Sammani Perera Photography

04/10/2026

Dear friends,

I need help with voting for a photo again. It is a little complicated this time because you have to create an account on the website with your email address and enter the code they email you to be able to vote. But it will not take more than 5 minutes. There are two things to vote for:
1. My photo under the “Landscape” category
2. ⁠Then my photo under the “Creator of the Year” category
3. Press “submit” after that.

Please vote when you get a chance. And please share as far and wide as possible 🙏🏼

https://alphauniverse.com/creator-of-the-year/?fbclid=IwZnRzaARF_a1leHRuA2FlbQIxMQBzcnRjBmFwcF9pZAo2NjI4NTY4Mzc5AAEeRYUq9bT7wJEVkbcn6p7X5K8ol0s73BEKFCv5PExk20wcVKFgXka9zoBRaVI_aem_N6C83YTYjAMl8_1qA7NPPw

Vote for the 2026 Alpha Female+ Creator of the Year

02/09/2026

Loku Hāmuduruwo (ලොකු හාමුදුරුවෝ). Born to a Roman Catholic mother and a Buddhist father, I am Buddhist by birth, but I didn’t fully belong to either of the religions. While other kids celebrated Vesak or Christmas, I celebrated both. While they learned gatha or prayers, I learned none. While they went to temple or church, I went to both. While they knew the village monks or priests, I knew none. So this is loku hāmuduruwo for me—Venerable Bhikkhu Paññākāra with his staff in the left hand and flowers in the right, his alms bowl over one shoulder and his folded cloth over the other, a smile on his face and speed at his feet. He walks in the blazing sun and the freezing snow, in good health and bad, in the name of peace, loving kindness, and compassion.
May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace 🙏🏽
Etymology: In Sri Lanka, the head monk of a temple is called loku hāmuduruwo. I use it here to refer to Venerable Bhikkhu Paññākāra for his position as the head monk of the Walk for Peace and the utmost respect the word holds.

Captured on days 88, 91, 95, and 101 of the Walk for Peace.

02/01/2026

Snow day at Elon University, NC.

01/31/2026

They are the Gentle Rain. They started their journey in Fort Worth, TX, a group of Buddhist monks and their dog, a walk of 2300 miles to Washington, D.C. Tired feet and cold roads, they would’ve expected, but crowds to flock around them with sunny smiles and tears, flowers and praying hands, perhaps not. We are drawn to their serene form and silent footfall. We seek them on their path, searching for something we have lost in the pages of life and seeing that something take their shape. We are the parched land and they are the gentle rain, surfacing those seeds of peace, loving kindness, and compassion we had long forgotten to nurture.
May you and all beings be well, happy, and at peace 🙏🏽

01/19/2026

A Walk in the Woods. Some say it was a gale, howling through the trees and wrapping around them too tightly. Others say it was men with chainsaws, gnawing at the trees and toppling them down too carelessly. Whatever it was, what it left of a once-evergreen forest was a graveyard of stumps until they were also lost to wildfires. “Graveyard Fields” the name stuck, but a walk in the woods it is now, meandering through meadows and shrubs, one of the most popular hikes in all of Blue Ridge.

12/08/2025

Dear all,

I am pleased to share with you that my photo, “Hliðskjálf,” won the Grand Canyon Conservancy’s Member Card Photo Contest. It will be featured on their website, social media, and the 2026 print and digital member card.

My thanks goes to the Grand Canyon Conservancy for selecting my photo as a finalist. Ever since my second visit to the Grand Canyon in the winter of 2023, you have supported my photography through information and collaborations.

My deepest and heartfelt gratitude goes to my family, friends, and people back in Sri Lanka. You spared me your time in the middle of rebuilding efforts in Sri Lanka after Cyclone Ditwah. Your support filled me with a sense of community I haven’t felt in the longest time.

Thank you, my colleagues and students at Elon University, NC and friends from Miami University, OH for your support! Thank you to fellow photographers, and all the known and unknown folks who took a moment to appreciate my photo!

This was a combined effort, you all! I couldn’t have won this without your immense support! Thank you very much!

12/07/2025

Hi to my followers! I just found out that one of my photos made it to the finals at a photo competition by the Grand Canyon Conservancy. It relies on the number of likes and comments. Could you take a moment to like and comment under my photo? It is the very first photo of the post. It would mean a lot to me.

11/13/2025

Master of the Harem. He grew his antlers since March, calming down after the chaotic rut and basking in the summer sun. He readied them in August, scraping off the velvet against trees and polishing them until they were sharp. He now wears them like a king does a crown, gathering cows around him and keeping other bulls at bay. Spring after spring, since he was just one year old, shedding and regrowing his antlers, his age and maturity earned him his title, master of the harem.

11/06/2025

Season of Mists. It was an ordinary morning, brisk and colorful as the previous days, and it was going to be an ordinary sunrise shoot, planned and stressless because I had scouted the Graveyard Fields the previous day. But somewhere between the Pisgah Campground and the Pounding Mill Overlook, a valley full of mist made us pull up by the roadside and kept us locked in place from blue hour to daytime. Season of mists, rolling in the valley, wrapping around trees, raking through the sunlight, it made that ordinary morning into the best fall morning I’ve photographed to date.

11/02/2025

Licks of Flame. Dolly Sods . . . there is something beautiful about that name, the first word drawn, the second rushed. Dolly Sods . . . there is something more beautiful about that place, the deep-pile red carpet of blueberry and huckleberry bushes punctured by stands of stunted spruce and scatters of forlorn boulders. Dolly Sods . . . I found myself there in the first week of October. Alas, I was just a few days late and the bushes about the Bear Rocks Trail had already shed a good amount of their leaves. But then, as the sun climbed up the distant ridge, the bushes started to glow, leaf by leaf, sprig by sprig, until they were all lit up in licks of flame.

09/05/2025

Hanging Valley. “A former tributary glacier valley that is incised into the upper part of a U-shaped glacier valley, higher than the floor of the main valley” (USGS). The geology of the Finger Lakes region evolves from a shallow sea to land, glaciers to melt water, leaving 11 lakes, Seneca Lake among them. While tied to these events, the birth of Watkins Glen goes back a mere 12000 years: Seneca Lake receded and rock shelves emerged out of its waters, Glen Creek sprung as a tributary to the lake and created its own ecosystem. This is Rainbow Falls of Glen Creek as it courses through the hanging valley it nourished about the cliffs and tumbles down the gorge it cut into the cliffs.