Recently I purchased a new camera to take live action shots of the athletes at my sports academy – tennis, golf, volleyball, soccer and swimming. I made a sizable investment in hopes of capturing the best most clear images for the students. What I did not anticipate was the fun I was going to have taking photographs. It could be said that I am somewhat addicted now.

That is, looking through the camera eye, I can watch life passing right in front of me. Then, when I decide, I can “freeze” moments in time. Capturing that life energy so that I can re-live it later. This experience and process was everything that I was aware of about pictures and picture taking, but never really thought about or grasped fully until I actually started taking the shots through the camera eye piece (as opposed to taking them from the display on my phone).

So, lately I have been experimenting with night photography, I am fascinated with light and it’s impact on my emotional state as it relates to the images I take photos of. Last night it was fire! I have, for a long time now, been enthralled with the open flames of camp fires, as my wife’s parents are avid campers and we have spent many nights aside the fire just relaxing and watching the flames and burnt orange coals waffle with the wind.

And last night I captured a few images of the fire that sparked (pun intended) this post. My camera has about a million settings and I often get lost with all the buttons and options that I have to simply just take a picture. However, sometimes I get lucky and I capture a moment that has just the right aperture priority, shutter speed setting, and focus. And the picture dances! In this case, the flames.

But more than the flames themselves, the black space around the flames is what spoke to me. The size of the flame within the frame compared to the amount of blackness was very small. Figuratively, this made me feel that the flame was desperately small compared to the darkness around me. Did I say “me”? I meant “it”. Or did I? That’s what I mean, photographs make me feel things. I saw myself as the flame or at least the life energy within me. I also felt overwhelmed by the amount of darkness that surrounded the flame. How much I think I have to overcome. I was taken aback from that frozen moment that I was not prepared for nor anticipated.

Then the essence of this blog post hit me – keep the flame burning – as it relates to the purpose of this website – endurance. We must keep our flame going no matter how much darkness surrounds us or how small our flame is compared to it. Initially, I was overwhelmed with doubt and the amount of work that I thought I might have to do to overcome that amount of darkness, but more than that I was amazed by the beauty of the flame and that it was, in fact, burning brightly. More brightly and more powerfully than the darkness that surrounded it. I was the flame, I was burning brightly, I was going to keep burning………