Visura Magazine, Issue 12

Visura Magazine, Issue 12

Once in a long while life deals you the perfect hand. You didn't deserve it. You didn't expect it. It just happened. All you can feel is grateful. That's where I am tonight.

Yes, I knew my self portrait project "Falling Into Place" was to be featured in Issue 12 of Visura Magazine. How could I not know? The editor Adriana Teresa and I have been fine-tuning this particular photo edit and text for five months. But there's something about seeing the magazine as a whole that makes me shake my head in disbelief.

How could it be that my work is in the company of such powerful photographers as this? It is hard to believe. I spent hours today reading every word and viewing every photo in this issue of Visura Magazine and came away feeling as though I had been taken on journeys to other times and places. In some cases I felt like I'd been socked in the stomach, leaving me gasping for breath. In others, tears welled up and threatened to fall on the keyboard of my laptop. None of the features left me unmoved. That is Adriana's gift: to bring forth from her contributors depths they might not have known were in them. I know that is what she did with me.

I go to bed tonight breathing in a sense of wonder and breathing out gratitude. Now I know why they say it takes a village to raise a child. The same is true for a creative endeavor. So many people have helped me come to this place. I am indebted to them all.

Mother Nature shows off

(Click on this photo to see it in a larger size)

One of the best things about living in the Midwest is its magnificent summer storms. We had a stunner tonight with more thunder and lightning than Ed and I can ever remember seeing. Actually it was two storms back-to-back. The first came in from the north, and the second from the west. Both brought wind and rain but it was the electricity that made tonight special. One brilliant flash of lightning and deafening clap of thunder struck simultaneously right over our house. It is moments like this when we are grateful for the mobile phone tower at the police station next door. Our own personal lightning rod.

Ed and I sat out on our screened porch and watched Nature's fireworks for at least 30 minutes. And then came the most extraordinarily colored sky I've ever seen. This photo of our house in that strange light is untouched by Photoshop. That is exactly how it looked.

An hour after the storm, our community put on its annual July 4th fireworks display. Sorry, folks, Mother Nature stole the show this year!