“One thing about my photographs is that they’re generally considered sad, or somber, or moody, or lonely — those kinds of adjectives,” he said. “At this moment, I was so incredibly happy and was so happy for many months afterward, I thought, ‘Do I want to put sad, mopey pictures out in to the world right now?’”

His answer? No.

He took one last magazine assignment — a story on a laughter yoga workshop in India for The New York Times Magazine — and then made a series of changes in his life. He stopped working. He stopped traveling. He stopped making photos of people. His intent, he said, was to live more in the moment rather than try to possess it.

For most of a year, Mr. Soth spent much of his time in a rundown farmhouse near his home in Minneapolis, making a few photographs here and there, but mostly meditating and pursuing an entirely different and private kind of art making. He was “wildly happy and quite satisfied” by his radical shift.

“I’d go out there and I’d sweep the dust into shapes and watch the light move across the wall and build these snowman-like things outside,” he said. “It’s hard to describe.”