HalfLife

Along the way, I met some very influential photography people. There were many, but these are the ones I listen to often. Want to come up to speed in the business quickly — start here? The internet is only as useful and credible as the people willing to spend time to share their knowledge. These are some of the best.

• Alain Briot, www.beautiful-landscape.com. I have taken several of Alain’s workshops and highly recommend them. He’s French and, without saying, knows art.
• Michael Reichmann, www.luminous-landscape.com. He’s Canadian and very wealthy. He can buy or borrow almost any new expensive camera, lens, or piece of technical wizardry and uses it hard and well and let’s us know about it.
• Uwe Steinmueller, www.outbackphoto.com. He’s German and ends his sentences with propositions and predicates. Like, “throw the horse over the fence, some hay.” This resonates with my Pennsylvania-Dutch heritage. But he’s the plugin guy for me and always has tips and tricks on digital workflow.
• Graham Nash, www.nasheditions.com. He’s my neighbor and that makes him, Manhattan Beach. He’s a printer extraordinaire.

There comes a point in one’s life when you start looking backwards more than forwards. When the dreams and plans in our 20s are supplanted by retirements and 529 college funds, it’s time to reconsider the second half of our lives.

The search for authenticity seems to ebb in the 40s. This is not a crisis but an opportunity to reinvigorate creativity. And the internet has given us all the opportunity to become experts very quickly.

Changing careers, taking up hobbies, resolving age-old mysteries can all be easily found using this great equalizer. It would have taken years of trial-and-error to achieve levels of competence heretofore unimaginable.

Wiki-everything and blog-anything certainly don’t replace practice and independant discovery, but it sure speeds up the process.

As a photographer, engineer and writer, this blog will share my discoveries along the way to create a more fulfilling Act 2.

Randy Mosteller