Ever wonder what the inside of the Buffalo Grain Silos are like today?
Check out Explore Buffalo and take one of their vertical tours of the silos in 2015!
Tag: beautiful
Spiral Out
“Energy cannot be created or destroyed; it can only be changed from one form to another.”
-- Albert Einstein
In a manner of speaking
This is the creation of energy
The capture of light, thought, emotion and memory
Preserved to inspire a future mind
Energy multiplied over through time
Eyes that stare forward from the past
A past that reflects a future shown
In the light that is yet to be captured
Time Traveler
And I capture with a lens all of the light there is to see
A passing moment in time; a moment that will cease to be
Now a moment that will exist forever for you, and forever for me
Light made to art, by a spirit trapped but still so free
In this marvel of a jar, I can hold time tight
Everything that this moment is, by capturing the light
Time yielding its moments to an image, and halting its forward flight
To let us reflect on what was, and where we were, when the time is right
Call me a time traveler, and this box is my time machine
I am a merchant of memories; spending a currency of what is and what is unseen
What I gather and what I see in my world, and in my mind, and what has been
With love, and passion, and art and soul, I salvage your memories and dreams
So travel with me in this world, like the sands washing on to the shore
In waves always constant but never same; some in a whisper and some in a roar
Relive what once was; recapture the time, the youth, the feelings, and more
Created merely from light, to bring your memories to life, and let your imagination soar
We Are The Stories Told By The Stars
“What do you see?” I asked her.
“I see… a light. But there wasn’t a light there before.” She stated with a tone of inquisitiveness
“Stars, and galaxies” I replied to soothe her curiosity. “What your eye cannot see, the camera, given enough time, can.”
“But why? Why can’t I focus on them hard enough to see them myself?” she asked.
“Evolution has provided you with incredible mechanisms for exploring the world around you, but only for what you truly need to survive. Your eyes are remarkable, but limited. Science and technology fill in where our biology doesn’t allow us to go naturally.”
She exhaled a thoughtful, “Hmmm…” as she pondered that. She cocked her head to the right and up once again at the sky, squinting with one eye and twisting her mouth tightly.
“I want to see more,” she demanded, “how can we see more?”
“Well,” I started as I considered my own limitations with the technology accessible to me and what it would cost to get something better, “you can see more with the right equipment, but this is all we have at the moment.”
She cast a disappointing glance at my camera resting steadily on the tripod. She reached to the shutter speed adjustment and opened it up to a 30-second exposure, then to the shutter trigger, pressed it and released it. The camera clacked its shutter open for her, and began capturing all of the light that it could see.
She grew a bit impatient waiting the full 30-seconds for the shutter to finish its cycle, then for the image to appear on the LCD.
She was surprised to see blurs of bright clouds which were barely discernable before, streaking by as if racing across the sky. A bright blue night sky, filled with thousands of tiny points of light and a bright, but shadowy glow from the moon in the southern sky.
“It looks like the stars would look during the day if the sun wasn’t so bright, doesn’t it?” She asked excitedly.
“It certainly does,” I replied with a smile.
She smiled at me, very proud of the results of her experiment.
“Remember,” I explained, “the stars that you see are very, very far away. It has taken thousands, or millions, even billions of years for the light that the camera is seeing to reach it and be captured. The stars that you see may in fact no longer exist, but we are seeing them as they were millions of years ago when the light we’ve just captured began its journey.”
I could see her wrestling with this. She is very bright, but for a child her age, this is a pretty deep concept.
“So, it’s almost like going back in time then?” she questioned as if she were simply sorting out her thoughts out-loud.
“Exactly. You can almost say that you, and I are time travelers, and our camera is our time machine, allowing us to see something possibly as old as the Earth itself.”
She reached out for my hand while gazing back up to the sky, her eyes still full of the wonder of this discovery. Taking it in, sorting the data, and allowing it to fuel the fires of her imagination.
“Time travel…” she whispered, “we can travel through time.”
Erie County Fair
Spend a day taking in the enjoyment of America's Fair - The Erie County Fair!
Be sure to like my page on Facebook for even more local event images!
Microbrew Bike Tour
On Saturday I joined friends for an 18-mile bike tour that included stops at some local micro brewery sites.
Enjoy the images of this beautiful city!
Humans
I've never understood how people could take things like airplanes for granted. We can fly from city to city... we can fly from the Earth to the Moon. What humans have accomplished is amazing, but what we can still accomplish is infinite in its possibilities. We need to start giving ourselves more credit for the power within us.
Changes
If you want to change how people see you on the outside, you must first learn to grow and change from within.
I Said I Want To Do An Edgy Shoot
This might be the trick, except I can't even watch the video without feeling vertigo.
Check out all of this awesomeness though.
Insomnia
Sometimes the tired mind gets to a place it couldn't go when rested. Thoughts flow, and words from them. Ideas begin to set in and discoveries are made....
This is from October 16, 2007. My birthday. It was a turbulent time in my life when everything seemed upside-down.
Except for one glimmer of hope.
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I slept horrible last night. Or perhaps better stated, I didn’t sleep horrible last night. Knowing I had an early morning to get into work, and the hell of a commute in New York City facing me to start, I tossed and turned just waiting for my wake-up call.
I suppose it didn’t help that my mind was running circles around the same issues it has been running circles around for quite some time now. What should I do? All these daunting tasks; the mountains that stand in my way, the raging rivers I must cross to reach what I want.
It is a metaphor I’ve used before… like trying to swim across a raging river; knowing what I’m leaving behind on one shore, unsure if I am strong enough to make it to the other.
The man who would play it safe would just live in contentment in the safety of the shore he was already standing on. Why dive into swirling torrents full of danger? What is so bad about quiet contentment, even if it isn’t exactly what makes you happy?
But as time has gone on, it’s not so much I can’t bear to stand on the shore anymore, but the river is rising. My room on this shore is eroding into the swift currents; I can’t stand by and let it sweep me under into a quiet despair and drown me. No, it’s sink or swim now.
I have to swim.
Not only do I have to swim, I have to realize there is so little for me on this shore it is time to throw myself to the swelling white-capped rapids before me. The rocks are sharp and jagged, the waters full of undertows. I can almost feel the mist of the waterfalls in the distance mocking me and calling me to fail as it chills my skin.
Sink, or swim?
Or simply succumb to the inevitable?
I must swim.
And what lies on the other shore? What is my guarantee that it is any better on that side of the river? Perhaps the murky waters have already eaten away too much of that shore I’m only swimming towards nothing, no future, no happiness. Nothing but the slow drowning death I’m already trying to avoid.
Still,it’s a risk I have to take.
Through risk, we grow. Through risk, we fail or succeed.
Only through taking risks can we achieve what we want in life. No one said life would be easy. The easy way is to stand on the shore and deny it dissolving under your feet. To keep backing up… regressing… avoiding the future and trying to hide in the comforts of the past.
That has never been my way of doing things. It is a risk I must take.
So if this is the end of who I am, so be it. I’ll shed off the clothes I once wore and dive head first into the cold, sucking river before me. I’ll swim as hard and fast as I can, on my own.
I will reach the other shore, on my own.
Or, I’ll drown. But at least I’ll know I wasn’t afraid to take the risk and try to live my life to the fullest.
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After writing this, and settling into my day, I received the following birthday greeting:
This day, is my new favorite day.
This day, brought so many other days that now, spark joy and breathe onto the flames of my happiness, desire, creativity, and bring a deep breath of life.
What an amazing twist of life, yarn and strands of what...fate? whatever it is...it twists and turns down paths neither of us can understand, yet here we are. And we collapse, we fall to the ground laughing because this is the perfect friendship.
So today, because this is the day that it all began before I even knew, I will dance. All day I will dance and sing, I will kiss the sky, stomp my feet. Beat a rhythm into the ground with my happiness and my small corner of the world will know how I feel.
I wish you the greatest, I wish only that you know the happiness that I do. The warmth that fuels you, brings a smile to your face as it has to mine, will be my first gift.
The first gift of many.
Perhaps the most positive, loving message I had ever received on my birthday....