• Art,  Art/Design,  Black and White,  lifestyles,  quotes,  shadows,  Woodcarving

    Casting Shadows

    One of my dad’s wood carving and morning shadows

    “So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?” – Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

  • Black and White,  clouds,  grass,  lake,  landscape,  Plants,  prairie,  quotes,  trees

    Beautiful Questions

    Cottonwood trees reflecting in a pond at Rocky Mountain Arsenal from 2011

    “The ability to ask beautiful questions, often in very unbeautiful moments, is one of the great disciplines of a human life. And a beautiful question starts to shape your identity as much by asking it as it does by having it answered.”

    David Whyte

    A few years ago I became less interested in answers and more interested in the questions. We already have too many people who have the answers. I’m grateful for the inquisitive minds in our world today, always looking for another question. Those questioning minds belong to the creatives, the prophets, researchers, the explorers, the seekers.

  • Black and White,  clouds,  landscape,  quotes

    Inner Solitude

    At the end of the road

    “Spirituality is not to be learned by flight from the world, or by running away from things, or by turning solitary and going apart from the world. Rather, we must learn an inner solitude wherever or with whomsoever we may be. We must learn to penetrate things and find God there.” Meister Eckhart

  • Black and White,  Candid Portraits,  People/Portraits

    Making her smile

    A young couple at the Lory Student Center

    I love the people I photograph. I mean, they’re my friends. I’ve never met most of them or I don’t know them at all, yet through my images I live with them. At the same time, they are symbols. The people in my pictures aren’t Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith or whatever; they’re someone that crossed my path or I’ve crossed their path, and through the medium of photography I’ve been able to make a good picture of that encounter. They have a life of their own, but they are also are symbols. I would say that I respect the viewer, but I don’t want to tell him everything. Hopefully, there’s an element of mystery involved. I like him to look at a picture and say “Well, that that reminds me of someone,” and make up a little story in his head, make him smile, brighten up his day. I think this is what I’m trying to achieve with my photographs. – Bruce Gilden