The photo that started it all: Rhino at the Erie Zoo, Erie, PA.
I’ve always been a curious person. I want to know how to do things, how they work, or even just to understand the world around me. I think part of it is I feel like if I can understand the world around me, maybe I can understand myself better. Because I’m a naturally curious person, I’m always taking on hobbies or projects. They usually last as long as my curiosity does or until I feel like I’ve got a handle on it. I was in to archery for awhile until I “Robinhooded” an arrow - shooting one directly into the previous one. I don’t think I’ve picked up my bow since. I tried making tobacco pipes for awhile. There’ve been several others. It drives my wife nuts. It’s a part of my ADHD (like, for real… actual diagnosis here). The older I get, the longer some of these hobbies stick around like my love of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu from which I’ve had to take a break because life got busy but I miss dearly. I’m getting ready to hit the mats again in this new year.
I can usually tell pretty quickly which ones are going to stick around a little longer than others, but I never put too much stock into my hobbies. I know they’re usually fleeting fancies or fads in my life and I’m okay with that. My dad and I were talking about it when I was home after Christmas. He asked me what inspired me to be like this. Was it natural or something I’ve kind of cultivated over time? I think it’s a mixture of both. I see the same curiosity in my son. But, I remember being fascinated with people like DaVinci and Ben Franklin. I loved the concept of a “Renaissance Man” - someone who knew something about a lot of things but may not be an expert in anything. Some things have surprised me, though, and they’ve stuck around. The first time I read Theology I knew I was hooked. I knew it was something different. I knew I wanted to read and think about God, religion, spirituality, faith, what it means to be human etc. for the rest of my life. I’m a little surprised you can actually make a career out of doing it. I sometimes wonder if people knew I’d tell them what I think about God for free… Don’t tell the church I serve that… I’m broke and need more camera equipment because who doesn’t need more camera equipment….
This has been a really long preface to get to the point here: Why Photography? How did this happen?
I can tell you the exact date, time, and location it happened because iPhones and the photo app on Macs are awesome like that. August 1st, 2019 at 2:53pm and 27 seconds I stood in front of the Rhino pen at the Erie Zoo with my son while visiting my parents and I took the picture above with my iPhone. I didn’t think twice about it. It was just a snapshot from my phone that would eventually get buried and never really seen again. We came home to Munster, Indiana, I returned to work, the kids got ready to start school, and life just was going as normal. August 5th, I woke up on my one day off a week. It’s a Monday - recovery from Sunday. I got myself some coffee and sat down in front of the tv to watch news, drink my coffee, and wake up. The sermon about Esther and Mordecai’s call for justice, that maybe God put her where she was right then for a reason was still stuck in my brain as I watched all the fighting, the ugliness, the inflammatory and awful things that sells the 24 hour news cycle played in my family room. I picked up my phone, thought about conversations I had at home with my friend Chris who is an amazingly gifted artist, tattooer, magician, and photographer (all things I love, btw). I opened my photo app and saw this photo of the rhino. I thought, “Hey. That’s not bad!” I posted it on Facebook, flipped through the fights on Facebook started by politics, and I wished things were different.
I found myself thinking about something I’ve thought about a lot since. You know, besides the news and Facebook, I don’t experience my day-to-day life as divisive. I mean, I see the problems and divisions, but in my church community we have people who believe just about anything you can think of whether politically or religiously. Yet, people aren’t screaming at each other or turning their backs on each other minus a few exceptions. I’ve seen a little of that throughout my career. It wasn’t anything new or worse than usual. At jiu jitsu we fight but that’s just for fun and no one cares about what you think of the President. They care about surviving the round. I’ve always known racist and hateful people. I don’t think that there are more of them now. But when I turned on the news or social media, I was bombarded by all these messages about lines in the sand and how the other side is stupid or hates America and wants to destroy it for <insert your own reason here>. And I began to wonder, as I still wonder, if maybe we feel “the other side” is so different or that we’re so divided because we’re told that and not because it was actually real.
photo by Isaac Worthington age 12
So, I’m looking at this photo, thinking about the Esther and my conversation with Chris and the news. And I wonder to myself, “What if the world needs to be different/better sure, but what if I need to see the world differently? What if I could look at this world in a way where I could find and see the beauty that’s already there in front of me like this rhino? What if I could show other people the beauty I’m trying to see and I am finding?” What if…. I could literally look at this world differently?
I had a friend who had expressed interest in a pistol I had and offered to buy it if I ever decided to get rid of it (that’s a whole other post. See above about hobbies and you can put it together). So, I called him, I sold him the gun, I went out and bought a camera which is now my son’s. He’s 12 (13 in 4 days from my writing this) and he’s killing it! Picking up that camera felt like the first time I picked up something written by the Theologian Paul Tillich. I knew it was going to change everything. I knew this was going to stick. I knew I wasn’t ever going to set it back down.
Did it work? Do I see the world differently? I’m inclined to think so. First of all, most of my time is spent on Instagram now if I’m looking at social media (@myphotojourneybegins - shameless plug. It’s my blog, after all) and so instead of political memes etc, I’m bombarded by the beautiful places and people all throughout the world from amazing photographers who are living ordinary lives wherever they are. It’s amazing. I’m looking at things differently too. I’m obsessed with finding and seeing good light which is a very theological thing to look for. And I’m reminded that there’s always light. Somewhere. Somehow. Casting shadows, illuminating things, sneaking through the dark places, overwhelming other things. And as a photographer, I’m forced to respond to that light if I want to see and show the beauty of this world. As a theologian and a pastor, I’m called to do the same thing. Find the light. In the dark places. In the places the light overwhelms things. In the spots we don’t normally think to look for it. And that light then calls out to me, to you, to all of us to respond to it in order to see the beauty in this world and each other and share it with others.
Sure, we can focus on the darkness. We can look at cloudy and grey days and say there’s nothing good out there. I’ve done it. I sometimes do it still. We can say there’s nothing particularly beautiful about a rainy and dark night too. But if you look, there is! If you find the light, if you chase and seek that light, I guarantee you - yes, guarantee you. It’s a promise - you’ll find something beautiful. I hope you stuck around to the end of this. I hope you’ll stick around as we continue this journey of finding the light and sharing it. I’m excited about where this photography, this blog, this life will go. And I’m excited to share it and travel with you because I think that’s how it really works. We have to go finding and sharing the light together.
So may you find the light in your own journey illuminating the beauty that’s all around you.
May you remember that even in the darkest and stormiest of times, there’s still some light, some hope sneaking through the cracks and clouds.
And may you hold on to that light and share it with others when maybe that dark and stormy night seems a little too dark and too long…
Ridge Road in Munster Indiana on a literally dark and stormy night (See? Told ya!)