When I have a cold, seems my thoughts are as cold.

When I have a cold, seems my thoughts are as cold.

It seems to me that when I have a cold, my thoughts drift to a cold stance to match.

I thought for a while that I could come up with an excuse for my cold rants, you know the one “when you are sick, you say things to make others feel down like you are. “

I can not get it, maybe the pressure, the cough, for sure the sneezing all tell me I am with a cold, does the cold really make it harder to be honest or easier? Maybe it’s when I have a cold most people stay away, to be honest that is safer. Maybe when I am alone I am left with my own thoughts and this cold. Maybe the cold is communicating with me in its own special way. I mean a cold is pretty blunt and all. It takes over your whole body makes you shiver and shake.

So why not make it an excuse, to step up and say

Frist:“Get Real”,

next: “Go big or go home”,

then: “That door swings both ways,

last; BUT DO SOMETHING!

Alas I have always been blunt, maybe the story stands in the way.

Another way of looking at change

The selfishness of the fear of Change;

It is not the fear of change that is scary but letting go of what we know.

We deal with change all of the time, those small inconvenient interruptions during the day the loss of a few moments of time on the way home. Yes they are irritating, it would seem what is frustrating about it is not what I am doing but what I am loosing. It is the knowing I am missing something I know.

Yet with in these moments of pause if you will, we meet new people, hear something or see new things that allow us to view things differently. So as you pounder the meaning of pause,  I offer a simple poem. The subject ” Public Schools K-12”.

 A poem:

I see more than I write, yet I am blind when I view the world,

I am passionate about art, yet my hand will not hold a brush,

My words have no meaning if they are not read,

My art will be lost in the confusion of contempt,

Alas for the conceit of judgment and control,

Conservative morals o what a foe,

Deaf shall you be, as blind as black shall you see,

Fail to see art and the dark ages will be.

A liberal will get this, maybe even fear this, a conservative will only enjoy the poem.

Placing a value on it I leave to you.

The Ego of expectations

I was once presented with an opportunity to give to another my skills my attention and abilities.  I have found that the skills the mechanics are easy to express and teach, and with the use of technology fundamentally fast.  The attention that it takes to become talented and skilled in any craft is it more about the time, than that it is actually teaching.

This means I have found to give somebody a mechanic’s skills it takes both my time, and their time, it takes them time to use those skills. 

If there was one thing that I would say it’s the hardest to teach it would be the abilities.  Teaching someone how to mechanically use a machine, is far different than teaching somebody the abilities it takes.

See abilities have reference to the active exercise of our faculties.  It implies not only native vigor of mind, but the easy and promptness of execution.  This promptness and execution can only be arrived at through confidence.

The downfall of all teaching is the expectation.  Teach a child to use a marker is easy, to teach them to keep the marker on the paper is also easy but it takes time, at my house it takes cleanser to clean up the walls as they explore, as find they can use the tool.

To expect them to develop vigor so easily expressed upon execution, is the folly of ego.

How would you communicate if you couldn’t talk?

How would you communicate if you couldn’t talk?

Every morning as I sip my coffee, I love to watch birds, squirrels cats or other critters of the morning. Its just something I do as I get ready for my day.

For years it would seem that some of them are doing the same thing, some actually seem to step forth and say hello. Or maybe they are just as curious.

Maybe for years the animals and critters have been watching me, just maybe they have been saying good morning, Maybe I missed it.

Humbled by youth yet again

I am humbled by youth, not for the life that they are about to see, but for the changes between what they will see and what I have already seen.

Many now have no idea what a phone cord is or was, I talked with a young man about this, he remembered the cords, but not the journey of the cord, at first it was so close to the wall, then it became the distance between you and the wall, then it was gone.

He looked at me and handed me a cell phone, I tried to find the receiver to get help placing a call.

Expectation and Vacations

Expectations never are met upon a Vacation

As I travel I seem to place more and more expectations in front of my relaxing, I am looking for a good place to eat, a good place to see, a good place to be.

Alas for me I seem to place more expectations on the end of any moment than the journey it takes to get there.

Everyone is given a chance at least once, some of us are given a second chance.

Everyone is given a chance at least once, some of us are given a second chance.
Alas the hard part is understanding what the chance was.



A Chance is an opportunity to do some great thing, many times as a photographer I have started a project or session and found myself elsewhere than what or where I believed I was going. For years I fought this wondering aspect of shooting images, trying to stay in control of the goal. The more I try to take charge the more I loose the goal.



Once lost the goal is forever allusive to be framed, scold myself to see the ending has never been enough to get there.



Alas for me, forever to repeat. To rewrite, reshoot, restart the process. Thus is the idea behind a goal. Goals focus my thought on the shiny little end.



When I step back I see the flow of chance in my work, that moment, that person, the smile I see chance. Chance teaches to look not at the goal but the journey we are on. To be given the opportunity to see that twice is the understanding.

What shall I seek?

Is it the emotions I seek as I look through my viewfinder.

What is pure and clear rests in your eyes, like the fresh frost on a cold winters night. That flash of passion that drifts a cross your face, seems to wonder about your body igniting the very essence of your soul.

You are but a sculptor chiseling away at the very rock.

There was nothing there but the cold textures of space until you arrived. That emptiness that has no sound is only broken by the shuffle of your steps, as if the very dust becomes willing to answer your presents. It is your fear pounded by your confidence you have used to stand so proudly, likened to the monuments of old.

Alas I seek you, not half, but you.

Every smile or tear, every turn or stance as the colors drift away and I slip into a trance. That excuse of flash, that click. Knowing full well how it will be impossible to capture even but a moment of you, how I settle for a glimpse.

How inferior the optics I use, for it is only that glimpse that shall be framed, As the dust settles back down, and my emptiness returns, you have become a blur of light, a shadow of my night, yet it is that single frame will be all that remains as you seek your fame.

Thus is our agreement.

Relationships or career?

Is it more difficult for a model to find a life partner than in other careers?

The stereotype is really hard to get over, but you can have a good relationship….

To be desirable, available, and unattainable that is the job, heck that has been my job making people believe those very things about a model. A relationship, even an association can place that career in deep trouble. A model has to put those three things first, from the time she/he wakes up and puts them feet on the floor until he/she is finally asleep.

I would be remised if I did state this; A model becomes desirable, everyone wants to be with them. They become available socially, that is the event type parties, gallery openings, product release’s building one’s career etc. Until they become unattainable, showing up at an event makes someone else’s career. Quote “if SHE would show up, Oh my Gosh people will think I have arrived.”, “Man if I had an image of HIM holding our product cha ching!” If you are a model and get into or try and build a relationship before you become Unattainable something is doomed.

Sorry if this seems a bit hard it is only my opinion based on my experience. You get lonely in this industry, when you do, call come over, my wife and I will have the coffee on and ready by the time you get here. Find a mentor in the industry, one whose life and lifestyle matches where you want to go. Build that relationship; remember when you take your eyes off of you, all of you, you become that which you associate with, it has teeth both ways.

Before I get twenty questions about me, I am on my third marriage and here is the score; I am a widower on my first, My second was a six month mistake, number three well after 14 plus years we started with a child each, we have added two more. 22, 21, 9, and 2 years of age. She is the blind date from this industry, suggested by someone other than my Mentor. At openings and events we found we seemed to end up next to each other.

There is a six month waiting list and a deposit before you fall under my lens. Mentoring is free, go figure…She is the backbone of each, at least to me she still has that unattainable quality.

If you asked this question of her, she would say straight out, Your nuts to even think about a relationship, they just happen when you are being you. Your job has nothing to do with it. Besides never get your honey where you get your bread and butter.

The Coin of life

Life can be described as if life is like a coin, the sides of the coin can explain how I wish to be seen, what others see, and the thin reality.

I can put efforts into what I wish others would see, the person, the man, the father, the artist, these efforts are still only what I wish, but that wish is what I hold as myself.

Others will only see that which they are looking for, that description can be as chiseled as that of what “I wish”. It is that which they seek, totally personal to each as they look.

The thin reality, is the thin side of common ground between “the wish” and “the seek”. It is set with folly and expectations, the fears, the dreams play equally in the hammering of the thinness. Yet it is the only part of the life, “the coin” I value for it is the only thing I really share.

Alas, My folly in this is I am neither the giant of my dreams, nor the dwarf of my fears. Neither can I be for another.