About my photographs and my photography...
I am a non-commercial photographer. I create and share photographs as a way of building relationships with people, and connecting with them. The connection, the relationship, is all that I ask for and all that I choose to accept for my services. I retain the copyright for all the photos that I create, but grant unlimited use of the images to the people with whom or for whom I create them. In my photo-release forms, I stipulate that I will never sell the images or use them commercially. I will not authorize third parties to sell the images or to use them commercially (except for the concessions that commercial, social media entities require when an image is posted on their platform). I create landscape and other types of images when the opportunity presents itself, but my real joy is working with people to create the best images that we can of them and their stories.
About me...
I am a flawed human being, trying to find my way through this life in a way that respects and honors the values that I hold. I don't always live up to my own values. Along my way, I have hurt people in ways that I could never make right. That was not my intention. I have also helped others along their way. That was my intention. I have also helped myself along my way, sometimes at the expense of others. I would like to say that taking advantage of others was not my intention, but have to admit that sometimes I just didn't care. I would like to say that my carelessness is all in the past, but that is just not true.
As a young man, I befriended some people whose favorite pass-time was ridiculing others. I admired their superior air and sharp wit. But, they were not very good at ridiculing Christians because they knew too little about what Christians believed. I saw a niche to fill, so I decided to become the resident expert on the silliness of Christianity, and all of its contradictions.
I thought it best to strike right at the root, and to become intimately familiar with their Bible. I began studying what it was, how it was written and assembled, and looking for the contradictions that would demonstrate its faults. I read and cross-referenced notorious passages, and took notes.
There is a funny relationship between truth and likelihood. Absent any other information, the most likely explanation of reality is usually the simplest and least complicated. What is true is usually what is most likely.
But, even in our every day life, we know that that relationship doesn't always hold. A magnet sticks to a refrigerator door even though there is no glue or other visible means of attachment. A microwave will heat food without any visible means of doing so. For many questions, the true answer is not the most likely answer, but one that depends upon factors which are unseen.
As I studied the Bible, and read what other flawed, broken individuals had written, and which other, flawed and broken individuals had translated and assembled together into a book, something began to happen to me. It was almost as if, when looking between the words and lines and paragraphs, I could see someone else looking back at me. Someone who was saying that there was truth, as unlikely as it may seem, behind the words that people who were just like me had written.
Carefully, tentatively, sometimes recklessly, I began to explore that truth. Over the forty-plus years that have elapsed, it has become more precious to me than anything else. I won't even try to explain it to you. If you choose to, it is something you will have to find for yourself. I will offer this, though: a good place to start is in a part of the Bible called 'The Gospel of John.' The Bible has a 'Table of Contents' up front, and page numbers. You can find it if you look for it.
I worked as a semi-skilled laborer. I cooked in restaurants, and washed dishes. I made cheese. I maintained golf courses, worked as a lumberjack, split rails and trimmed trees. I married and had a son while carrying no medical insurance, and with no benefits from my work. We got by, but barely.
I pursued my relationship with God. I found that He is a poet, who expresses Himself using all the varied tools at His disposal to guide my life. Most of the time, that guidance is so mixed with the ordinary ebb and flow of thought that it is indistinguishable from all the ordinary ideas and observations that I test and choose to accept or discard. On occasion, rarely, and usually when there is a path to follow that I would never take on my own, God has been very clear.
At the age of 24, that clarity led me to join the United States Air Force. I will skip the details, but joining the military was the last thing that anyone who knew me would have expected. In retrospect, it worked out so well that I would like to claim that it was all my idea, but I can't. It wasn't anything I had to do, wanted to do, or thought was a good idea. It was simply what I knew He was asking me to do.
My military career began as an enlisted mechanic, working on F-111 airplanes at Lakenheath, England. We helped build a church there, among other adventures. The Air Force sent me back to school. They paid me as a Staff Sergeant for three years to complete my Bachelors. Then another year and a half as an officer for a Masters degree, and another three years to complete a Doctorate. I did things and saw things I never could have imagined -- from negotiating contracts for space nuclear power technologies with institutes from the former Soviet Union, to examining test devices over a thousand feet below the deserts of Nevada. After 20 years, I left the Air Force in Washington, DC, and spent the next 15 years working for the Federal Government, ending my career as a senior executive at the National Nuclear Security Administration.
All along the way were the people. The friends we made. The children we came to know. The lives we saw that were touched and transformed as they followed their own paths with God -- paths that were similar to the one that my family and I followed, yet each different and unique. Paths that intertwined with ours. Joys we shared, and some sorrows. And, always the adventure.
And, now I am retired. My wife and I are full-time grandparents, helping our children care for our three grandchildren. I found that photography was a natural way to connect with others. It is useful, it brings joy, and it is something I can do well. So, that has been my main extra-curricular focus.
And, that is my story. I hope you enjoy the photos that I post here.
Feel free to contact me using the Contact page above. It sends me an email, and I try to answer all that aren't trying to get me to buy something.
Don Nichols