I think it is long overdue for me writing a post. During the last 3 years of covid, I mostly stopped doing the things that brought me the most joy. I have been sidetracked from my normal: exploring and chasing the light. 2020 was a major hit to my creativity, photography business, happiness and just life in general. No more trips abroad. No more trips around the country. For all of my adult life I have taken at least one major trip each year and most of them with Tiffany. Alaska, Hawaii, Asia, Italy, New Zealand and Australia, US adventures, etc.

A few recent images from the past two years. (above)

I stopped doing art shows because they were all cancelled. I stopped going on adventures because most places were closed. I stopped taking pictures because I was depressed. I gained a bunch of weight. I started having major nerve issues and was told I needed emergency spinal surgery because my sciatic nerve was freaking out. I didn’t really want to do that so I lost almost 40 lbs. The comet NEOWISE was an exception and was a short jolt of creativity but since the pandemic continued and wave after covid wave I just stopped taking images. Then it became a habit. There is a quote by Lao Tau that I think resonates with me pretty strongly from these past 3 years of change.

“Watch your thoughts. They become words. Watch your words. They become actions. Watch your actions. They become habits. Watch your habits. They become character. Watch your character. It becomes your destiny.” - Lao Tzu.

I transitioned into an IT career in mid 2021 as the income from photography dried up when covid hit and there were no art shows, and people didn’t want to spend money on art. I have always been working to get into IT as the allure of working remote would allow for so much else, but the change and all the learning during the transition sapped even more of my creative spark.

Then we bought a house at the end of 2021 that needed a ton of work. It’s quite nice now. But we spent well over a year, almost every waking moment outside of work, fixing it up inside and out and only sort of finished in the last few months. I don’t regret it but the amount of soul sapping work it took left no room for “fun creativity”. Now the house projects are done (for now) and I am starting to experience this thing called “free time”. I had almost forgotten what it was. Because we now have an acre of space and a whole house to do fun projects we’ve begun to learn new things. We bought a blacksmithing forge from a friend to play with. Tiffany now has room to set up her jade/stone carving equipment and sewing area. We have a wood shop set up from all the house projects.

My normal image count for a typical year has always been around 30k+ and some years far, far higher than that if there were a lot of time-lapses. I think in 2021 and 2022 I maybe took 3k or 4k images. Most of them were of the fires that were trying to burn our new (to us) home. The fires. So the fires last spring (2022) took whatever creativity I had left hiding and completely snuffed it out. Our house nearly burned down twice and we were evacuated twice. I did get one terribly beautiful image of the eastern slopes of the peaks burning. Then came the floods after the fires. In the end we didn’t get burned and we didn’t get flooded (many others did) but the terror and sadness from it all was just soul crushing.

There were other moments of joy. We went to Indiana with our wonderful friends Matt and Kristen to their lake house. That trip was amazing and I even snapped a few keepers like the image of a heron below. Indiana is beautiful and getting away from the home turf was soooooo needed. The Indiana trip was really good and now that we are done with house projects (and I have a trustworthy car) its time to go on some adventures again.

Other morsels of joy included creating new forms of art. I got really into fractals during 2020 and that transitioned back into other computer graphics. Way back in the day after I graduated high school I almost went to college for 3D animation but instead went traveling. Using photoshop and some of the neural network driven software you may have seen in the news, I’ve been creating assets based on prompts that I spend far too much time writing and tweaking. Then I spend sometimes upwards of 40 hours in photoshop manipulating them into a scene and painting over things to get it just right. That has got me through this winter and now that the snow is melting and the sun is up for a little longer each day, I plan to get back into chasing the Milky Way and exploring the southwest with Tiffany and our pup.

I have an art show at Brandy’s Cafe downtown with my friend Chaz Donelson from Feb 28th - April 25th. We will both have our photography on display and I will have a few digital creations as well. If you are in the Flagstaff area during this time, it would be great if you could check it out. Brandy’s is one of my favorite restaurants and I have been going there since I was a kid. Pretty much anything on the menu is great, but the eggs benedict are spectacular.

So, it’s been a pretty heavy duty 3 years of transition. I know I’m not the only one who has experienced monumental change. If you are still with me and still following my artistic journey I truly appreciate you. I think this website will transition into displaying other forms of my creativity rather than just photography. Probably wood and metal working. Probably stone carvings I’ve been working on. Definitely more digital art and of course photography. After experiencing a creative drought I am really looking forward to getting back into the things that bring me the most joy.

Stay tuned for more. Creativity is life. Don’t let it snuff out.

-Abe

Feb 4, 2023

Update After 2 Years of Change