Young Guest Photographer

  My earliest memory is of playing lava monster with my older brother. We jumped from cushion to cushion trying to avoid landing on the soft carpet just inches from our toes. We bounded, rolled, and laughed for hours before collapsing onto the cushions from exhaustion. Later, I played role playing games with my brother on our trampoline, endlessly creating characters and battling the evils of the land until we were called to dinner. I played Dungeons and Dragons after that, still battling creatures of evil, but now with refined rules and sophisticated attacks. Through all these imaginative pastimes of my youth, however, I always maintained a vivid image of the rolling hills, jagged mountains, sunlit forests, and tranquil lakes where I solved the mysteries of kings and fought the minions of dragons. We and got older, as children tend to do, and we played in these sweeping vistas and angry seas less and less, until they were but a place to send my daydreams, escaping from the monotony of school. Suddenly, life became busy, there were homework assignments, sports, extracurriculars, and social events constantly demanding my attention, and my time for idle daydreams was limited even more. I read fantasy stories and still allowed myself time to dream about surreal landscapes, but it wasn't the connection I had felt before. As my schooling progressed, I not only learned about the exploitation of nature, but also it’s intense beauty, and the ‘green’ movement across the nation. I was stunned at the amount of rainforest consumed each hour, and disgusted by the amount of pollution traveling into the clear, blue skies I had watched throughout my childhood; I couldn't believe we were destroying the precious earth we were each given as art transcending all beauties. Again, time progressed and I became increasingly cynical and disillusioned with both humanity and fantasy. Then, I watched a movie that transformed my love of nature and fantasy from a passive hobby to a growing passion. The movie was, of course, the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Soon, I found my imagination once again swept through the grassy hills of Rohan, the deep forests of the elves, and the dark Mines of Moria. I had another epiphany then: I discovered that the vivid imagery of my youth could be captured on film, and that the beauty of nature could be preserved forever with the simple press of a button. As I discovered my budding love of photography my parents purchased a point and shoot camera for me, and I could often be found wandering through the seven acres of forest that we own in rural northern California capturing hundreds of frames of everything I could find, from trees to dead leaves. I was enchanted with photography, and began to save money for my first DSLR. When I finally purchased my used Nikon D40x, I discovered a new magic, which transformed my photos from grainy snapshots to the beginnings of the fantastic mindscapes I longed to recreate. Now, when I wasn’t taking pictures, I could often be found on one of several photo-editing programs, giddy with delight as I discovered tool after image-transforming tool. I know that it is unlikely I will ever be able to accurately recreate my imaginary world’s beauty, but the closer I get, the more attached I become to photography. While I am not able to single handedly stop global warming, or bring back the days of Dungeons and Dragons games with my brother, I finally found a way to create a physical representation of the beauty I see in the nature all around me. Thus, photography has become both a time machine and a social activist movement toward a more beautiful, clean world. I hope you enjoy my vision of nature, captured in a .jpg file, but yearning to fly beyond its two-dimensional existence.

   Ben



Previous Young Guest Photographers:

Sagan Pope... http://vimeo.com/33588869

Sam Kate Patterson... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMUOX-xrpCU

Bryan Dubay... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6wYuISlqhw&feature=related