Michael says... Grandpa listens... Grandpa says... Michael listens...
...Can’t think of much of anything better than that...

Buddha said, “We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves.”

Michael is a second-year student at the University of California at Santa Cruz. Today he came home for the holidays, and we talked. I like the way he sees... the way thinks... the way he talks... what he is obviously becoming. Up to now his two major areas of study have been mathematics and cultural anthropology. He is staying with the math and switching from cultural anthropology to photography in the Fine Arts Department. He told me why he is changing to photography. I like his reasons.

We walked and talked; we ate and talked; we visited the Museum of Photographic Arts and talked; We looked at shadows and talked... we looked at the way the shadows of trees change a landscape and reminded ourselves that every landscape changes every moment of every day. I introduced Michael to my favorite rainbow eucalyptus tree, and we talked. I captured an image of a section of curb that I’ll bet nobody has ever noticed exactly the way it looked at the moment when we saw it, and we talked.

The artist who paints with light has a daunting challenge. The proliferation of mage-making devices has flooded the world with images. Just about every place on earth has been captured on film or digitally. At one time or another just about every person on earth has been photographed... still and moving... and in black and white and in color. One might wonder what is left to be captured. Michael knows the problems, and he believes as I do that each of us has a unique way of seeing the world; so he is going to find images that no one else has seen and present them for all of us to see. He believes he will be an artist with photography as his medium. I believe it, too.