Welcome To My World...

Shalom Park, Ocala, Florida...October 14, 2012

I have always been a creative person. Extremely "right brained" (although women and men much smarter than myself seem to have now debunked the whole right vs left brain myth). Growing up, I couldn't draw...couldn't build anything for that matter. I loved singing, but was much too shy to perform. My true love however, was writing. It was the biggest escape in the world for me. I would go down to the docks when life got me down, open up my notebook and write my troubles away. Day or night, it didn't matter. I loved sitting by the water, listening to it lap up against the wooden posts, singing its lullaby to me as I used my pen to take me away to far away lands, to turn me into a superhero, to get the girl, to win the lottery, to be anywhere but where I was right at that moment. Simply put, it was the greatest freedom I could ever have imagined. This blog isn't about writing though. It is about something that starting with the photo you see above, became yet another love of mine. Photography. Capturing and freezing those small moments that change our lives...forever.

I seems most people like taking photos. You see them all over the internet. Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, Tumblr, Flickr, etc. Most of social media has been taken over by photographs. We freeze and document an endless amount moments. The advent of smart phones has helped this trend explode. The best camera is the one you have with you, is what is often said. Most of the time that ends up being your iPhone, or your Android. I've even seen people snapping photos with a tablet! I still have a tough time figuring that one out.

The photo above was taken on 10/14/2012. While I had taken a lot of photos before, and many more since, this one seems to stand out to me in my memory as the one that really got me thinking more and more about photography. It was probably the luckiest photo moment that I'll ever have, and it was breathtaking. I was at Shalom Park in Ocala, Florida with my daughters, and stumbled upon this heron fishing in the pond. As I broke out my camera, All I was looking for was a simple shot of a beautiful bird. As fate would have it, I stepped on a branch and the noise startled the heron who took off in flight. I pressed the shutter button multiple times and what you see above was the final result .

From that day forward, it was almost like a high to me. I thought I was going to be the best photographer in the world. I mean, if I could capture that photo, there was no stopping me! Unfortunately, that wasn't to be the case. Funny thing though, is that it didn't have to be. I soon realized the high wasn't about capturing the perfect photo (at least not for me), but in freezing those moments in time and looking back at them and reliving that second...over and over. That's what photography has meant to me.

In the years that have passed, I've realized that just as I do when I write, I create a story with each photograph that I take. Creating this blog melded those two worlds for me. Over the coming days and months, I will share some moments with you. Some are happy, some are sad, but they're my moments and they all tell a story. I hope you enjoy the journey.

-Robert