Someone one once asked me why I enjoy photography. The answer simple, but I also feel it to be profound. A lot of the skills I’ve picked up over the years have been a combination of my thirst to learn and the sense that they would be useful in my vocational work. It’s a balance which has served me well, and fed my desire to play as I explore whatever tools wind up in my hand.

Photography is a bit different. I do use my camera in my vocational work, but the desire to take up photography didn’t have a vocational angle. It’s usefulness for “work” is just a happy side effect. I picked up photography out of a desire to frame beauty, and thus become more aware of it’s presence all around me. For me, photography is pure recreation, food for my soul. In that respect the art of photography is much like one of my other favorite hobbies, reading. I suppose the two could be said to be related, after a fashion, one reads the world around me and the other reads into the world inside my imagination ¹.

Photography is such an important recreational activity to me that after working three straight Saturdays, having my days off disrupted, and an extended time at church ² my heart noticed the blue sky and urged me to get up and go out for a walk.

I thought this photo would make a good black and white, so I opened it up in Luminar 2018 to see what I could do. I’m pleased.