Motivation

What is it that drives us to create, to discover something new, or just want to keep learning? I go through periods of intense creativity and then long patches of the doldrums where noting seems to inspire. You would think after many years of making photographic images I would have a better understanding of the creative cycle and be more accepting of it, but I am not. I am sure most creative persons has asked themselves these types of question many times. How do we balance this cycle of the creative process? I think sometimes we need to step away from what we are doing and clear our minds of the pursuit we are on. Sometimes we are simply over trying and making ourselves frustrated. Second we all have the tendency to compare ourselves to others. It is easy in the current social media world to ask ourselves why do some people get all the attention and our work gets overlooked. That is another trap that will completely engulf you if you put your focus there. But then there is another aspect creatives all deal with. You ask yourself, "I've created so much stuff what is the point of making anymore"? Just yesterday I was going through some of my many archival boxes of my darkroom prints that were fully matted and ended up putting them in the trash can. Then today I am putting together this above image in a matte and a frame, and the haunting question came again, "why make more"? After so many years what is the point, no one is going to buy it, and it will end up in my closet with a bunch of others. But a voice in my head asked me "do you enjoy it"? and my answer was yes. So the voice said, then keep doing it. In life we need to focus on the journey and not the destination. As artist we are always looking for the completed piece but in our minds it is never truly completed. There is always something we could add or change, and that is ok. Just keep doing what brings you joy.

Death Valley 2011

We have made many trips to Death Valley and each time I find it a fascinating place to explore and photograph. I like going back in my files and find new images to work on that I previous overlooked. Certainly the process in Photoshop has improved greatly since I made this image. This is another sleepless night for me so I decided to work in my modern day darkroom (photoshop) to help clear my mind of events of the previous day. I enjoy the quiet time in the middle of the night. The quietness takes me back to my darkroom days where I spent thousands of hours standing alone in the dark to make my images. The work of the darkroom process is a difficult one but renders the most satisfaction for me personally when doing photographing printing. This image was made shortly after sunrise out on the Dunes. Death Valley is a special place to visit and you might consider making the trip yourself one day

Time

Time is a thing we take for granted and it is always slipping away, but in our youth we can squander it freely without thought. When I visit an old structure such as this fallen down church I get a sense of time and it's passing. At one time it was the pride and joy of a small community but now it is abandon and the people are gone. I look out over the empty land and there is not a home or a town for miles. I am curious how this church was build in this far off place. The advent of the railroads bought people and productive farms to remote areas of the Midwest Plains in the early 1900's. Small towns grew up quickly with the influx of people, but eventually most died out when the trains stopped running in the last couple of decades. So as I sit in these quiet places and listen to the squeaky door hinge as the wind blown against the door, I feel the sprit of the place and have a sense of the people from long ago.

Uncertainty

We all experience it at some point in our lives. Here I am the night before I take off for another road trip of photography and primitive tent camp in the Plains states of America and Canada. It is an area that I have avoided traveling to and photographing my entire life. So I ask myself why at the age of 75 do I want to go to a barren land and sleep on the ground in an area that is void of scenic value? In the process of trying to answer my question, I realize that my soul feels barren and my desire to create has vanished from my being. Is it due to my age knowing that I can now "see the end”, or is it that I am out of touch with what creative photography means to me in the world of AI. I am uncertain of that answer as I write this. Have I lost hope in my pursuit of my passion? No! But has technology and the means to create a meaningful image shifted so far that I am no longer relevant to the current trend? I am beginning to thinks so. I suppose it is a natural progession of an aging person that has dedicated their life to a dream and vision that suddenly fades without them being aware it. I will make my trip feeling in an exhausted state, and hope the stark barren landscape can offer me something in return. To find a place of balance in life, you need to experience the extremes.

Tower Studio

Off the coast of Newfoundland is the island of Fogo. It has long been a fishing community and that is the main livelihood of the island for centuries. In the past few decades the fishing industry has been on the decline because of over fishing, but in the past couple of years it is showing signs renewed growth with the fishing regulations that were put in place to bring back the fish population. If you visit the island there are some interesting artist studios to visit with working arts. This one is called Tower Studio and is an oddly shaped building positioned in coastal landscape. I find doing an architectural study of these various odd shaped buildings gives me a new insight in how an abstract structure can be a place of quiet and peacefulness due to their unconventional design. We usually think of things in architecture as form over function. That concept is clearly apparent with this structure of making a creative space for artist to work . The building in itself it an expression of art.

Majestic Cypress Tree

I am fortunate to live in Florida and near a large lake that has numerous old growth bald cypress trees. These majestic trees have weathered hurricanes and lightning strikes but continue to grow in the lake over the many years. Sadly most cypress trees were harvested by the logging industry years ago, and they cut nearly every cypress tree that could be found. It is a valuable wood and I have seen some very beautiful tables made from huge slabs from a giant cypress trees that once stood tall in the swamps. I have a great affection for these trees because each one has it own unique character about it. Occasionally on hot days I will anchor my small boat in the shade of these trees and listen to the sounds of nature around me. They provide a secure nesting place for the Osprey and other birds native to the area. The Bald Cypress Tree is the only tree that losses it leaves for the entire winter in Florida. Winter time is when I usually prefer to photograph them, because without the leaves you can see the true character of the tree. This particular tree with it’s Spanish moss looks best in the summertime. I called it the guardian tree because of it’s strength and status it portrays .

Traveling in Iceland

I am still finding new and interesting images from a trip I made to Iceland back a few years ago. That appears to be the case with most of my photographic outings. When I first get home from a trip I dive into the images that capture my attention the most and make a small collect of prints. Then I find myself moving onto other projects and abandoning the process of working on image from my recent trip. I find that after a few years of having a large group of images packed away on a hard drive, I find many inspiring images that I overlooked on my initial review when going back through the files. It is exciting to bring new life to old memories and add to an existing body of work. Sometimes we are so excited to cull out what we think are the best images from the trip that we bypass others that may hold a deeper meaning. This above image was taken somewhere in Iceland but I can't remember exactly where. That is because it was a scene that I just happen on when traveling to a more popular location that might have been photographed more but other's. I like the quiet and subtleness of this scene and the emotion I get from it of being in a far off land in a remote area with no other travelers around for miles.