"I really haven't had that exciting of a life. There are a lot of things I wish I would have done, instead of just sitting around and complaining about having a boring life." -Kurt Cobain

"I'm notorious for giving a bad interview.  I'm an actor and I can't help but feel I'm boring when I'm on as myself." -Rock Hudson

"I'm pretty boring, really." -Brett Favre

"Basically, my life is so boring, it's embarrassing." -Hugh Grant

"I don't want to be boring.  But that's not so easy." -John Malkovich

This image got its start, as some do, in the wee hours of the morning. I awoke during the quiet hours half-way between midnight and dawn and, unfortunately, my brain turned on and the thoughts began. Sometimes I can short-circuit this process by reading a bit with my red-light headlamp. However, not this time - so thoughts chased their tails until one waved a flag at me and told me: "You have a boring life.";  I grimaced and nodded, "yeah, it's true. I wake up every morning, put on my suit, attend to teeth, face-hair, always granola and yogurt for breakfast, off to work, and then back home, work on computer, dinner, bed, maybe a dream, waken at 3am and struggle with thoughts and sleep, up at 6:30a and all over again...   -  My God - what happened?"

.... (but after more minutes of tail-chasing)  I came to realize, lying here while the rest of the house is breathing slow, how easy it is to fall into this trap - of only emphasizing the dull stuff - but, really, when I look with fresh eyes, there is more to it than just that....  So I need to remind myself: fresh eyes!  Look!  

My family, my daughter who will launch a life of her own in just a few weeks, the travel, this amazing city that I call home, skiing (the faster the better), friends who have compelling lives to share, and as I look, even the so-called boring bits begin to look different; there are challenges to be met at work almost every day, most of our meals together contain enough laughter to satisfy, and day's end, with promise of tomorrow.   

My mantra must be: "fresh eyes, fresh eyes"

"In the right light, at the right time, everything is extraordinary." -Aaron Rose

Now some notes about this image:  

I fretted.  

As you might expect, every thing here was shot in IR except the color layers. That amazing IR sky is from two separate images both taken at Lake Chelan (our summer vacation spot in eastern Washington).  That place, if the conditions are just right, generates clouds that are like nothing I've ever seen and I was very happy to finally have an image for some of them. The color layers are from a number of visible-wavelength images that I've collected over the years - a couple of sunsets, a watercolor wash, and this very cool red color from the side of a building I collected in Rome (definite high romance factor!).  

But here's the real thing about this image that I love: that cliff and that house are real and in that same view as the image of Mt. Rainier (actually the cliff, house and Mt. Rainier are taken from a single IR photo I took from just below the summit of High Rock). This place is called High Rock Lookout and the house is an old forest fire lookout (a google search will show you its location and info on the hike). From the house, we could see Mt. Rainier, Mt. Adams, Mt St. Helens, and Mt. Hood about 100 miles away in Oregon.  That cliff off to the left of the house drops straight down for about a thousand feet and it is impressive (and scary)! I stood mesmerized on that precipice for many many minutes as I imagined flinging myself into the void.... real heights always do that to me. That place is in another world - a beautiful, powerful, cruel, and tempting world. 

There you go, my friends. 

"Fresh Eyes"