Since the start of retirement in 2012, I have been studying and furthering a constant interest in the magical art of light and shadow, bird on the wing or coastline shrouded in fog.

For over forty years I was a clergyman, ironically counseling parishioners nearing retirement to try to look back and identify the things they enjoyed doing as a young child and possibly see within them a clue to deeper passions and interests inviting rediscovery at this third chapter of life. Almost a year after I was already immersed in my new pursuit of photography did it dawn on me that as a third grader I had built a “camera” out of a cardboard box using a variety of strengths of plastic lenses from Woolworth’s, each held by an empty paper-towel roll. Ah, yes, it was Picasso who cautioned, "Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." 

So here I am standing beside the staggering beauty of the Icefields Parkway in Jaspers National Park. I hope it shows in my face what Immanuel Kant knew so well he had it engraved on his tombstone: “Two things awe me most, the starry sky above me and the moral universe within me.”