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.

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.

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.

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.

Seeking quiet in a noisy world

 

We just returned from a road trip that took us nearly 6,500 miles of traveling backroads through parts of the U.S. and Canada.  We took our camper so we could spend several days in an area to explore around and learn some history of region.  Making a trip like this would usually require a lot of planning, but we decided to just drive and see where the road would takes us.  We met many fine people in our travels and received a lot of good tips on where we might want to go and what to see in those locations.  The most enjoyable times of our trip were spent in the quiet and open spaces.  For nearly a month while in Canada we had no internet, cell service, or TV, and soon realized how much our lives have become reliant on that technology.  When we returned to the States with being connected again we sort of felt like we gave up something to be back in the flow of digital information.  The freedom from noisy ads, news, and all the other stuff thrown at us each day was refreshing.  I realize few of us are going to be separated from the hustle of the busy world around us, but a roadtrip taking the backroads can give you a little break. 

When disaster strikes in the digital world

Lou Rovo Center for Brain Health

                                                          Florida Polytechnic University

 I recently started to do some architectural photography.  Finding an interesting build can be a challenge and then hoping for the right light when on location is always a concern. I made the first image last September in Las Vegas. It was located on a busy street with lots of traffic nearby. The building had trees and other vegetation planted around the structure.  The second image of Florida Polytechnic University I made this week.  In contrast it was a very quiet campus with classes out of session for the summer. The Florida summer clouds made for a nice backdrop.  Now for the heartbreak.  I was working on my photography a couple of days ago when one of our daily violent summer thunderstorms came rolling in.  I usually run to the computer and shut down all my devices and unplug from the UPS backups.  The next morning I fired up my computer and my couple of external hard drives only to find several folder completely gone from my external hard drives and other images gone from within folders that remained. These two images are just a couple that no longer exist.  I have searched and for days and there is nothing to find.  How this can happen is unknown to me.  I try to backup as much as possible but for some reason all the digital devils struck and took away some of my best images I have worked so hard on.  It is a mystery and the lost is devastating because now I only have a few jpeg images to haunt me of what I had.