A photograph is a self-portrait that reflects your concepts and opinions of the world to others.

What? and why?… to make a photograph.

Photography is a relatively new art form. It has only been around for a bit over a century and a half. In the scheme of almost every other form of the arts, that is a very small amount of time. In many ways, photography owes itself to all the arts that came before it.

It is the why and what we seek to find as photographers. As photographers we are visual poets. We write poems with our vision. Our subjects the actors we use to tell our story.

You have a story that you can tell. It is a story waiting for you to express in your own voice and in your own way. It takes time and practice and the right frame of mind. But that is a goal that can lead to seeing and ultimately to understanding.

Somewhere along the line, the world seems to have succumbed to the need for exaggeration in everything we do. ………Photography opens the door for seeing the world as it really exists. It allows us to realize the good as well as the bad.

In my mind, truth should be the goal of every image and the understanding of that truth, the prize.

To be inspired is not to copy what others create, but to use what we learn from their works to stimulate our own innovation.

While it is a great thing to have access to the abundance of imagery that exists on the internet, the actual experience of any piece of art is minimal at best.

What is the other half of the photographic experience?