Greetings!

Another week of editing and enjoying life has gone by. A good number of work you see in this issue is new art. There are no new shoots as of yet. I’m talking with several past models and a couple of new ones about getting together to create new art. We shall see. One scheduled is Griffin, and we will be shooting for a few hours at that unique home in Mesa.

Getting the new year started with some active creativity will be good. By active, I mean me running around and thinking up ways to light and shoot at what angles. This usually puts me on ladders, lying on the ground, and everything in between. Of course, I always feel a good shoot for a few days later. I consider it all good. The best art has a little pain involved. It is an excellent excuse when you are an old guy, and many things come with pain. Ahhh, my whole life is just art. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

I messed up my trusty little Canon EOS R camera. It was their first mirrorless camera, and I bought it in 2019, so it has seen some action. But, taking it to the Dunes three times in about a year has it pretty dirty. As much as I worked to keep the sand away from it, I think there are much smaller sand particles at work. The controls are flaky, and the image sensor is almost dirtier than I can safely clean up. I am tossing around the idea of taking it to C.R.I.S., a camera service shot in Tempe. It is an excellent place to get cameras and lenses fixed. I dropped a 24-70 L lens on a concrete floor….twice…and it was in bad shape. C.R.I.S. not only fixed it, but I swear it works better than when it was new.

Because I haven’t been shooting during the holidays, I’ve been playing with my radios and learning a lot from them and some from the people I chat with over them. It’s nice to belong to a community whose primary purpose is to communicate. A lot of my operation in Chandler is communicating through the dozen amateur radio satellites we have crossing the globe. I have a new radio about the size of four cell phones stacked, and it connects to my home network. Then I can connect to it using any of my computers, and all the controls are on the screen. Our advances in electronics and radio technology today are crazy cool. And no doubt, tomorrow will be even more magical.

It is already magical that I can talk with someone on the other side of the globe with the power from a 9-volt battery.

To be a great conversationalist, ask questions and listen. Repeat.

“Be curious, not judgemental” - Walt Whittman

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