Quality and consistency of the photography.
• Respectful representation of subjects and communities.
• The photographer’s personal engagement with the material.
• Potential fit for the second Beyond the Cushion book.

Not every submission needs to be about a dramatic transformation. Sometimes the most powerful essays are about quiet commitment: the cushion in the corner of a bedroom, the hands arranging offerings, the silence before chanting, the community that keeps showing up, or the way practice changes how light falls across an ordinary room.

Final Note

At its heart, this invitation is about bearing witness.

The Dharma is not only found in temples, retreats, or formal teachings. It is also found in kitchens, bedrooms, hospital rooms, city streets, community halls, and the simple gestures of people trying to live with more awareness and compassion.

Your photo essay is an opportunity to show how practice lives in the world.

Through your lens, you are invited to document not only what Buddhism looks like, but how it is felt, practiced, questioned, and embodied in modern life.