Well, several years ago when I was working on my mission statement, I wanted something that was short, simple but also that down hill drop of a roller coaster to wake people up. So, I settled on the mission statement that I continue to use and see no need to change it in any way. It simply says: To enhance the mind, stir the emotions and quench a thirsty soul.
Enhance the mind can be done through education, exposure to new experiences. To stir the emotions needs to get a bit deeper under the skin and cause a bit of a squirm or uncomfortableness in general, and to quench a thirsty soul needs to send a bit of goosebumps racing up and down your spine. These things do not always have to work as a triptych panel although sometimes for various people they do indeed. When that happens and they write to me, I enjoy a very good day.
Never-the-less, there are times that I outsmart myself and forget about how powerful an image can be. Then, like today, when I take an hour or two and start at the beginning of last year and go though my entire file of images, pausing now and then when I remember something really special about an image and can recall almost every detail about that shoot. Then, there pops up an image and I stop and just sit back in my desk chair and shiver from the goose bumps that it has caused---a through quenching of a thirsty soul. What does that mean, you say. It is a deep satisfaction that there is more to life than people walking around with their heads buried in an iPhone and that I am so thankful that I can shock myself back into the reality of caring once again, hoping that it has that same shock value to others that let them know they are alright, or at least better than they thought there were.
Yesterday, I drove past the Bomb Factory, a music venue for concerts in Deep Ellum. I though about all the places in Detroit that once held such concerts like the groups that tour nationwide and have changed today like Deep Ellum venues. This morning, the first thing I see in the headlines is about Chris Cornell, the frontman of Soundgarden and Audioslave as well as the organizer of the grunge movement in music. Chris was due to be at the Bomb Factory, one spot that I try to cover from the outside as people of all ages line up to get tickets or to get inside. There are forces working in the universe.
It was not by accident that I happened to come down Commerce from Trinity Groves yesterday. Usually, I take the middle tunnel, which is Main Street. Those are the tunnels at Dealey Plaza that come out of the rail road bridge and fan out over Elm, Main and Commerce Streets in downtown Dallas. It's just a force of nature that causes one to react and not know why until the answer falls into place. I had been wondering how I could be in three places at once on Sunday, which I could not have been anyway, but it's the last Byron Nelson at Cottonwood Four Seasons. The Dragonboat and Kite Festival is that same weekend in May annually and the Bomb Factory was something that I was thinking I could maybe hit late but now, it's not in the storyboards at all.
My blog continues to grow but I do work at it. If it ever got profitable, I'd have to make a decision that might change the mission statement. There isn't much chance of that because I've seen things grow and grow and change the whole character of what once was a great ideal in the beginning. I always want that great ideal in the beginning---even at the end.
See if you can pick out the three mission points that goes with the three images. Remember it's the goose bump factor that determines the winner.
Enhance the mind can be done through education, exposure to new experiences. To stir the emotions needs to get a bit deeper under the skin and cause a bit of a squirm or uncomfortableness in general, and to quench a thirsty soul needs to send a bit of goosebumps racing up and down your spine. These things do not always have to work as a triptych panel although sometimes for various people they do indeed. When that happens and they write to me, I enjoy a very good day.
Never-the-less, there are times that I outsmart myself and forget about how powerful an image can be. Then, like today, when I take an hour or two and start at the beginning of last year and go though my entire file of images, pausing now and then when I remember something really special about an image and can recall almost every detail about that shoot. Then, there pops up an image and I stop and just sit back in my desk chair and shiver from the goose bumps that it has caused---a through quenching of a thirsty soul. What does that mean, you say. It is a deep satisfaction that there is more to life than people walking around with their heads buried in an iPhone and that I am so thankful that I can shock myself back into the reality of caring once again, hoping that it has that same shock value to others that let them know they are alright, or at least better than they thought there were.
Yesterday, I drove past the Bomb Factory, a music venue for concerts in Deep Ellum. I though about all the places in Detroit that once held such concerts like the groups that tour nationwide and have changed today like Deep Ellum venues. This morning, the first thing I see in the headlines is about Chris Cornell, the frontman of Soundgarden and Audioslave as well as the organizer of the grunge movement in music. Chris was due to be at the Bomb Factory, one spot that I try to cover from the outside as people of all ages line up to get tickets or to get inside. There are forces working in the universe.
It was not by accident that I happened to come down Commerce from Trinity Groves yesterday. Usually, I take the middle tunnel, which is Main Street. Those are the tunnels at Dealey Plaza that come out of the rail road bridge and fan out over Elm, Main and Commerce Streets in downtown Dallas. It's just a force of nature that causes one to react and not know why until the answer falls into place. I had been wondering how I could be in three places at once on Sunday, which I could not have been anyway, but it's the last Byron Nelson at Cottonwood Four Seasons. The Dragonboat and Kite Festival is that same weekend in May annually and the Bomb Factory was something that I was thinking I could maybe hit late but now, it's not in the storyboards at all.
My blog continues to grow but I do work at it. If it ever got profitable, I'd have to make a decision that might change the mission statement. There isn't much chance of that because I've seen things grow and grow and change the whole character of what once was a great ideal in the beginning. I always want that great ideal in the beginning---even at the end.
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| The Musuem Tower financed by the pension funds of Dallas Police and Fire Fighters |
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| The restored Texas Theater in Oak Cliff |
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| A Riderless Horse in a Procession |
