We Can See More With The Camera Eye

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Resonance In Blue And Gold I A, Charlottesville, Virginia, 2000

The camera does not see as we see. While it can reproduce the appearance of human vision, it can do so much more. Only two percent of our field of vision is in focus at one moment in time; it can focus one hundred percent of its field of vision. Our angle of vision is less than one hundred eighty degrees; it can be extended up to and even beyond three hundred and sixty degrees in all directions. It can see microscopically and telescopically. It can see in brighter, darker or contrastier light – and even into other portions of the spectrum. It can see in a fraction of a second or over a span of hours, days, months, and even years. With the camera, we have made a marvelous extension of our sense of sight, one that continues to evolve.

I’m fascinated by photographs that reveal more than the eye human eye can perceive. Whenever photographs show me more than I saw, I feel as if a magic trick has been performed. This is one of those photographs. I saw the patterns the rain made in the water but I never saw them like this, until I made the photograph. They were too complex and fast-moving to take in all at once. Because the photograph holds them still, I can spend more time considering them, and my understanding of them grows over time.

While I celebrate the marvelous capabilities of the camera eye, I’m not unmindful of the challenging questions that our use of it raises. At what point do we modify our understanding of our own direct experiences to the documents we create? Which has greater authority? When does a photograph supplant memory? What do we consider to be more factual? What do we consider to be truer?

It’s often said that as you deepen your understanding of something, the number of questions you have about it grows. Over time, I’ve come to love the questions even more than the answers. Sometimes revealing, usually stimulating, always useful, questions can have more than one answer and point the way to many new things.

How many ways can photography help you see and experience more?
How can the ways of seeing you learn through photography be extended to moments when you are not photographing?
Are there ways that photography limits your seeing?
Are there ways that what you have learned from photography limits your seeing?

Read more The Stories Behind The Images here.

28 Quotes On Purpose

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“Your work is to discover your work and then, with all your heart, to give yourself to it.” – Buddha
“The purpose of life is a life of purpose.” – Robert Byrne
“If you’re alive, there’s a purpose for your life.” – Rick Warren
“Here is the test to find whether your mission on earth is finished. If you’re alive, it isn’t.” – Richard Bach
“Having a sense of purpose is having a sense of self. A course to plot is a destination to hope for.” – Bryant H McGill
“The purpose of a man’s heart are deep waters, but a man of understanding draws them out.” – The Bible (Proverbs 20:5)
“Everyone has his own specific vocation or mission in life … Therein he cannot be re­placed, nor can his life be repeated. Thus, everyone’s task is as unique as is his specific opportunity to implement it.” – Viktor Frankl
“It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is.” – Hermann Hesse
“Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement.” – Clement Stone
“There is one quality which one must possess to win, and that is definiteness of purpose, the knowledge of what one wants, and a burning desire to possess it.” – Napoleon Hill
“One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests.” – John Stuart Mill
“Nothing can resist the human will that will stake even its existence on its stated purpose.” – Disraeli, Benjamin
“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“Success demands singleness of purpose.” – Vince Lombardi
“More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.” – Billy Sunday
“The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things.” – Rainer Maria Rilke
“The only failure one should fear, is not hugging to the purpose they see as best.” – George Eliot
“The soul which has no fixed purpose in life is lost; to be everywhere, is to be nowhere.” – Michel de Montaigne
“When a man does not know what harbor he is making for, no wind is the right wind.”  – Seneca
“If you don’t decide what your life is about, it defaults to what you spend your days doing.”  – Robert Brault
“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.” – Dalai Lama
“Life finds its purpose and fulfillment in the expansion of happiness.” – Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” – Helen Keller
“The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.” – Mitch Albom
“No man or woman is an island. To exist just for yourself is meaningless. You can achieve the most satisfaction when you feel related to some greater purpose in life, something greater than yourself.” – Denis Waitley
“This is our purpose: to make as meaningful as possible this life that has been bestowed upon us; to live in such a way that we may be proud of ourselves; to act in such a way that some part of us lives on.” – Oswald Spengler
“It is essential that we enable young people to see themselves as participants in one of the most exciting eras in history, and to have a sense of purpose in relation to it.” – Nelson Rockefeller
“Be the change you want to see in the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi
“The purpose of education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.” – Malcolm Forbes
“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” – Albert Einstein
“The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.” – Stephen Hawking
“The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.” – Christopher Hitchens
“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people are so full of doubts”: – Bertrand Russell
“As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.” – Carl Jung
Find more Creativity Quotes here.
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Green Action – Recycle your Old Cell Phones

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Be more green!
You can make a difference today!
Make many small changes to make one big change!
And you’ll save a lot!
Take action now!
Here’s one idea.
Recycle your Old Cell Phones
We have all heard the call to recycle our old cell phones.  We have heard that doing so can save us energy, resources and keep dangerous materials such as like lead, mercury, cadmium, brominate flame retardants and arsenic out of landfills and ultimately our precious  groundwater.
The fact are staggering. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans discard 125 million phones each year, creating 65,000 tons of waste.  With the average person in North America changing out their cell phone every 18-24 months, the waste generate from these upgrades have caused cell phone waste to become the fastest growing segment of manufactured garbage in the nation.  Sadly, only about 10 percent of the cell phones used in the United States are recycled. If Americans recycled all of the 130 million cell phones that are tossed aside annually in the United States, we could save enough energy to power more than 24,000 homes for a year.
There are several ways to recycle our old phones.  One is reuse.  The market for refurbished cell phones has grow over the last few decades.  Many organization reuse this old equipment for help with their charity and safety programs.  Other markets reach out to smaller developing countries to provide phones where they would be otherwise unaffordable.
Cell phones are filled with valuable reusable materials all of which can be recovered and reused to make new products.  For every one million cell phones recycled, we can recover 75 pounds of gold, 772 pounds of silver, 33 pounds of palladium, and 35,274 pounds of copper; cell phones also contain tin, zinc and platinum. Many of these metals when reclaimed from old phones can be reused in jewelry making, electronics and auto manufacturing.   This reclamation saves valuable resources and rescues these metals from landfills.
When the rechargeable cell phone batteries are no longer able to be reused they are able to be recycled to make other rechargeable battery products.  The overall recycling of just one cell phone saves enough energy to power a laptop for 44 hours and recycling one million cell phones could save enough energy to provide electricity to 185 U.S. households for a year.
The next time you upgrade to a new cell phone, think before throwing your old one away or tossing it into a drawer.  The area for recycling and reuse of these old phones is growing every year.  Answer the call and recycle!
Find more resources that will help you take action now here.
Find environmental organizations to support here.