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I owe everything to my dad. He taught me to be independent, to work hard, to be responsible, and to be respectful. This is the first Thanksgiving that he won't be sitting across the table from me, but he'll always be in my heart and his lessons will always be in my head. The best way to honor my dad's memory is to do the same for other young artists and family members. It'll help them on their journey and It's a great way to keep my dad's memory and lessons alive. I am thankful to have had you in my life. I love you, Dad.  I finally sat down and watched the movie "Kodachrome" with Ed Harris and Jason Sudekis. There are many lines in that movie that nail the "why" of film photography and the " why" of photography in general. I enjoyed the movie. While it was predictable, the performances range from nuanced to solid. It tackles the themes of life, the struggle to stay relevant, the preservation of historic processes, the need to make amends, the deep loss of a bygone process, and the need to feel loved. In the movie, Ben states that photographers are "preservationists." He is right. We should be committing the most important moments to film, to preserve for future generations.  Armed with my film camera, I headed out to photograph this structure in the Fall colors. I've had this image in mind for a while, but there's no guarantee on lighting. You are at the mercy of nature. This particular morning, the sun was covered by clouds. I didn't have much hope to that this image would happen. Without the sun, the colors would have been dull and the structure would have been a dark blob. Then, for a split second, the sun broke through the clouds behind me and lit up the colorful trees. One image...that's all I had time to create before the sun was covered again by clouds. It never reappeared that morning. More clouds came in and then it started to rain for the rest of the day.  On a brisk Fall hike before the Winter cold front arrived, knocking the remaining leaves from the trees and coating the forest floor with ice and snow, I came across some sort of pulley system from years past.  "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion." Henry David Thoreau  As I've previously mentioned, this Fall has been lackluster. But yesterday on my hike, it gave me a blaze of glory. With the temperatures rapidly dropping and winds picking up over the next few days, this was Fall's swan song.  One day I wrote her name upon the strand, But came the waves and washed it away: Again I wrote it with a second hand, But came the tide, and made my pains his prey. ‘Vain man,’ said she, ‘that dost in vain assay, A mortal thing so to immortalize; For I myself shall like to this decay, And eke my name be wiped out likewise.’ ‘Not so,’ (quod I); ‘let baser things devise To die in dust, but you shall live by fame: My verse your vertues rare shall eternize, And in the heavens write your glorious name: Where whenas death shall all the world subdue, Our love shall live, and later life renew.’ ~Edmund Spenser   If I can stop one heart from breaking,
I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain. -Emily Dickinson |
