My dad bought me my first camera, when I was nine. We were in Jackson Hole Wyoming, in our little 15 foot Shasta travel trailer on summer vacation. Our destination – Yellowstone National Park!
He bought two of them, one for me and one for my little brother, Pat. He paid for the little Brownie Box Camera’s with a bunch of shiny silver dollars and old fifty cent piece’s. Many with eagle’s on them. I had wanted the camera that could use flash bulbs but that was two bucks more. We lived in Boulder City, Nevada Which is about 30 minutes from Las Vegas where silver dollars were abundant. My dad didn’t usually use silver dollars as currency.
Somewhere along the way, I realized that he was using his coin collection to pay for our vacation that summer.
That was my dad! What a wonderful example he was. With that simple gesture of kindness, even without the flash attachment, he gave me the opportunity.
That day I became hooked on photography and have been ever since. Several years later I would learn how to write as a journalist.
Add in a bunch more years, volumes of small journals carried in my hip pocket, and that little tiny voice inside of me saying “there’s a book in here somewhere”.
I’ve been told by more than a few people that I’m a pretty good storyteller. All my stories are true. I write in the genre of what they call memoir. Which basically means that my stories are true but they don’t have to be in sequential order.
I’ve also been told that I’ve lived a interesting life. Life goes on when we as humans make plans. And I’ve certainly had a lot of plans. Some of them have been successful and some of them not. There is an old Jewish saying “that man plans and God laughs”. I’ve always liked that saying.
I hope you drop by once in a while and check me out! If you like what I have to say please join my tribe and follow me in some of my adventures. If you do join my tribe to I’ll send an email inviting you to more stories. And of course I love comments. Your comments are the only way I know if I’m doing a good job on my writing.
My dad died at 63 years old of a heart attack. He had just retired, worked hard all of his life, and I remember telling myself that that wasn’t going to happen to me.
I started writing this blog in 2012. I had the time because I was off work as a photographer because of a detached retina in my “shooting eye”. I had to give up many weddings that I had been booked for.
It took a long time for it to heal, and since the wedding season was over for me. I took my friend Vita Jones from Rotary up on her suggestion to follow her as her photographer on a project in Peru.
Positive growth.
Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture.
But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.
Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put.
Tom Patterson – Photographer – Writer – and Seeker 
Hi Tom,
Everyone complains about the “haters” as they are called – people who feel threatened by ideas other than their own. I have stopped looking at Facebook because of all the negativity, and also because it seems apparent that no one is changed in their opinion by someone else’s point of view. Change has to be an inside job, meaning some personal experience. So, it sounds as if you are not taking it personally which is a good thing, because the negative comments are really about psychology more than politics. So glad you are still writing in spite of all the setbacks recently. Five words a minute is frustrating but still well worth it. Love, Jan
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