Bright, mystifying colors glow in every photograph taken by Krystian Samek, one-half of Happy Aura, a family-operated aura photography service.
“We are a unique aura photographer company because we’re one of the only traveling aura photographers,” Krystian said. “And while you’ll find aura photographers in big cities like Nashville, Denver, you know, New York City, this kind of thing. We bring that aura camera to the rest of America.”
Happy Aura — Run by Mary and Krystian Samek — set up its Auracam 6000 in Bell Urban Farms on Feb. 1, offering both photography sessions as well as aura interpretations.
An infographic that the company released for its one-day stop in Conway stated, “Happy Aura employs the Auracam 6000 which, through quantum physics, gathers data with silver lined hand sensors that take electrodermal and temperature readings. Your vibrations (vibes) are measured in hertz, the hertz are translated into color, and then a representation of aura colors are projected onto an instax film headshot. From there, we are trained to interpret those colors, the placement on the photo, and some of those meanings.”
The colors can range from red, orange, yellow, tan and green to blue, indigo, purple, white and pink. Each color can hold several different meanings, as red can mean survivor, entrepreneur and passionate, while indigo can mean deeply sensitive, nurturing and creative.
Krystian said, “It’s so accurate that if you stare at yourself while taking this photo — and most humans are like this — you talk some trash to your reflection, and that conversation shows up right here in the aura photo. We generally call it overthinking.”
“So if you don’t like the way your reflection looks, or you’re mad at yourself for being late or you didn’t feed your dog and it’s concerning you, that conversation shows up right there,” he said.
Although different locations of colors can hold many meanings, it’s the left and right sides of the photos that hold the most significance. The left side of a photograph represents internalized energy, or the way that you see yourself, while the right side of the photograph shows external energy or the way that the world sees you.
“Our holistic approach is — when you get your first photo with us, we don’t know what we’re gonna tell you,” Krystian said. “We’re definitely gonna describe personality traits to colors, but there’s, like a large intuitive portion of a photo that we give you, and that’s the message you seek, and that is the holistic approach to mind, body and or soul that we want to activate within you.”
Krystian and Mary began to publicly offer photographs as Happy Aura four and a half years ago, however, their journey with aura photography first started eight years ago.
“We got our first aura photo in 2017, that changed our lives. We want to bring it out to the world now,” Krystian said.
“When we first got this thing [Auracam 6000], there was only a paragraph — that much — based on all the aura colors and what they mean,” he said. “So we had to really find out. So we would invite people to our house late at night because our daughter had to go to bed around seven. So we could set up around eight or nine and invite people over. We take a photograph of them and be like, ‘Alright, trauma dump on us. Let us know. Let us have it.’ You know, we’ll just try to place everything in that photo.”
It was only two years ago that Krystian would begin to define Happy Aura’s business model as “primarily traveling.”
“We live our lives by mantras, and one of our mantras, is if you’re not getting support local, then maybe your mission is global. And while we are getting a lot of support local, we’re also getting a lot of love from around,” he said.
“My wife and I, before we got our daughter, we moved into our car with a tent and did that for seven months, and then we decided we wanted a kid, and now this kid is five. We’re like, we should do this again, and aura camera is allowing that to happen.”
Megan Colclasure and her friend Destiny Warner came to Happy Aura after hearing about the experience from a client. Although the pair had a lot to unpack after their appointment, Warner said she took one thing away.
“The last thing he said to me, which was, who were you before the world told you what to be,” she said.
Happy Aura will be staying in the central Arkansas area until March 8, with its next pop-ups being 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Feb. 7 in Pink Olive, Little Rock, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. Feb. 13 in Sterling Market, Little Rock, and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Feb. 14 and 15 in South Main Creative, Little Rock.
Happy Aura can be found on Instagram and Facebook @happyaura.ar.