Most of the time on this blog, we talk about conferences, headshots, and event video. Today I want to share something more personal: a long-term documentary project I’ve been building alongside Orange Photography, and a trip that begins next week.

What is Beyond the Cushion?

For more than ten years, I’ve been photographing and interviewing people across the United States about how meditation and Buddhist practice show up in everyday life. These aren’t monks on mountaintops. They’re parents, teachers, therapists, business owners, artists, and retirees, people working through stress, relationships, grief, career changes, and the ordinary pressures of modern life.

The project is called Beyond the Cushion. It now includes more than 70 recorded interviews, a growing collection of environmental portraits, and plans for two books.

You don’t need any background in meditation or Buddhism to connect with these stories. At heart, they’re about something everyone deals with: how people find steadiness, purpose, and connection when life gets complicated.

A smiling man in maroon robes photographed in a colorful shrine room

Why a corporate photographer takes on a project like this

The skills are more connected than they might seem. Whether I’m photographing an executive before a keynote or a retired schoolteacher in her living room, the work starts the same way: helping someone feel comfortable in front of a camera, listening closely, and finding the moment when they stop performing and start being themselves.

Long-form interviews have also sharpened how I think about video storytelling. Turning hours of conversation into a few honest minutes is the same challenge our clients face when they want testimonial videos or event recaps that actually say something.

A smiling man in a 'You Are Enough' sweatshirt photographed outside his home

A year of sharpening the axe

There’s a line often attributed to Abraham Lincoln: “Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.” That sums up the past year.

Alongside Orange Photography’s busiest year, much of my time went into building the foundation for Beyond the Cushion:

  • A redesigned website. After six months of work with an art director, the new site launched this year, bringing the photographs, interviews, videos, and themes together in one place.
  • A small creative team. For a project that lived largely on my hard drives for years, I’ve brought in help with creative direction, web development, video editing, SEO, and social media.
  • New videos and practitioner stories. We developed introductory videos, practitioner profiles, and photo essays that make the archive easier to explore.
  • Smarter tools for a big archive. Organizing 70+ interview transcripts into themes would have taken years by hand. AI research tools like Google’s NotebookLM made it possible to find patterns across hundreds of stories, the same kind of tools we’re increasingly using to help clients organize and deliver large photo and video libraries.

The goal is to build an audience and community around these stories before approaching publishers. Even great books need readers waiting for them.

A woman in black seated on a white bench in a minimalist courtyard

Next stop: Bhutan and Southeast Asia

Next week I head to Asia for about a month. The trip begins in Bhutan with Project 108, a remarkable undertaking in Gelephu Mindfulness City: 108 traditional Bhutanese monuments called chortens, each about fifteen meters tall, completed together in a single day on November 1, 2026.

From Bhutan, I’ll continue through Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand, including Siem Reap, Hanoi, Bangkok, and Chiang Mai, documenting everyday life around temples and the communities that sustain them.

I’m approaching the trip with one question in mind: what can I understand as a visitor, and what might I overlook? It’s a question any documentary photographer should ask, whether the subject is a village festival or a three-day corporate summit.

Follow along

If you’re curious, I’d love for you to follow the project as stories from the road start coming in:

And of course, it’s business as usual at Orange Photography while I’m away. Our producers and nationwide network of photographers and videographers are ready for your upcoming events, so reach out anytime.

— Jack