Nice dive at Molokini crater,

The strobes failed so I took my chances in shallow waters using the natural light. Enjoy.

Maui is a showcase of talent when it comes to arts, and photography is no exception. In my journey of discovery I get to know many of them but some in particular, for some mysterious reason, leave an imprint in my memory … their work coming back to my mind time after time.

For someone like me, with no formal education in arts, art is an exercise of my perception where my intellect, or reasoning has little to nothing to do with it. It’s all about feelings. There is what I like and what I don’t, regardless of the author, techniques, or tools used to create it.

During the last year I had the chance to meet briefly three women who’s ability to capture feelings has amazed me right away. Their use of composition, lense, color, light, depth of field is simply amazing. The post processing simply perfect for the image. And while they probably use different tools, and methods, their results are somehow similar.

Please let me introduce you to

Anna Kim

Juliana Arboleda (go to “about me” page)

and

Jennifer Auby Rosenblad (and you still have to see her latest shots she’ll hopefully upload soon … her best so far in my humble opinion)

Two days ago, browsing through the shelves of a local bookstore in search for some interesting reading and why not, some inspiration, I came across with a book that suddenly made the connection clear …

Expressive Photography …. by The Shutter Sisters ….

Sisters …

And as I browsed through the book I saw images so similar to Anna’s, Juliana’s and Jennifer’s work that I suddenly realized I was simply witnessing life through the eyes of women. It’s not just about being expressive but what it is shown and how it is expressed. It’s about the angle of view, the subject, the story being told … and on top of it … the feelings …

Can’t wait to start reading it !

Thank you ladies for showing me your magnificent point of view !

My life has seen lots of changes since that shy and introverted boy, afraid of almost everything, of my adolescence.

I’ve traveled a lot, lived a lot, in Argentina and other locations of the world.
The “white & blue” turned into other hues and blended into a swarm of flags.
I discovered Buenos Aires after visiting the Capitals of Europe and discovered the Argentine culture after experiencing foreign ones.

While inside, in Argentina, I was blind, deaf and mute. Until I dared to travel.

There’s those who find their destiny right away in life, and those who never find it.
There’s those who spend their whole lifes in the same environment and those who need a constant change.
Those who are rich having nothing and those extremely poor having it all.
And in between, there’s a lot of everything.

I have lived with most of them,
I have been one of almost all of them for a while at least.
I have shared tables with Presidents and Homeless, exclusive gala parties and humble campsite fires.
I have eaten in the best restaurants of the world paying bills with lots of zeros to the right and enjoyed delicacies under a thatch with dirt floors,
three legged chairs and flimsy tables, bills with only one zero before the decimal point.

I have had the privilege to experience a little bit of everything,
and of everything a little bit,
never too much to get used to it, but always enough to be satisfied.
I have learned a lot, of a lot,
without becoming an expert of anything so there’s always much more pending to learn.

And I always find new challenges, spaces to explore, values to discover.
I have had my glorious victories and my demolishing defeats.
I have being passionate about new projects, both short and long termed,
and I have crashed a thousand times having to start over again and again.
Sometimes my fault, others being victim of others.
But this is common to most of us, what’s new …

Twice in my life I chose a path so wrong that I had to stop blunt.
Closing an improvised final chapter with the painful acceptance of an ending very different of the one I fought so hard for.
I put aside the Book of my Life in the Arc of Memories,
next to all the treasures from past experiences,
and retired in isolation, hermetically,
to cleanse my soul, mourn my loss, and reconnect with my inner self.

I made my mind blank until, right from the very essence of me, I could be born again,
reinventing myself to start again writing fresh the first chapter of a brand new book.
I have died twice to be born agan like the Fenix,
with wider wings to reach higher but less feathers and less weight.

My family was a model where virtues like love, friendship, generosity, humility were given to me at an early age.
I never craved for anything I really needed, and I have achieved, sooner or later, everything I ever wanted to achieve,
fruit of a clear vision, hard work, perseverance and patience.

Life taught me the rest,
like the fact that nothing comes for free,
and what comes easy has no value,
where great dreams are achieved at the expense of great costs
and this might be one of the most basic laws of life …

Renewal, exchange,
like the energy transforming itself, one must give in order to receive.
We sow what we’ve seed … nothing so true.
Life constantly presents us with choices,
we must decide by ourselves and there is no school where to learn that.
We learn as we go, like Serrat sings, “Walker, there are no roads, you make them as you walk”.

We start crawling, tumbling, and we learn as we fall how to walk straignt.
And by the time we realize where we are going we are actually running already.
Our dreams will be for some future day because the road is not flat anymore,
and our speed downhill is so fast that it feels like freefall …
and we want out but we can’t …
and we are trapped by the currents,
dragged into whirls and holes and we barely grasp to stay afloat …
if we float …

But there’s also breaks of calm water where to breath again,
where to stop and think where are we going,
what are we doing,
that life is passing by and our dreams remain dreams.
This is the moment to face our fears, bite hard and take the challenge of a change.

Every change starts with a big renouncement.
Breaking ties with the fake security of conformism,
abandon family mandates, accepting and overcoming the guilt,
and finally becoming one to end being part of the rest.

Defy the establishment and loose ties exploring every corner of the Wind Rose.
Renounce to all accomplishments and failures, to family and friends, even to love who decided to remain.

Renounce to all possessions as we need to travel light.
Renounce to all and only then can we fell free at last, free of ties, of needs, of responsibilities and duties,
conditions and mandates … renounce to all until we can be alone, empty … just us … alone …

Here is when we start the inner journey, the true journey

It’s a world that, in oposition to he exterior, is absolutely endeless and is not victim of time.
Only when the clock stops ticking we start to understand our known nature …
and have a glimpse of the many other selfs we are,
the denied, the shy afraid to show up,
the unabled and the postponed.

Only then our dreams stop being dreams,
and reality, like a fantasy, seems to be malleable for the first time,
we can shape it to our taste.
The noise stayed behind drowned in the turbulences and things have now a different meaning,
seen from a different perspective.

The “what will they say” becomes a “what do I care”,
not out of arrogance but after the wisdom that we have nothing to prove,
not to others, not even to ourselves.
Simply learn how to be by just being
without guilt or the load of heavy challenges,
surrender the lead to our instincts
and free our mind to things that should have never stop being at the top of our priorities.

The price is as high as the reward.

Each door that opens before us offers a whole new world to be discovered.
In exchange more and more distance from our roots.
Loneliness is immensely rich and immensely crude.
And the more we explore and the more we learn the more different we are,
the more unique, black pearls in a white world, where white segregates the black.
And the black observes, awaits, accepts …

If white only new it lacks of any color while black is the sum of them all …

Freedom is extremely beautiful but it knows no ties,
not even for love, that comes and goes like leafs in the wind.
Sometimes it stays for a while.
Other times it makes us wish and despair.
And sometimes its so deared pressence becomes a problem by making fly so difficult.

Our children become the dreams of our dreams …
memories of a future that might never reach us …
remembrances of a life that never was and who knows if it will ever be …
and so we go … exploring and discovering.

But there’s one thing I have learned.
Everyday I am grateful for being alive, for my good health,
for being able to live each day as if it is the first without worrying it might be the last.
To know that past and future blend into an eternal present.
And that I have always been the only pilot of my life,
the only one responsible for my surroundings,
the only one able to generate the change.

It’s been me, it is me and it will always be me.
And I don’t blame nobody because the blame always comes back to me,
and I forgave myself already the day I chose to be reborn.

Today my wealth is in the simple, the basic.
In the harmony of feeling satisfied, the peace and the sweet promise of being able to, maybe, start soon a new era in which the dreams of my dreams finally become true.
In which loneliness is no longer exclusive of one but enjoyed by two.
Where nothing is branded and all faces are beautiful.
Where there is no black or white, no dark or clear,
but the infinite hues of this colorful universe that belongs to all of us and to no one at the same time.
Where value is always relative to what it means to each one of us and nothing,
absolutely nothing can be sold for a price.

Today I finally feel I can see a faint view of my true beginning …

Fernando Lopez Arbarello
www.FerLopez.com