When I look at my life there was a point when I changed.  Not the person deep down inside because I became that person a long time ago.  Still I changed the way I present myself.  When though?  As look inside and outside I realize that it began in the late 1990s.  In the early 1990s when I began to teach workshops and give slide shows I was forced to look at myself in a different way.  Despite that fact I still remained the fairly quiet, very personal person I had always been.  It was the late 1990s.  Like a tornado, the obscure became the obvious.  It was the internet.  I began my first website in 1997 and I now had a forum to speak to people to whom I did not have to look in the eye.  A powerful and dangerous tool.   Those of you who are old enough to remember a life before the web know what I speak of.   There is still much that I do not divulge, as I have always fought to keep a part of me private, but like most of us, I make far more public than I would have ever dreamed that I would.  I have been “out there” for a long time now.

I have embraced my share of technology over the years but I am truly of an earlier age.  I do not need to have the web at my finger tips every minute of the day.  I do not text.  I do not use GPS.  I consider it a sacrifice to carry a cell phone.  I absolutely have no interest in having every app with the ability to post on Facebook or Twitter no matter where I am and what I am doing.  I am a true 20th century man and proud of it.  In fact I am probably more of a 19th century man.   I love having acquaintances but I do not need to pretend that internet acquaintances are necessarily friends.  It takes time and a slice of real life before I feel like a friend, or consider others to be my friend.  Friendship like everything good in life takes work.  I have never noticed any shortcuts.

I have been involved in most types of photography but it is not a surprise that nature became my primary subject.  I used to do some people photography but there are those that are far better at it than I so I decided to leave it to those people.   I still love the creative aspects of studio photography but in the end, that kind of photography is all about me.  In nature I have found friends.  I can develop a personal relationship with the land and the flora and fauna that live there.  The best human friends of the second half of my life were all made when I was out in nature making pictures.

When I am in nature I am not judged by the clothes I wear or the company I keep.  In return I do not judge nature.  We have a perfect relationship (friendship).  I leave technology behind me in the city.  Most of the time now days I even leave my tools (camera equipment) behind.  I think nature can be the great escape for all of the techno junkies but it only works if you divorce yourself from that technology for a little while.  Today’s technology is obsolete by tomorrow.   Nature will remain “current” long after your body and mine have turned to dust.

In the end we all have choices.  We can have both technology and nature.  It’s about where your priorities are. One is seductive and manipulative.  It will pretend to be your friend, but many of humankind’s worst live there.   The other is equally seductive but will remain a friend you can turn to forever.  Nature and natural are one and the same.   Nature is a creation of something greater than us.  Technology is a creation of man.

Having said all of that I have hopes that I will remain “out there” on the Earth Images Blog for a while yet.  Someone has to spread this incredible wisdom (sarcasm?).   Have a special day and spend a little time alone or with a friend in the natural world.

Monument Valley, Arizona/Utah

Great-blue Heron with nesting material

P.S.  For the first time in a year or so I write this with only a few corrections and no dyslexic words.