Any time I have attempted something creative in my life, my goal has always been to find escape. Let me try to explain what I mean.

For the most part, reality is predictable to me. I see a tree and it's pretty much a tree. I see a dog rolling around in my lap and there is no doubt in my mind it's a dog. My days are also predictable to a certain extent. I live in reality, not in my imagination. In summary, what’s in front of me is usually what it appears to be.

This is definitely a dog in my lap and a cute one at that

When I create something (let's just talk about photography for a moment), I find little satisfaction in faithfully reproducing what's apparent. Nonetheless, I do it quite frequently. I'm lucky enough to live on the road and visit new places all the time. I want to capture those places, of course, whether it's with my iPhone or my camera. Not everything has to be "artistic". But for those special images that fire my imagination, I want them to occupy a completely different world, one that’s alien with maybe just a hint of familiarity.

For a while, I was creating photographs that had a painterly feel to them. I added textured layers and manipulated colors using a photo editing program. The process fundamentally changed the mood and meaning of the image. Mostly, it was stripped of the reality it once represented. What emerged was an image that more closely approximated how I felt while shooting. It was my response to what I saw. My vision.

Ode to Wyeth - Florence, Oregon

Morning Fog - Yellowstone National Park

In general, some of these images fail and some of them succeed. The ones that fail do so for a variety of reasons. For those images that succeed, however, they are the ones that take on a life of their own.

I used to be in a rock band a long time ago and was a contributing songwriter. The process of creating a song had many layers. First there was the inspiration; the energy that made me receptive to creative ideas. Then there was the process of trying to formulate those ideas into something coherent. What followed was endless tweaking until finally the thing was created. It's like giving birth and nurturing to the point that the child gains independence. When I could let it go and really listen to the song as a whole, not as a series of separate parts, that’s when I could finally call it done.

I painted landscapes and portraits for a while too and found the process to be almost identical. Inspiration, formulation, execution, fine-tuning, completion.

The common thing in all my creative endeavors is that whatever I successfully produce, it elevates my mental state.

With my best creative photography, I have this same feeling. The images that have been transformed by my imagination possess a certain type of magic that I feel each time I look at them. I don't sense this when I view a conventional image.

I think this potrait has a special painterly quality

   

This photo of my friend has no special qualities. Well, maybe "special". No offense, Glenn

A couple of years ago, I began shooting pinhole photography. I won't get into the technical aspect of what that is but let's say the images I produced were unique. I would look at a scene around me and then look through the viewfinder and it was like a keyhole into a magical place. My pinhole images not only captured the physical surroundings but they also appropriated an emotional energy. Sometimes I felt like I was photographing an ethereal world, not visible to the human eye.

Ghosts of Gettysburg

Anguish

After a year of pinhole photography , I decided to take a break because I felt like I was repeating myself. I recently came out of hibernation because, on the last Sunday of every April, thousands of people celebrate Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day (WPPD). This has now become a tradition for me.

When I started pinholing two years ago, the image I captured on WPPD was shot on Whidbey Island in Washington. A ghost-like figure stood on the porch of an old abandoned house. I loved the unsettling atmosphere of the picture. Last year, while in New York City I went to Wall Street and captured kids gathered around a street vendor.

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day on Whidbey Island

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day on Wall Street, NYC

This year, I am in Joseph, Oregon. There is beautiful scenery all around but I wanted to create something a little more mysterious. A few days ago, I noticed an old silo not far from where we’re staying. It had a sufficiently disquieting atmosphere, perfect for a pinhole photograph.

Scouting the location for this year's WPPD image in Joseph, Oregon

 

When Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day rolled around, I had the whole thing mapped out in my mind. I wanted to have a figure, almost in silhouette, looming in the photograph with the silo in the background. As luck would have it there was a downpour of rain the night before. It left water-filled potholes everywhere.

In order to make the subject large and foreboding, I shot at ground level and this enabled me to include nearby puddles and consequently some interesting reflections. The low angle of the camera and close proximity to the water made it appear much larger than it actually was.

Having this vision in my head before I ventured out made the shoot successful and efficient. I think the entire thing took me about ten minutes.

In post production, I converted the image to black and white, cleaned up dust spots, added some sharpening and a sepia tone and finally used a texture layer to complete the look.

Harbinger - my final image for this year's WPPD

This is an example of what I consider to be a successful photograph and one that has my own unique voice. The finished image looks nothing like the place in which I shot. The picture occupies an entirely new world, one not confined by its four sides but freed by an implied third dimension. I'm not talking about depth, it's something else. In my imagination, I step into the frame and walk around this dark and desolate world. It's exactly the kind of thing that starts my adrenaline flowing and keeps me creating pictures.

When I look through a pinhole I am not a photographer. I am an imagemaker and maybe even a maker of worlds. For me that's a distinct difference.

If you would like to keep up with my meanderings, sign up to subscribe to my blog at the bottom of this page. Peace.