Worn Out

Posted by Russ Devan (New Hanover, United States) on 13 November 2008 in Landscape & Rural and Portfolio.

I found this old, broken picnic table in the middle of the woods while on a hike this past weekend in French Creek State Park with my son and our dog, Nala. The section of woods that we hiked through must have been used as a picnic or camping area at one time decades ago. The forest has since completely reclaimed the area, which is a good thing. Ben and I only hiked a modest five miles or so. Nala, however, was on the same trail as us, but probably hiked 15 miles (up the trail then back, off to the left, up a stream, down the stream, off to the right, then up the trail and back again).

Recently, Laurie Jackson of “Capture This Photography” chose my photoblog as one of six to receive the “Kreativ Blogger” award. I received her email telling me that she chose my photoblog while I was out to dinner with my family, so they got to see the big smile on my face when I opened her email in the restaurant. Thank you, Laurie. That was very sweet of you.

I found it interesting that of the six photobloggers to which Laurie chose to bestow this award, two of them, in addition to myself, are members of the Chester County (Pennsylvania) Camera Club (Betsy Barron, Anita Bower, and myself).

The requirements of the award are that I must name six things that make me happy. This was a bit of a challenge in that I was limited to only six things. Being a photographer with a photoblog, photography is an obvious no-brainer of a choice, so I will list six additional things that you may not have known:

1) spending time with my wife, seeing her smile, and feeling her reach for my hand, even after 21 years of putting up with me;

2) spending time with my kids, watching them grow up and discover new things that they find fascinating, and listening to their funny stories about life while at the dinner table;

3) playing with our Labrador Retriever, Nala;

4) the peace and solitude of being outdoors in the wilderness, especially beside a quiet northern lake, on top of a mountain, next to a gurgling stream or just anywhere that is miles from civilization;

5) listening to beautiful music (classical, jazz, new age, and classic rock are my favorites) which many times influences my images either before I capture them in the camera or while I post-process them (Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 in D major by the English Chamber Orchestra is playing on my iPod as I write this); and

6) camping with my son's Boy Scout troop.

The other requirement of receiving this award is that I need to name six photobloggers whom I admire. Again, this was rather difficult because there is so much talent out there and a great many photographers whom I admire and draw inspiration from. Some of these folks probably already received this award, but it would be disingenuous of me not to list them as those I most admire. I wish I were able to devote more time to viewing the works of other photographers, but career, family, every day life, and my addiction that is photography prevents me from doing that as often as I would like. But I do eventually make it around through the photoblogs; albeit, rather slowly. There are many more than six photobloggers that I would like to list, but here are those that make my short list.

1) Betsy Barron. Even though Laurie also nominated Betsy to also receive this award, I would be remiss in not naming her as a photographer whose work I greatly admire. She is technically very savvy, immensely gifted, energetic and driven. It’s great “talking shop” with her during our bi-weekly car-pooling trips to our camera club meetings.

2) Dan Creighton is a photojournalist for our local newspaper, The Mercury (which, by the way, won the Pulitzer Prize for photojournalism in 1979…the winning photograph was taken less than two miles from my home here in New Hanover). Creighton photographs pretty much anything that catches his eye (thus the name of his blog) and has photoshop skills that are out of this world. It always blows me away when I see his photos in our newspaper that were taken at an event at which I was also present (taking pictures for myself), yet I’ve never had the good fortune to run into him yet.

3) Kathleen Connelly. No introduction or description of this talented lady is needed since she seems to be universally well-known in the photoblogging world. When I jumped back into landscape photography several years ago after a years-long hiatus, I googled “pennsylvania landscape photographers” to get ideas of what others were shooting and I found Kathleen’s photoblog. Hers was the first photoblog that I ever saw and it was purely by chance (I had never even heard the term photoblog before that time). I have been addicted to her work ever since.

4) Uwe Eischens is a very impressive landscape photographer from Frankfurt, Germany. Wonderful, wonderful work and very moving images.

5) Matthias Pabst is another wonderful landscape photographer from Germany.

6) Tristan Campbell is from the UK and is probably one of the best known photobloggers out there. I sense a feeling of calm come over me whenever I view his work, which I find very inspirational.

"The Master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both."
- Zen Buddhist Text

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