I had the honor and the privilege to photograph Jenn's Caribbean wedding in May 2009. I captured her moment in time when all was right in her life. Little did she know what was lurking...

The end is near…but so is the beginning…time to reflect on 2011 and dream for 2012.  You might be thinking New Year’s Resolutions…or not.  A lot of individuals are very good at keeping them, then there are those of us who start out with resolutions only to falter somewhere down the road.  But, what causes us to stray from those good intentions?  Are they just lame excuses…or are we just hitting life head-on?….a “train-wreck” of sorts.  Each of us has a personal struggle.  The challenge is how we deal with it.  I’m starting to think about what my struggles will be…am I strong enough to challenge them?  Am I LIVING my moment in time?  I’ve seen my Grandpa battle pancreatic cancer…my Dad battle colon cancer…my Mom battle liver disease and who was ultimately saved by a liver transplant, my sister battle ovarian cancer…am I strong enough?  I’m certainly angry enough.  I can’t say much for “Time” healing all wounds, but it does put an occasional scab on the matter.  The ghosts that occupy the chairs around my holiday dinner table are constant reminders of how short and precious life really is.  Make those New Year’s Resolutions count this time and fight with all your might!  I want to introduce you to my friend Jenn.  An avid outdoorswoman…yeah, no question as to how we met…we’ve been on some awesome adventures together.  These days, Jenn’s not challenging herself on the trail or the slopes, she’s challenging death.  As a doctor, she’s trained to save lives…now she’s got to save her own.  I am so thankful that she found an outdoor organization called First Descents.  “First Descents offers young adult cancer fighters and survivors (ages 18 to 39) a free outdoor adventure experience designed to enable them to climb, paddle and surf beyond their diagnosis, defy their cancer, reclaim their lives and connect with others doing the same.”  ~ Mission Statement of First Descents.  What a blessing to an outdoor lover!  First Descents has empowered Jenn to stand up and say “I am taking back what you have stolen from me, Cancer.  Feel my revenge.”  I encourage you to read Jenn’s story here: http://teamfd.firstdescents.org/2011/fd/galaxygirl/Jenn/

I hope you find this story empowering and will pass along word of First Descents to help others.  You might be asking why I chose to write this and post it on a photography blog…I see photography as playing a role in everything I do.  Photography captures our moment in time for the entire world to see.  Its proof that we were here on this Earth…that we LIVED!  Through good times and bad, document it!  First Descents is capturing powerful images of cancer patients turning a blind eye (even if for a moment) to death and challenging themselves on the rock or on the water, facing their fears, accomplishing and saying…look at me…L I V I N G life.  Memories fade, but preserved photographs will live on for generations.  Life is too short, be sure to capture YOUR moment in time!  You just might be the inspiration someone needs.  Am I strong enough?  Try me.

One thing I have learned is not to delete anything (unless it is REALLY bad) until I can look at it somewhere other than the teeny screen on the back of the camera.  I came within a frog’s hair of deleting a picture that ended up winning a contest.  If I have the least little bit of hope for the picture, I’ll leave it.  I can always delete it from the computer.

Which brings up the point, what is good, what should be deleted, and what is something that you want to put in the family photo album for generations down the road to look at and talk about how funny everything looked.  I have a group of friends and family on my email contacts in a group called guinea pigs that I send pictures to for their perusal after I’ve culled them.  At first, they were too nice.  Everything was “Great!”  Then I started sending them some artsy-fartsy stuff that I knew most of them would not like.  Some of them started being honest and some of them just didn’t make any comments at all.  Slowly, but surely, everyone has come around and I think I’m getting genuine reactions.  It definitely keeps me grounded.

A friend of mine had her adult son come home for a visit and wanted to get some pictures of him to replace the high school senior pictures taken years ago.  Given the opportunity to do two of my favorite things, take pictures and boss people around, I jumped at the chance.  Michael is camera shy but he was doing it to make his Mama happy.  Since I knew Sara, I kind of knew what pictures would interest her the most, I thought.  Once again, I took many, many pictures, and when she downloaded them she was surprised at the number.  Then it was my turn to be surprised.  Some of the photos that were my favorites, she didn’t like at all and some I would have deleted she loved.

I recently got to take my first retirement vacation.  I got to go to the mountains and the beach in the middle of September.  With camera in hand, I got some good photos, some boring photos that I like, and some really bad ones.  Now comes the age old question, which is better number 1 or number 2?  Number 2 or number 3?  146 or 147?  I sort of feel like I’m at the eye doctor.  I was watching television  one night and came across a photographer in some exotic land taking photos we all wish we could take and he said that a good photograph has three things: lighting, composition, and imagination.  I guess the wild card there is imagination.  So I’m going to pick 147.  I think.

Take butterflies.  Everyone I know has several GOOD shots of butterflies.  I’ve got several blooming things around the house and my neighbor plants the whole front of his garden with flowers.  Plenty of opportunity.  I’ve got more blurred, half shots of butterflies than anyone I know.  I finally got a shot I could post on Facebook that was from way below that I named Dive Bomber Butterfly.  My friend told me it was scary and I needed to delete it.  Paula told me I needed to go to the butterfly house at Lost River Cave.  She seemed to think that if they were contained I might have a better “shot” at it.  So one afternoon when it was about 110 degrees in the shade, Chris and I decided to go.  Being the semi-fitness freak that he is, he decided we needed to park at the dog park and walk down.  To me, Lost River Cave implies shade.  The trail we took was in the blazing sun until we were almost there.  I whined the whole time.  The good thing, once we got there, was it was too hot for the butterflies as well.  They were so lethargic I could pretty much get any photo I wanted to take.  They were almost all the same kind of butterfly, but it didn’t matter to me.  I actually got some butterfly pictures where you could tell what they were.  Not great, or creative, but they were butterflies.

Hummingbirds are another one.  The best picture I have of a hummingbird is one sitting in a tree and a hummingbird sitting looks pretty much like any other small bird.  Once again, I planted things hummingbirds were suppose to like and even put up a feeder on my front porch.  But every time I got out my camera, those suckers take off for the high country.  So I sit and wait, and wait, and wait, and become the evening buffet for the mosquitoes.  Okay, I’m smarter than those hummingbirds.  I’ll go inside, put the camera on a tripod (aren’t you proud of me, Don?) and take pictures through the window.  That way the birds won’t see me and I can quit being one of the main food groups.  I got lovely pictures of hummingbird silhouettes.  Seems like the new windows I got really do keep the UV rays from heating up the inside.  And block the light.

One evening while we were waiting for my daughter to get off work, my son-in-law and I were sitting on the front porch.  For about the third night in a row, I was trying to get a picture of the spider that has spun her web from the pillars.  Josh , who is a bit arachnophobic, informed me that unless that spider wrote “Stupendous” in her web, there really wasn’t any reason to take her picture.  He may be right.  I still don’t have a good one.

The thing about the balloons at Balloon, Tunes, and BBQ is that the balloon glow lasts for about twenty seconds once a year.  One year I got there too late, the next year it was all blurry shots, and another year it was rained out.  So this year I was determined.  I got there early, went right up to the fence, set up the tripod, and waited.  I’ve really got to get tripod lessons.  They are better.  I actually got some pictures where you don’t have to squint and turn your head to the side to make out that they really are hot air balloons.  There is always next year, right?

The Photo Gods took pity on me one night.  We had been out and when we got home a hummingbird moth was getting a drink from the flowers in the front bed.  I grabbed the camera, got one shot, and off it flew.  But what a shot.  I was so proud I put it in the monthly photo contest.  Now if they would just give me the winning lottery numbers.

There was an old tree truck that long ago fell from its heights into the creek. Now, many years later, covered with lichen and moss, it becomes a wonderful backdrop for a nature photographer. In the summer, sunlight rarely fully illuminates this location because of the leafy covering, instead beams filter through the canopy of trees and spotlights the surface carpeted with discarded elements of nature.

A dried and curled leaf was trapped by a few threads of a spider’s web that became visible in the narrow beam of sunlight as it reflected off the silvery strands. A small eddy in the creek caught a leaf in its swirl causing it to spin around and around in the same place. A flash of red from another dried leaf caught the sunlight and the remnants of haze set aglow by the morning sun drifted through the trees and across the surface of the creek.

Nature has a unique often subtle way of demonstrating beauty. That broken and weathered trunk was at one time tall and strong and able to stand for many years against the elements. But, now in the final stages of its life cycle, it exhibits a gracefulness and dignity only nature can command. Maybe we could all learn something from such things, that in all stages of life, there is beauty and wonder, grace and dignity, if only we took time to step away from our narrow view of the world and try to understand.

How easy is it to overlook the simple beauty of light shining through a branch of a maple tree or the delicate beauty of a spider’s web undulating in the gentle morning air. Being a photographer is all about looking for light…but it’s more than that…it’s also about looking for and finding unique opportunities from ordinary situations…about discovering beauty and simplicity in the midst of chaos. Before long, one begins to understand that it is during those transitional times, when the light changes, is when the most magic occurs.  Life is lot like that, I’m beginning to discover as I grow older and watch parents enter their twilight years and see my own on the horizon.  Photography can teach us a great deal about life:  Timing is the key…willingness to change your perspective and observe from a different point of view is the mechanism…being there to capture the moment is the reward.

The diversity of nature may surprise us if we stop and observe closely enough. Photography often presents us with opportunities to those subtle events that we more often than not would simply overlook. Things we so often take for granted take on a new life when viewed from the perspective of a photographer’s eye. A thistle is just another weedy plant until the light catches it just right and one takes the time for a closer look. Often, all it takes is a simple perspective shift to reveal hidden beauty…even in a weed.

Nothing Better to Do

There resides in the heart of every hunter a natural wisdom to seek out those things that takes us back to our essentials. This wisdom awakens when the cool days of October arouse one from the slumber of a long summer’s sleep. Upon that awakening a hunter’s desires are aimed toward the fields and lairs of the backcountry where wild game roams. It is a calling developed over time, through trial and error and experience, that one day evolves into a conscious state becoming less of a desire, and more of a need as an intimate part of our being.

When October finally arrives and the cross timbers of Oklahoma change from their adornment of forest green to the browns, reds and yellows of fall, I am called to the hills of Southeastern Oklahoma less to pursue the elusive White Tailed Deer, but more to purge the influence of modern society by stepping back in time. The muzzleloader season provides a good throw back to a simpler day and serves to blend our connection with the past to the reality of today. Within the Sooner State, there are few places better suited for this purpose than these ancient, pine covered hills.

To rise early before daylight invades the darkness finds one clearing the fog from the eyes. In the stillness of the morning I stand outside loading the last of my gear before the noise of the city gains momentum. In the pre-dawn quiet, I hear a flight of ducks wing overhead unseen, bidding me a fair journey. There is a change in the air, and the musty, humid stirrings of summer are replaced with the aroma of fall. After months of hunting inactivity and in need of a lifestyle modification, I finally begin the healing process within the first few miles of the long awaited drive.

To leave the city and all its forest of houses and trails of concrete streets, the eventual transformation of terrain brings the delicate scent of fresh earth and pine to trigger images from the days of bygone years. Within those images are faces and moments frozen in memory: The crackle of a campfire and the sound of the wind filtering through pine covered hills. The melody of a creek and the cry of the coyote at dusk, the sight of a magnificent buck locked with keen eyes onto your every movement, then his bolt and snort through a tangle of woods. Remembering moments such as these is like savoring each as a delicacy fit for royalty. Here, you enter a new kingdom away from that other world, a kingdom seemingly made for you. Even so, you are not its master, nor its ruler, only its servant, for in order to take from it, you must give of yourself to its heritage.

I continue to drive hypnotized by the hum of tires, wind against the canvas top of my Jeep, and the rhythmic undulations of wiper blades clearing the rain off the windshield. In time I enter the land of my ancestors where I grew and lived and learned to love the outdoors. It feels good to return to the home of my youth. I climb higher into the realm where the clouds hover on the tops of the rugged pine covered Kiamichi Mountains. The muting effect of the mist and haze brighten the red sumac leaves and the kaleidoscope of colors that have already invaded these heights. The road begins a series of curves and drops, climbing ever higher, curves and rolls again and again over countless rises until finally I reach the crest and began to descend out of the mist until the form of Clancy’s Country Store filters through the rain.

Its rock façade darkened and streaked by the moisture that drips from the tin roof stand as a sentinel in the heart of these hills. I stop on the edge of town, a mere wide spot in the road, listening to the smooth rumble of my engine as it breathes the cool mountain air, and view this unencumbered corner of the world with a certain degree of envy. Hugging low to the ground a blanket of smoke from various chimneys settles and blends with the mist. An old country dog raises his head for a look while sitting under the protection of a sagging porch, wags his tail, unchained, unfenced, then lays his head down again, more concerned with resting than who belongs to this intrusion. All these things are common sights for this old Kiamichi community, for the local people, and though much of my own history is anchored around and near these hills, I am but a returning visitor. Honobia is its name. No self respecting resident would ever pronounce it like it’s spelled…locals pronounce it using ‘Oklahomeeze’ as Ho-Nubby. Even so, however you pronounce it, the image becomes a vision taken from the very soul of the American experience and the heritage of Oklahoma’s backcountry.

I turn off the first exit and head down the rain soaked, washboard dirt road. There will be no dust today. I slow down as I cross the first low-water bridge. Honobia Creek is lower than expected in spite of the much needed rain. The summer was dry. There are two more crossings to negotiate. Boulders protrude above the now slackened pools rippled by individual drops of rain, with red and yellow leaves adrift on the surface, a sure sign of the first vestiges of fall. It is a difficult creek to wade and fish as the large rocks are slippery and cumbersome to navigate. It can be worth the effort though. My mind is elsewhere on this trip, filled with images of trophy deer that stalk these hills.

Finally, there is the last turn off, and I climb even higher into the hills, my tires slipping on the loose dirt, and ascend one final time past clear cuts, new growth, and standing timber to the top of the ridge, exit at a long forgotten logging road, and catch the first sight of where deer camp will once again be set. The pungent odor of weeds is heavy and they are thicker now having grown since my last intrusion, but the old circle of rocks that is the campfire is still there. The rain continues to drip and the mist floats easily amongst the backdrop of tall pines and rolling hills. A muffled thunder rumbles from the dark low clouds and reverberates across the ravines and a haze floats softly against the upper reaches of the slopes like soft spider webs drifting on the wind.

On days like these, the woods take on a magical look, and with the breeze, a torrent of liquid jewels tumble through the trees adding their song to nature’s symphony. I set camp with the refined choreography of past experience waiting now for tomorrow’s arrival of my good friend and hunting partner. By the end of our hunt, the neatly arranged camp will most assuredly take on that cluttered look. A few ducks wing low overhead their wings whistling, greeting me a Kiamichi Mountain welcome. I raise my arms as though taking aim, then, watch them circle and disappear over the far ridge.

It is near midday now and time for scouting. The rain still falls sporadically, but I don’t mind. Tomorrows opening day…maybe this evening I can get in one hunt using my bow if the rain slows down. It feels good to stretch stiff legs. Finding and examining the first rub in the familiar draw where ‘Mr. Big’ was shot a few years before, raises my expectations and senses to a higher level. It is an average size rub where the bark on a young sapling was rubbed jaggedly clean, but there are several scattered in a pattern running parallel with the lay of the land near the top of the ravine indicating a nice buck frequents this draw. There’s a scrape not far from the top just inside the tree line, where the first pre-rut activity indicates the bucks are becoming restless. This is a good location, familiar I am with its character…deep woods with a run off creek at the bottom and converging draws splattered with acorns across the hump near the breastwork of rocks on the east side. Both opposing ridges are studded with tall pines and accented with hardwoods and boulders. I will begin my hunt once again here and stake out a good place for a stand not far from where I last hunted.

My lungs and legs burn as I climb out of the draw…residue from too easy living…it feels good and does one a favor to burn those extra calories. After returning to camp, I sit under a makeshift canopy in mid-afternoon and listen to the rain tap against it as the material undulate with each rising breeze. The fresh scent of rain helps to clear my head and soothe a tired mind. For the first time in many months I begin to truly unwind and relax. I wonder, will the rain will hold or clear? It doesn’t matter. I…am finally here and have re-discovered the wealth earned from time spent outdoors.

With only five days to recover from what is lost through the year this allotment of time is not nearly enough, but I dare not go without, for it brings into focus the most important things in life. Time away from the pressures of making a living is too precious a reward to waste. As I stand isolated again in these hills a sensory wealthy man, it is a comfort to see the full spectrum of time allocated to this endeavor spread out unmapped, uncharted, waiting for the choreograph of events to decide the outcome. Quickly, my allotted time will vanish like the whiffs of campfire smoke and misty fog that filters across these green hills, and I must return to that other impoverished world… longing to remain. Until then, I will savor each moment, the fireside stories of past exploits and the dreams of future ones to come. I look upon this time with reverent favor and from it I return with more than tangible trophies, but trophies garnered by favorite memories, which after all are the most important. You see, the making of a memory such as this is, well…I can think of nothing better I’d rather do.

The leaves are changing now but still a couple of weeks from peak. Halloween weekend should be the one with the most color. Maybe I’ll be able to get out and take a few shots during this all to short spectacle.

These shots were taken yesterday in a beautiful place that I found only last year. I thought I knew every nook and cranny in western Allen County, but this one had managed to elude me all this time. This road simply has a sign that says “Goodnight Hollow” and doesn’t have any homes on it. It leads to a shallow (most of the time) water ford that has a parking spot and a swimming hole on the far side. Such a nice spot…..