Something Will Have Gone Out of Us

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; If we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. Without any remaining wilderness we are committed wholly, without chance for even momentary reflection and rest, to a headlong drive into our technological termite-life, the Brave New World of a completely man-controlled environment."

— Wallace Stegner

Fallen Timber, Little Truckee River

A Person Can Learn a Lot From a Dog

"A person can learn a lot from a dog, even a loopy one like ours. Marley taught me about living each day with unbridled exuberance and joy, about seizing the moment and following your heart. He taught me to appreciate the simple things-a walk in the woods, a fresh snowfall, a nap in a shaft of winter sunlight. And as he grew old and achy, he taught me about optimism in the face of adversity. Mostly, he taught me about friendship and selflessness and, above all else, unwavering loyalty."

— John Grogan

Winston

Be a Farmer of the Spirit

"Art begins not in the learning of skill, but in the decision to live artfully; to be a farmer of the spirit; to accept ambiguity; to not ignore, but to acknowledge the many problems in the world and to uphold one’s capacity for awe and compassion alongside, and despite of them."

— Guy Tal

After the Storm

A Way of Feeling

"Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything."

— Aaron Siskind

Phillip Road

A Way to Make Your Soul Grow

“If you want to really hurt your parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” 

― Kurt Vonnegut, A Man Without a Country

It's estimated that approximately 880 billion photographs will be uploaded to the internet this year alone. That's 126 photos for every human on the planet. We're drowning in a tsunami of digital photographs. It's clear now that the budding photographic artist hoping to have their work seen is up against impossible odds. Photographs that do garner wider attention tend to be either garish, shocking, or controversial in some way. Quiet photos that require time and contemplation, float by unnoticed in the collective photostream, like a single drop of water in a raging river. Now, more than ever, the only answer is to do the work solely for your own enjoyment and edification, or as Vonnegut so eloquently says, “to make your soul grow”. 

Natural Rock Garden, Study 1

Time’s Relentless Melt

“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.”

– Susan Sontag

Putah Creek, Detail 4