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A couple of weeks ago I lost a very dear friend and brother, Gus Clouse. \u00a0I wrote a blog entry about how much I loved and appreciated him. \u00a0As loss always does, it has caused me to do a lot of soul searching. \u00a0It brought me to a troubling conclusion! \u00a0I’ve spent the better part of the last fifty + years traveling all over the world to make photographs of many subjects that for the most part that are, truthfully, fairly insignificant. \u00a0Yes they were beautiful and interesting, but, they did not matter to me near a much as my family and friends! \u00a0Above, top left Jim Haverstock and his late wife Sue, Jim Begley, bottom left to right, Carl Turner and his wife Monica and Jack Graham. I have well over 500 images of waterfalls but very few of these people!!! \u00a0I realized this when I tried to find images of Gus! \u00a0I have more images of Sherelene and my children and grandchildren, but I’m with them all the time, but then I’m with these people a lot too!!!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n So what am I going to do? \u00a0I’m going to try to make more photographs of the people I love! \u00a0I’m sorry that I’ve dropped the ball of the ability God has given me, I need to use it to magnify Him and the ones I care so much about! \u00a0This group at the top are among my closest and most dear friends! \u00a0Jack Graham has been my teaching partner, friend \u00a0and brother and we’ve gone though lots of trials together, He’s a true friend! \u00a0Jim and Sue are two of the dearest friends I’ve ever had, and I really miss Sue, but she is with our Lord! \u00a0Jim is God’s guide to me in my spiritual life! \u00a0Jim Begley is not only a great photographer, but also a dear friends with whom I’ve shared many great adventures, he’s wonderful Christian man and friend! \u00a0Carl Turner is one of the most God loving men I now, he truly has God’s ear, when’s the chips are down he’s the one I pray is on his knees lifting me up to our God! \u00a0Monica is one of the most Holy Spirit driven Christians I’ve ever known! \u00a0These kinds of friends are priceless! \u00a0I don’t deserve them, but I’m thrilled to have them in my corner! \u00a0I love doing portraits of our students in the Missionary Baptist church in Cades Cove, one below, I promise to try to do better!<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n One of my favorite workshop guests!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I promise to work hard at it!<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Blessings,<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n the pilgrim<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A couple of weeks ago I lost a very dear friend and brother, Gus Clouse. \u00a0I wrote a blog entry about how much I loved and appreciated him. \u00a0As loss always does, it has caused me to do a lot of soul searching. \u00a0It brought me to a troubling conclusion! \u00a0I’ve spent the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28094"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28094\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28097,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28094\/revisions\/28097"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/billfortney.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Student-960x540.jpg\")
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