Your Passion is Beautiful

The kindness of strangers and the question behind slow photography

She walked by me at the lake and said, “Your passion is beautiful, you know.” I turned around to see if there were other passionate people she could be directing her kindness towards, and no. She meant it for me. Before she walked too far, I engaged with her in conversation. We talked mostly about our encounters with the animals on this path including turtles, raccoons at 5am, a big cat who most likely was a mountain lion, and the den of snakes nearby (which I surely must avoid at all costs).

I had bent down to check in on a small cat, this one had a collar and was curled up in the brush. Had this passerby watched me caring for this cat, or was it the slow studying the landscape with my camera that got her attention?

Over the past 2 months I have begun the slow process of rebuilding my identity and sense of self after leaving a design career that left me feeling hollowed out and exhausted. Three decades of building my resilience as a leader in experience design, innovating with AI in education, came to an end. The newfound freedom from my desk and the responsibilities of corporate life is now leading me towards a new path, where my hands can make things in real life.

My 4x5 large format camera and the brand new 8x10 had been silently ignored on the shelf, until now. Each week I am now making the time to load sheet film in the holders, bring my gear on location, meter the light, compose and focus under a dark cloth, expose and document everything before developing in the darkroom. Last month I learned from Mark Osterman how to create my own emulsions for making dry plates, which essentially are silver gelatin film on glass. The experimentation, constant learning from mistakes, and the investment of days before a photograph is fully realized in glass or paper, is fast becoming the new standard of my art practice.

Photographing with handmade dry plates at Letchworth State Park, NY

A student recently asked me why on earth we would spend our time and money creating photographs through analog, chemical means when we can just press the shutter and print digitally, or prompt them into being with AI. As an educator in historic processes, this struck me as the fundamental question I need to answer. In my perspective, technology is a tool artists can use to shape their work. I employ digital negatives frequently, and also see the beauty that light captured on film can uniquely bring.

What I hadn’t expected to learn was that my passion for photography and nature was visible to passing strangers. I’m going to bet that your passion is beautiful, too.