I feel I’ve always been a Creative.  I started with photography.  In my early 20s I went to the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, Where I took several classes for the creative and technical sides of the camera.  Then I built a darkroom in a spare bedroom and took classes around that part of this creative medium.  Then the digital era came upon us and transformed the medium, in ways that I could never even have imagined. 

For several reasons I was slow to embrace it. The cost of entry was very high back then; I didn’t even own a computer yet.  I think it was in the 2000’s I bought my first computer from Gateway.  You remember Gateway, right?  The big box that looked like a cow… I taught myself how to type.  I hadn’t typed since high school where you used those upright typewriters with the blank keys?  I taught myself to use the typical production software.  You remember, Word Perfect?  Somewhere along the way they went to the curb with Gateway.  They’re both still around but you never hear of either of them anymore.

Then somewhere in the 2010s the entry to digital photography became much more affordable.  So, I dove into Sony equipment.  Because my old “Mind of Minolta” lenses would work on it.  Sony acquired Minolta in 2006.  That limited the cost of entry as well. 

But now I must learn the software that was needed to process these digital files.  I started with Lightroom 2, which intimidated me in a huge way.  And Photoshop was just so expensive, that was never going to happen. I remember trying a trial version and was just so overwhelmed it was ridiculous.  But I overcame all this negative thinking when Adobe came out with the LR & PS package in 2013 for $10 a month.  It took me some time, but I learned PS and took some incredible classes online.  I have found an entirely new way to interact with my photography. 

I guess almost 10 years later and 60,000 + photos I began to wonder how I could use my photography in other expressions of creativity.  I started making my own textures to use in photo overlays in photoshop.  This opened an entirely new way of creating with my photography.

Perhaps a couple of years later, I came across a medium called photo encaustic.  Encaustic is a very old medium that uses a combination of beeswax and damar resin.  You could use it just like that or add pigment to it, to do more of a painting or tinting with it.  This really got my mind thinking about branching out into other creative endeavors. 

This brings us to 2025.  I was longing for creative growth and became curious about other ways of expressing myself.  I took a painting class.  I began thinking about collage, and mixed media.  One day at the end of one of my online classes I had a little time and came across an idea that resonated so deeply within me that I felt I had to pursue it.  That is my current project, a painting only project I might add.  The Soul! 

Well, you might be wondering at this point, what’s the point of all this reminiscing of my creative growth.  It’s simply this.  While there were times that I would create a still life for a photo project or get out during the blue and golden hours in the wee hours of the morning and evening to capture a previsualized picture.  This new project has challenged me to think in reverse of my entire creative life.

My photography was always leading me to destinations, hikes, historical landmarks, museums, street scenes, urban exploration, (which I love), finding locations where I would search for the composition to capture and process later at my computer.  Whether it was a singular process to share what I saw, or a composite to create something else entirely, or even to turn into something that looked like a painting but using software to accomplish it. 

The challenge now is not to go find the inspiration but to take this idea I have in my head and convert it to something I see in my mind’s eye.  Sure I would previsualize a photograph, but it was in the context of where I was shooting.  Before I was a hunter, now I’m a gatherer or better yet a vessel.  I’m a conduit of this thing that I have inside and need to put out into the world.  I’m growing this idea from my soul.  Nurturing it from my research and studying.  Allowing it to evolve as I talk to others about it.   It’s taking me a lifetime to get here.  There’s healing happening here.  There’s growing within my life.  It’s making me a better person.  More aware of those around me and those I’m connected with. I’ve grown and changed as a result of following my creative path.  I would challenge you to do the same.