My question to you: “Why do you do what you do?”

My family and friends have often ask why I like to work with Photoshop to create surreal photographs.  In the past, my response was “I don’t know.”  But, now I know. This morning on the CBS show, Sunday Morning, I got my own answer to that question.  The answer came through our former President, George W. Bush, who was the featured person in one segment of the show.

They ask President Bush “Why did he take up art?”  He answered “To learn.”  I have paraphrased here how he explained it: “Every day being president is a learning experience and all of a sudden you are out of the Oval Office and that learning experience stops.  I took up art to keep on learning.”

Boy, I thought, I retired from some very interesting jobs and life styles in my working years and each of those years was a learning experience. I have, also, done many interesting things in retirement that where learning experiences.  It dawned on me, I study PhotoShop and surreal photography because I want to keep that brain of mine learning just as long as it will keep working.

So, in my “old” years, I study every day for the fun and mental value of learning. One of the areas that i have been studying is what are elements of a good photograph. Then I study to learn how I can combine photographs in PhotoShop to create a surreal photograph with those elements. One recent study was about using lines in the photograph’s composition to control the viewer’s eyes and mind – to help the viewer see the photograph’s item of interest. 

Oh, by the way, since the helicopter is taking off early tomorrow morning on Mars, I was thinking about our 1969 moon landing when Commander Neil Armstrong spoke the words “Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed.”   The following surreal photo, titled simply “The Eagle Has Landed”, took shape in my mind before breakfast, this morning, when an eagle landed on my neighbor’s roof. 

You can see, in this surreal photograph, I used the lines made by the contrails and the flag pole to isolate my point of interest from the surrounding elements. My focal point, of course, is our National Bird in front of our Country’s flag: 

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

Just for learning I used lines in a less direct way to create this abstract, hoping each viewer sees a story – I really had no story to tell – just and abstract of lines and colors – and of course a single rose.  I titled it simply: “SINGLE ROSE”

As you swing thru life – Enjoy learning –That is a simple message from me