Simply Seen

Now, 45 years later, living a life defined by photography, I keep searching for the simplicity of those days. As a dream, this simple little plastic camera, was the embodiment of all the imagined realities that this regularly visited dream allowed me to explore. So on this day, I held in my hands, my “Magic Lantern.” But unlike Aladdin’s original, mine granted me the same wish as many times as I wanted – the wish to render what I saw as proof, to myself and others, that what I saw was real!

Newer cameras, complicated technology, client’s needs and my own artistic aesthetic have changed how I photograph and see but I can still feel, to this day, the simple excitement from that birthday. It is the litmus test I choose to help identify when I’m following “my bliss.” It was this feeling that I experienced, when I first used the Hipstamatic Camera application on my phone, that made me choose to dedicate myself to it for a year.

With the simplicity implied in it’s name – Kodak’s classic Instamatic camera – the Hipstamatic asked me to look at the world with the same sense of innocence and wonder. Not that this is easy to do but I have delighted in the daily use of this “divining rod” to seek out my bliss and collect my “Simply Seen” photographs in search of simpler days and simpler ways!

See the Simply Seen portfolio