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.  

Give life to your dreams

I recently came across this writing I did a number of years ago and at first I didn't recognize it as something I wrote.  I found it inspiring as if I was reading someone else's words.  I will turn the age of 74 in a few days and reading something from my past creates a stirring in me. I question myself if I dream as much as I did now that I am much older. Probably not,"but" I will be celebrating my 74 birthday on a two week tent camping trip to the N.W. to do some photography. 

"Give life to your dreams"

We start life on a fast and rigorous pace with school, work, family, and community. We all dream but where do they take us? If we learn to make our dreams into actions we will have a fuller satisfaction in life. How do we take a random thought or dream and make it a reality? It first begins with taking the time to dream and visualize. Try to imagine yourself doing the very things where your thoughts are taking you. Second you need to find your special place to dream. It may be a quiet and secured place or a favorite place from the past that brings you a sense of peace. Next you need to keep your dream personal until you are certain this is something you truly desire to do. Rushing out to tell others will dampen or destroy your dream because they will influence your thoughts, and often you will toss it off as only a whimsical dream and at that point you will become defeated and losing belief in your dream. I had a place where I did most of my dreaming. It had a long distance view where I would look out over a vast landscape. In my spare time I could sit there and dream about far away places and actually could see myself doing it. I knew at the time it may be years before I could eventually do what I was dreaming about but in my mind I knew that I was going to do it. The next step in planning and learning what actions you need to take to make your dream a reality. This is the work action that needs to happen to keep your dream alive. Write down a list of the steps that you need to do to start the process. With this you will start to realize you are bring your dream to life and that is when the excitement begins. Refuse to listen to the naysayers and others around that will dampen your enthusiasm. Life is full of negative voices and don’t let those voices steal your dream you have started. You will know that your dream is right when it is your own, and the only way to achieve that is limit the outside influence that can rob you of your hopeful thoughts. The next step in living out your dreams is to get up and go do it. This requires a bold and daring move to commit to something that was just a thought in your head a few months ago, but if you visualized your self doing it and made the basic plans to carry it out, then it is the time to move forward. Here is a few saying that you can apply to your motivation for bring a dream to life.

“ Analysis Paralysis” Failure by default (over thinking something)

“Winners take imperfect actions, while losers are perfecting their plans” (Make a plan and take an action)

My dreams that started in my favorite place has taken me to several countries in the world and to explore off the beaten path. I have hiked, camped, and met wonderful people along the way. I have a lifetime of memories and many inspiring photographs that take me back to my original dreams. Time is precious so don’t just dream it away, give life to your dreams. 

 

The Melting Building

Architectural photography is something I have never done a lot of.  I mostly have concentrated on landscapes and abstract subjects for most of work.  Recently I was in Las Vegas and visited the arts district. That is where I came upon a wonderful abstract building,  The Lou Ruvo Center for brain health designed by architect Frank Gehry,  and is often referred to as The melting building.  It has to be one of the most artist designed buildings I have seen.  Certainly it is a one of a kind and the abstract quality makes an interested building to photograph.  I always try to show a presence of light in my final image and it all starts with analyzing the light in the field before making the exposure.  Once I have an image with the proper light and composition then the real work starts to produce an image worthy of representing this wonderful structure.  It can take me days of working on a single image to get the desire look I am after.  Sometimes I am rewarded with an image I feel represents the inspriation I felt when in the field with my camera. 

Ebb and Flow

 I will be 74 years old next month.  My interest in photography started in high school when my small school built a darkroom and started a photography class.  In the first year the class was offered there were only two of us who were in the class.  I remember clearly the first time I watched a plain piece of white paper turn into a photograph in front of my eyes in the darkroom.  It was a magical life changing event for me.  I instantly connected with the process and the possibilities photography held for self expression.  So here I am 60 years later still pursuing the photographic process. During those years the equipment and process has changed numerous times requiring a re-education to stay current with the process. The changes always had a period of ebb and flow to the creative aspect of photography. New techniques and to be learned and equipment exchanged. It is more costly and time consuming in the electronic world of photography with hardware updates and digital procedures constantly changing. I still have the desire to create and explore with photography but miss the process that I fell in love with in the darkroom.  The AI technology that will soon be unleashed on the world will probably spell the end of the creative process of the individual and will usher in the the computer generated art that has very little heart and soul. 

Fogo Island

 It was a foggy morning as I searched around Fogo Island in Newfoundland for a pleasing scene to photograph.  I came upon these three boats and at first I kind of dismissed them for making a pleasing image.  Mainly because there were so many other interesting structures with boats around area that held my attention.  That was four years ago and recently I was going through some files of that trip and came across this image.  I was intrigued by the simple quiet composition and could see potential in the image.  It is strange, but I usually find these lost and forgotten images during a period of sleeplessness in the middle of the night and immediately start working on them with enthusiasm.  The stillness in the scene represents the stillness of the night and completes the creative cycle. 

Book Projects

I have spent the past several months sorting out and editing my photographic images I have made over the past five decades.  My photographic journey has taken me down many paths of creative interest.  As I go through the tens of thousands of images made on film or with a digital camera, it becomes apparent there are numerous images that can be grouped together according to theme and style.  I can clearly see how my interest with certain subjects grew while others faded.  My efforts with this project is to products books of images that I pulled from my files and organize them to be viewed as a theme.  This is a time consuming project that takes discipline to complete.  My first completed book is titled "Street Portraits".  It contains about seventy photographs of people I randomly met and photographed in their environments.  It is satisfying to see a complete body of work represented in a book format.  Currently I am sorting through images that contain a theme of what I refer to as visual rhythms in nature.  These are images that have common patterns with form and movement found in nature.  I first went through my plant life images, and then as the project grew, I found similar images of tree roots and rock formations.  As I work on old and forgotten images I became aware of how my photographic pursue developed a rhythmic visual style.

Style

 We all develop our own style in photography if we stay with it long enough.  We first start out trying to mimic other photographers whose work we admire. There is nothing wrong with this but at some point we need stop trying to reproduce another photographers work and create our own look.  It starts with an awareness of things that we are drawn to and putting together a body of work that represents our emotional response to what we see. There is nothing mystical or magical about the process.  It is simple seeing and putting your inner person into play. We all have jobs and commitments we have to deal with everyday, But deep within all of us is a hidden person that can create and present something that has meaning to us. The source of this creativity ebbs and flows with intensity and sometimes is not present at all.  It is not that is is not there, but because we have stopped seeing and listening to the things inside of us and take on other duties of the day,  Somedays I walk though the day and look for nothing. My eyes are shut because of negative news and other outside forces that occupy my mind.  Then for no particular reason I wake up and find everything has the potential of creating an interesting image and my mind is flooded with wonderful ideas.  I guess this is a normal and healthy way that the creative minds works.  The down times are frustrating but are periods of rest before a rush of new creative energy comes flooding in. Often my moods follow the same path as my creative and non creative periods.  The above image was made in Mexico of some banners hanging in a small church,