The Japanese word seijaku means literally tranquility or silence and it is an essential principal of Japanese aesthetics. Soft light and softer lines are the compositional building blocks of tranquility and its colours are soothing tints, tones and shades of blue or green that blend, gently from one into another.

One a summer’s evening many years ago, I stopped at Goat Pond, near Canmore, Alberta. It was a beautiful in the mountains, the sun was setting and the lake was a deep blue, still and tranquil. I was setting up my camera in the silence, enjoying the solitude when, drifting across the pond like an autumn mist, came the sweet, yet haunting melody of a flute. Like the call of a loon, the sound was beautiful and perfect, a compliment to the silence.

In stillness, tranquility offers us that rarest of treasures, utter peace.