It's about experiences, not things

I wasn't going to write an end of the year reflective post but then I was listening to public radio today and they were talking about experiences rather than things is what fills and fulfills our lives, it was a great reminder to the amazing year it was. Things are cool for a week or two until they aren't new anymore, but experiences become memories that do last a lifetime. They travel with you no matter where you are and they are so full of intellectual and heart felt thoughts and emotion. So on the last day of this year, 2013, I reflect and find my heart and mind filled with new experiences. Most of those experiences are from people near and dear to me. Family, friends, co-workers, fellow artists, poets, all these people have blessed this past year with amazing shared experiences.

I continue to be blessed to have my one true love and soul mate by my side for the last 29 years. Filled with many stories of heartache and trouble we have persevered and continue to grow stronger and learn from each other, every day. My kids will always be a focal point in my life and I'm glad for the baby steps taken this year to begin rebuilding the relationship with my son Phil. A momma's boy to the end I love every minute I spend with my mom. I need to work next year on strengthening my relationship with my sister who inspires me with her strength, kindness and hard work. We need to add to our many shared wonderful experiences.

Many great experiences shaped my life this past year and I want to highlight four individuals who weren't in my life last year, who have help enhance and make my life and me, better this year.

The greatest being my grandson, Brayden. This new life showed me how to appreciate more, love more and be a kinder more compassionate individual.

The next three new connections came through the conduit of photography. These three amazing individuals have taught me with their honesty, sensitivity and openness. Maybe not the same as their own, two of these fine people have given me a renewed sense of the spiritual which had been missing in my life for many years. I will never believe in the same way they do but they have opened my heart to new possibilities and what we share is more similar than different. Another has shown me a humor and wit that creates real teachable moments through her eyes. Life is serious but let's lighten up people, we are all in this together. All beautiful individuals who have had an impact on me and continue to do so through our continued dialog, yes often times through Facebook but people who I'm honored to call, friends.

The Road Less Traveled

The road less traveled

The Road Not Taken

by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

And that has made all the difference! I started down this road almost two years ago when I committed to pursuing my Identity project. Conformity was something I've always struggled with since my personality is such that I often feel as though I don't fit in, even when invited. This is as much my own doing as it is the clique's I've found so prevalent in both society and creative circles.

The Identity project brought into my life 33 amazing individuals that had a variety of personal reasons of their own to be included in this series. This visual journey was the road less traveled and took me way out of my own personal comfort zone even though the subject matter was one I knew and lived my whole life. So this road of “wanted wear” opened my eyes and my heart to experiences and stories much greater than the photographs they represented.

“Yet knowing how way leads to way”, I doubt I will ever come back. The year Two Thousand Thirteen has brought, once again, personal rewards that are much deeper than the two dimensional photographs created. As a visual storyteller I have realized my greatest gift in creating my photographs is to listen. I listen with my ears, my eyes and my heart and it has transformed the way I make photographs. I shoot less and listen more. I pay attention to the sitters body language to guide my photographic narratives. In the end I want my photographs to speak of beauty, strength and empowerment. I often find that the subjects I resonate with the most also have chosen the road less traveled. I share this years road with many amazing and beautiful individuals. You know who you are and that has made all the difference.

One hit wonder, The Best of, or Stay tuned...

Resuscitating my blog! Seeing many of my fellow friends and artists write about their personal thoughts and observations of late has inspired me to revive my own blogging which has been mostly neglected four almost four years. Looking through some of my early posts I found this one which is still relevant to me today so I will begin with one of my favorite posts from 2008. If you enjoy what I've posted in the past on FB, follow my blog for my unique and personal view on life and experience.

Photographers must withstand, with the help of their families and friends, the psychic battering that comes from what they see. In order to make pictures that no one has made before, they have to be attentive and imaginative, qualities partly assigned and partly chosen, but in any case ones that leave them vulnerable. When Robert Frank put down his camera after photographing The Americans he could not so readily escape the sadness of the world he recorded as could we when we closed the book.
Paradoxically, photographers must also face the threat that their vision may one day be denied them. Their capacity to find their way to art, which is their consolation-to see things whole-may fail for an hour or a month or forever because of fatigue or misjudgment or some shift in spirit that cannot be predicted or understood or even recognized until it has happened past correction. For every Atget, Stieglitz, Weston, or Brandt who remains visionary to the end, there is an Ansel Adams who, after a period of extraordinary creativity, lapses into formula. excerpt from THE EDUCATION of a PHOTOGRAPHER, edited by Charles H. Traub, Steven Heller, and Adam B. Bell.
I often think about this potential fate. You see it often with artists/writers, they produce a great body of work for a period of time and then reach a plateau in their career. The work becomes average instead of ground breaking or innovative. Will I succeed? Only time will tell. A one hit wonder or a visionary to the end?