Lightbender's photostream  

I am a geologist so you might say I think about Eternity for a living.
I have a somewhat rakish spirit but a quiet manner.
I have a skeptical mind. My nature inclines towards optimism.
I'm a young soul from an ancient time, and am much more a citizen of Athens than Jersusalem.
I seek and rejoice in beauty. I embrace the bittersweet succulence of life.
My heart has broad portals and everyone I have ever loved I still love.

I grew up with a father who was a serious amateur photographer and had a darkroom in the house, and so I thought I had a pretty good photographer’s eye, but after surveying all the fabulous creativity and talent of Flickr photographers around the world I’ve been thoroughly humbled and inspired anew. One of the real pleasures of this site for me is searching out new images to add to my favorites and I enjoy going back through and reviewing them often--I love the new "Medium thumbnail" viewing option! They also serve as a tutorial for me. No doubt a person’s “Favorites” collection can be quite revealing of one’s aesthetics and interests, and those of my contacts are a fascination for me as well… and a wonderful guide to new great images and ways of seeing.


Flickr’s gallery feature is one that I think has great potential for interesting thematic collections and thoughtful commentary. These are some of the galleries I’ve spent time on assembling:

My most visited gallery:


Three galleries on dance, a particular interest of mine:


Portrait galleries:



A BIT MORE ABOUT ME...

Interests: Beauty, Ballet, Art, Photography, Cinema, Travel, Birding, Reading, Nature, Museums, Jazz, History

Favorite Books & Authors: Anastasia Hobbet (Small Kingdoms, Pleasure of Believing), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen (Emma, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park), Camille Paglia (Sexual Personae), George Eliot (Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda), John Milton (L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Paradise Lost), Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate), Daniel Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea), Christopher Hitchens, Victor Davis Hanson, Nabokov (Lolita), Will Durant, Rebecca West, E.M. Forrester (Passage to India, Howard's End), T.E. Lawrence (Seven Pillars of Wisdom), Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale, Soldier of the Great War), Frederick Turner (The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit), Kenneth Clark (The Nude), Willa Cather (My Antonia, O Pioneers!)

Favorite Movies, Stars & Directors: Roman Holiday, North By Nortwest, Casablanca, The Red Shoes, most any Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie, Gene Kelly, American in Paris, Pride & Prejudice, Wives & Daughters, Manhattan, Rear Window, Philadelphia Story, Passage to India, Lawrence of Arabia, Gerard Depardieu's "Cyrano de Begerac," Brannagh's "Henry V" and "Hamlet,", Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma, Frances O'Connor's Mansfield Park, Strictly Ballroom, Fanny & Alexander, Red, Happy-Go-Lucky, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Julie & Julia, Bright Star, Lord of the Rings (of course)

Favorite Music & Artists: Any Handel Oratorio, Bach, Vivaldi, Rameau, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Penguin Cafe, Bill Evans, Billie Holliday, Diane Krall, Count Basie, Ahn Trio, Caetano Veloso, Artie Shaw, Lester Young, Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Stravinsky, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Leo Kottke, Souad Massi, Melissa Etheridge, Madonna's "Ray of Light," Kate Bush, Paul Simon, Enrique Granados, Stan Getz, Enya, Doc Watson, Ella Fitzgerald, Led Zepplin, Oscar Peterson, Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck, Dakota Dave Hull, Benny Goodman, Ceasaria Evora, Phillip Glass, Ludovico Einaudi

Countries I have visited...
visited 42 states (18.6%)Create your own visited map of The World or another interesting projectCreate your own visited map of The World

...AND FINALLY, A FLICKR BEAUTIFICATION PROPOSAL
Are you tired of all the gaudy group invites and medallions cluttering up comment threads on Flickr like billboards along a highway? Here’s my modest proposal: go ahead and appreciate the kindly intended recognition, add to the group if you want, enjoy the word of praise for the moment, but then clean up afterwards by deleting these “group code only” comments; let the more thoughtful and personal comments stand out, and it just might help encourage a higher level of interaction within the Flickr community that I think all would enjoy. I for one would prefer to see group invites come through private messages rather than adding to the visual pollution in comment threads, but if you would like to invite one of my photos to a group publicly I sincerely thank you, and I will likely add it; just please don’t feel offended if I delete your “code only” comment afterwards. I plan to adopt this stance going forward, and hope the ethos will spread around Flickr. I may not get around immediately to cleaning up every one of my images' comment threads retroactively, but I’m working on it. (And feel free to copy this proposal to your own profile if you agree with it.)