Recordation or Revelation?

I began my career back in 1980 as a journalist. Living on the coast, that role meant documenting storm damage when it occurred as well as covering key events in our growing community. I believe the role of journalist is a crucial one, but I have exchanged that identity for someone who needs beauty. If I cannot easily see it, I need to sculpt it out of light and shadow, feathers and fur.

The poet Keats used "truth" and "beauty" synonymously. In my emotional and photographic lexicon, beauty is etymologic cousin to hope, to serenity, and to joy. Beyond picture postcards, images of beauty evoke in me an emotional response of purpose, of possibility, of abundance, and of connection. These are the photographs I seek, the visual love letters worth a thousand words.

I recently climbed Jockey's Ridge, the highest sand dune east of the Mississippi, what passes for elevation in these coastal flatlands. I thought I was headed out to photograph "Jockey's Lake" -- a rain-filled depression that currently holds more water than I have ever seen there, thanks to record rainfall between storms Hermine and Matthew. I was on the lookout for itsy-bitsy frogs, no bigger than my fingernail, that emerge in wet spells. I made passable images, overlapping panoramic documentary photos of the lake. I saw no frogs. Instead, what intrigued me was the play of fire on sand in the waning light of the afternoon -- the same visual metaphor that caught my heart and eye on a recent visit to a fishing pier here.

What is beauty to you? What do you seek? Good questions, and not merely for photographers.