I Am A Photographer

Yesterday was an inedible day.

I taught a 2-hour class, on iPhone photography, at Precision Camera and Video, in Austin, Texas.

Like I always do, I arrived early, to set up the room, lights, A/V, etc

But, before I did all that, I wandered around the retail stacks, looking at all the eye-popping and wallet-depleting, camera gear and accessories available to the modern photographer and filmmaker today. Wow. Amazing. We’ve come a long way since the earliest successful photograph, taken by French inventor, Joseph Nicephore Niece in 1826.

My whole life and career, I have stood on the shoulders of other photographic giants, to view the world through their eyes and vision.

Now, others stand on my shoulders, for a different viewpoint and perspective. I am honored.

I was feeling positively and romantically sentimental about my 4+ decade career in photography.

How exactly did this all happen? How did I get here? Seriously? Pinch me? Am I dreaming?

Then I picked up a stack of newly printed 17×22 prints from the Canon Pro-1000 inkjet printer.

I gently brushed my hand over the high-quality Giclee prints, made on Hahnemuhle fine art paper.

I repeated the same motion, two more times, as I stared at the photograph

My heart stopped.

Good gadhhh. The prints were just beautiful, even rapturous.

I was ecstatic, beside myself with joy, mood, celebratory reverence, deep appreciation.

It seemed like, oddly, in that single, solitary moment, my photographic life flashed before my eyes.

I saw the beginning and the end and the millions of photographs I’ve taken in between these points.

I have lived a storied and cherished life behind the lens.

I truly and remarkably have.

Thank you Dad for my first Minolta SRT 101 camera in 1975. It you only knew…….

Photography, from beginning to end, has been an experiential reward of the deepest treasure and pleasure that life could offer.

Of all the careers and professions in the world, photography called and found me.

I am humbly grateful. My heart is full. I am complete.

Never in my wildest dreams, have I found anything, that comes even close, to the keen and buoyant Joie de vivre that photography has brought to me and into my life.

I am a photographer. My mission and mantra are to create something out of nothing.

I leave a trail of twinkling, radiating, easy-to-follow, fairy-dust, wherever I go.

My cauldron is, always, full to the brim, of glorious light, color, design, subject, emotion, texture, form, ideas, art, romance, love, perception.

I can’t get over the fact that I’m an artist. I make beautiful things.

Some of these things only ever exist in digital form, for my own enjoyment. Others find their way to print and paper, for a wider audience to equally revel in and celebrate over.

I, unashamedly, live, on the expressive side of life.

My everyday language is lyrical, the delightful, the emotional.

I memorialize life’s moments and memories, at fractions of a second.

Man and machine live together, inside me, like a lion and a lamb.

Photography is a secret lover, a sagacious therapist, a traveling companion.

While many think of photography as something they do, I think of photography is something I am.

It’s an intrinsic and inherent part of living, breathing, existing.

For all that stirs in me, it eventually, finds its way out, through my camera lenses.

Want to know me? Look at my photos and you will discover me.

I feel the world. I honor the world. I see the world. I capture the world. I beautify the world. I share the world.

I am a photographer.

Click.