Home at last, o.k. only close!

My plane landed in Louisville at 5:00 p.m. last night and my steering wheel on my FJ Cruiser really tried to turn onto I-64 East, the first leg of the trip home, but it was not to be, I had to force the wheel in the opposite direction to drive west across Kentucky to my next assignment.

When I got up this morning, thankfully not at 2:00 a.m., like all last week, I showered dressed and loaded up for the first morning of the Mountain People’s Workshop.  On the drive over to the college I saw some beautiful fall foliage and just couldn’t pass up the tree above.  Standing in the brisk morning air and photographing this tree, a lot of memories came flooding back, of lots of cool days, photographing lots of wonderful fall leaves.  Fall is my favorite time of the year for a lot of reason, but mostly the wonderful cooler weather, and incredible color.  You know already, if you have visited here often, that I love color!!  As a photographer, I’ve had the pleasure of shooting so many fantastic subjects that really depend on their great color to make them succeed! Color literally attacks the senses!

I plead with my students to discipline themselves to work in a way that their images do attack the senses!  The purpose of making photographs is to tell a story, and if you do not believe that the story is compelling, why are you doing it, and if you do, then you want it to hit the viewer with all the impact you can put behind it!  Your work needs to have impact, change things, cause people to want to make changes, inform, inspire, and teach.

Even more so, should your life have an impact!  What  kind of father or mother are you, what kind of parent, or grandparent, what kind of friend are you to your friends?  Do you bring kindness and compassion into the lives of others. When you come into someone’s life and then leave it, do you leave something of value, of worth.  Our lives, just as our photography, needs to be impactful.

When it is all said and done, that will be the measure of if your life was well lived.

Blessings,

the pilgrim

Photo Note:   D600 with the 16-35 AF-S VR