How my Photo Art Developed
Living in town was fulfilling for our family life, as we mostly all lived within the confines of a village, if you will. All other family members were within a block or two, church was literally a 5 minute walk. The market was only a 5 minute drive. Our neighbors were quiet gardeners and church folk. An idyllic setting one would think. And we did believe that, I am told. But at some point my Father decided to uproot our family, to a 15 acre plot of land, that became a working farm, where we raised chickens, pigs, cattle, horses and from time to time, geese, sheep, ducks, a peacock, dogs, cats and assorted farm animals too numerous to mention.
We also grew crops for our animals and food in a large garden for our own family use, in short, a lot of hard work. I was five and a half when we moved, and by the time age 6 arrived I had been converted to a full time farm hand. Twice a day I found myself tending all the animals, feeding and gathering eggs, milking cows, slopping the hogs, as we called it then, and filling lots of water troughs.
It was hard work, but it wasn't nearly enough for the likes of a young lad yearning for something more.
The Yearning For my Love of Nature
When all the duties were done, and sometimes even before they were finished, I would run to the back porch door, where I could quickly enter the kitchen door and grab the Kodak Brownie from the shelf above the table. On a warm summer morning I had huge fields to explore. Within those fields, at alfalfa level or down to ground level were thousands of compliant subjects which sometimes happily, sometimes warily self composed within the confines of my lens. Flies and dragonflies, spiders and butterflies, moths, hummingbirds, starlings, finches, robins, crows, raccoons and porcupines, moles, and many many more would get lodged between a glass lens and a shutter on film.
At the time I hardly considered how lucky I must have been to have all this nature at my reckoning. I simply went through rolls of film like there was not tomorrow. It was not till around 7 that the subject came up. "Son, what are we going to do with all these rolls of film?" That's when it really hit me. The idea of preserving and printing started to weave its way into my mind. It would do no good to keep shooting at such a frenetic pace, as do digital shooters do today, without some sort of preservation which from that point on became the standard of my obsession for Photo Art.
My world of photography at that time was a fairly narrow focus for a photographer of adult perspective, but to me at that age, it was a vast field of exploration. One week I would focus on flowers or seed heads, fresh or at advanced stages. While the next would bring me to shots of hawks in flight, red-winged blackbirds posted on alfalfa stalks or insects of every variety imaginable.
It took me a long while then, to move from the unlimited sources of photographic captures in the outdoors to venture inside, a very long while indeed. And still to this day, people and their social habits are not nearly as strong a draw as is nature. You will do me and yourself a favor, I hope, by visiting my Photo Art Collection at my website where you'll find a lot more than insects, birds and mushrooms.
And if you decide to purchase anything, or just comment on a few of my photography, please leave me a way to reach out to you from time to time as I add more art. Thanks
