Photography is the rest God grants me. It is respite from a frantic world and frantic thoughts. When I pick a place to find its art, I intend staying only this allotment of time. I become enthralled, though, and time stands still. Nothing else matters, except seeing the beauty in a piece of driftwood on shore, unique angle of bell tower, or rich artistry in heritage architecture. I only capture minute details of the tapestry of our world when I free myself of the minutes of time. I can't help but stay, soak in, and capture everything I see literally from the ground up. God gives us lives full of meaningful moments—sometimes painful, sometimes joyous, but always fleeting. Light, seasons, people, aging, growth—all constantly change. I stay a moment, to slow a door closing on a chance lost. Before life inevitably pushes me again, I relish seeing the art in filigree, flourish, dappling, intersect, and hue. I am inspired, capturing perspectives of moments that are seen on the ground along dips and valleys of a clover field or towards the sky along the texture and shading of a building. I bend in crazy angles my tripod can't even manage just to see a new perspective. I only move on with the promise of new delights to come when I stop again to find the photographer's elusive great Capture among the saved images I see anew in another time. I find them often among the images I least expect it, and I bring them back to life by painting with the tools of a photographer's trade. I, too, must think of layers and depth and consider colors or none that the painter does. I don't want to remake my Captures so much as draw out what is already there. I share my perspective of the ornate column or shimmering petal. The philosopher Mihkail Bahktin wrote of the answerability of art—a crossing of the artist with the audience that is a lively exchange in which meaning is born. This artistic meaning is so unique, so creative and alive, that no one expresses or interacts with the work again in precisely the same way. Being an artist is to be entrusted to express reality in ways that captivate, inspire, or inform each person to stay a moment and find personal meaning in my art within the context of their life. I use God's provision for me in composing to enrich both your and others' experience of the world in elusive, creative pauses of life.