Much of life runs at a pace indistinguishable from one to the next.  As much as we try to live every moment, we lapse into an easy rhythm with eyes looking no further than the next step.  It is with difficulty that we remember what yesterday's lunch was.

Then there are those moments when a cathartic agent enters our banal lives and we are shocked into living the moment as a participant rather than an observer.  Such an agent of wakening in my life this past week was James Van Alden.  A man more passionate and stubborn about his craft would be difficult to find.

A couple of hours with James reminded me of what a person with a camera can be; not a photographer, anyone with a camera and a trigger finger can be a photographer, but that rarer of breeds:  an artist.

A photographer is a cataloger of the world around him.  He records the events, places, and people of his time.  Some of his images might be more artful than others, but his subject matter can never transcend the corporeal world we live in.

A man like James Van Alden creates.  He makes tangible the ethereal world of dreams and visions.  The images he creates do not exist outside of his imagination until he wills them into existence with broad strokes of light and shadow.  His brush is the camera and his palette the unspoken desires that walk our dreams.

If God is the man who creates, let no serpent deter James Van Alden from his path.