The Journey Into Art (Thoughts)

(This is the full text submitted for publication on several photography websites.)

Introduction

I am a technical professional who wanted to become an artist in his middle years. I confess that I had no previous art training except for making papier-mâché boxes in high school!

I learned that the Internet could not teach me what I needed, except perhaps how to take an average travel photo...

“Midway along the journey of our life
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.

How hard it is to tell what it was like,

this wood of wilderness, savage and stubborn
(the thought of it brings back all my old fears),

a bitter place! Death could scarce be bitterer...

“Look to your right... It is the path back home. If you choose, you can take it. It is safe, easy, and comfortable. You do not have to work out or fight or do anything else you do not want to...

“If one says ‘red’ – the name of color – and there are fifty people listening, it can be expected that there will be fifty reds in their minds...

If you are willing to do something that might not work, you’re closer to being
an artist.
-Seth Godin

As many know, I spend most of my days practicing medicine, so my thoughts and opinions are those of a middle-aged person coming into photography as an art form...

Hovenweep Pueblo was occupied from around 1200-1300 CE. All signs of occupation were really gone by 1280 CE. The site has not been fully excavated, so we only know some generalities about the area.

The architecture is similar to archeological ruins in Mesa Verde and Chaco Canyon in New Mexico...

What in the world were they doing building something so beautiful on a rock???

They say it was for a structure to retreat to in the event of an attack. That sounds very plausible to me, given the description of the times...

A ruin should always be protected but never repaired - thus may we witness full the lingering legacies of the past.

Walter Scott

This is one of the pueblos in Hovenweep National Monument...