The world which sur­rounds us is noth­ing more and noth­ing less, than pure energy. At what level we con­nect with it, is a very per­sonal experience.

I have for a short period of time felt a grow­ing desire to return to my “cre­ative world” and explore my image cre­ation process a lit­tle fur­ther. It is here I will flesh out my rea­sons for this. How­ever, I shall begin by giv­ing you a frame of ref­er­ence and some con­text to what you are about to read.

For almost half my adult life I have been loos­ing my eye­sight and hear­ing. I have a con­di­tion called Usher Syn­drome which sci­ence states will even­tu­ally send the indi­vid­ual who has the con­di­tion, blind and deaf. I don’t agree with sci­ence, how­ever I am also a real­ist with a gutsy attitude.

At the moment I have a visual field of 1% in the left and 3% in the right eye. This, as you can imag­ine, is a severely restricted visual field. My hear­ing is also at 20% at present.

Now that you have this con­text, I shall begin explor­ing and con­vey­ing the process and rea­sons why I feel the desire to “return home” to my cre­ative spirit, so-to-speak.

For the last twelve months I have found my life to be a chal­leng­ing time. Deal­ing with intensely per­sonal and pri­vate frus­tra­tions of mov­ing about in my world and com­mu­ni­cat­ing from within it has been a very painful process. I have lived with this in total silence how­ever a spot­light has exposed a lot of inter­est­ing moments for which I live in eter­nal gratitude.

I would like to state at this point that the object of this explo­ration is not one of sad­ness but more an hon­or­ing of these moments and feel­ings which have brought me closer to under­stand­ing the world which we “choose to cre­ate” and live in. And it also brings me closer to “my home and cre­ative spirit”.

I have always felt that com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the way we go about it in our lives is a very unique, vital, and indi­vid­ual process. My hear­ing and vision, while extremely dif­fi­cult and painful to deal with at times, has shown me very recently that cre­at­ing images and liv­ing in the “won­der of the moment”, is a very pow­er­ful and beau­ti­ful experience.

As a pho­tog­ra­pher, when you are “cen­tered and liv­ing in the present moment” your soul and spirit will see the true light of what sur­rounds you. When you exe­cute the shut­ter, and the light forms upon the film, you are totally liv­ing in the moment. You are there. You are “alive and con­nect­ing” with the universe.

It has taken a lot of con­fronta­tion and intro­spec­tion for me to real­ize the value of what it means to start record­ing images again and the world of “light and energy” that sur­rounds every one of us. An even greater real­iza­tion for me is that, I am at the end of the day, really not visu­ally impaired, nor am I really hear­ing impaired either. The images I cre­ate are a reflec­tion of this and ulti­mately, my life and the cre­ative out­let that pho­tog­ra­phy gives, is about heart and soul. It is about liv­ing and breath­ing in the moment and feel­ing it with every cell in my body.

Some of the great­est artists in the world have been through their own very per­sonal and painful moments to record bril­liance that show­cases the virtues of the human spirit.

I will fin­ish this by say­ing that my jour­ney into the phys­i­cal dark­ness is also one of great beauty and con­trasts. Pho­tog­ra­phy, my cam­eras, my heart and soul are con­stant travel com­pan­ions that will con­tinue to show me the light of the world which we live in.

In the com­ing days, weeks, and months ahead, expect to see some work being cre­ated which will show­case the nat­ural beauty that sur­rounds us at every cor­ner of life. It will be my life, my heart, and my soul. And it is some­thing that I will wear proudly on my sleeve.

This is what pho­tog­ra­phy and the chas­ing of the light means to me.

Note: I have posted this on facebook.com/mrbradfordsmith and at bradfordsmith.com.au. Con­sid­er­ing its con­tents, I thought it would have a more appro­pri­ate place and home here.