Deborah Kunzie | Today you are you! That is truer than tru! There is no one alive that is you-er than you! ~ Dr. Seuss

"The reward of a thing well done is to have done it."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

by deborah kunzie

I grew up in Antioch, a small Florida town surrounded by open countryside. I learned to love the outdoors. I ventured into the woods every day to explore all that nature had to offer a girl coming of age and meeting life face to face.

When I was thirteen my father gave me a toy Diana camera and I used black and white film to photograph my favorite scenes in the natural world. The resulting pictures made everything more mysterious, quieter and calm, mirroring the same feeling I had while focusing my camera outdoors.

While photographing the trees, the leaves on the ground, the winding creek that meandered through our property, my passion grew for capturing anything that caught my eye.

Every moment presented an opportunity to photograph something unexpected. When I was not in school, I spent the mornings tromping through the woods and discovering how beautiful things appeared in the early light. The dawn dampness and the perfect light made the deer moss that grew on the creek banks, covering stones and tree roots, so attractive. I shot hundreds of images and carried those memories into adulthood when I had to leave that special place.

Imagine being alone in a place where life moves slow listening to the wind move the position of the branches, or the water trickling over stones, and hearing the voices of the nature spirits as they spoke. What a privilege to be present at a time when I had no fear of my surroundings, and was thrilled to have the chance to embed myself into every experience.

Those unexpected moments of communication resulted in me speaking to the place first instead of snapping away at everything. This connection influenced my desire to create something new from behind my camera. It gave me the chance to photograph only the beauty of the world, and therefore, I allowed no ugliness to appear.

At that young age I was not thinking of the technical aspects of photography. That was irrelevant at the time. I only wanted to capture the essence of the subject in front of me and give it back to the world in the best possible way.

The image alone needed to be explanation enough in the eyes of the viewer. The type of film, or the kind of camera, or what size the picture would end up being was of no importance. Not having to think about all that kept me in a singular moment of pure reality.

But how?

Fifteen years ago I went back to my childhood home to listen to the voices that I once heard there. I needed inspiration in order to chart the direction of my life's course. This time, however, I held a Nikon 35mm camera in my hands. I pulled off the road and found a fine spot at the edge of a lake, from where I snapped a shot of an egret flying. That was the first bird image I had ever taken and I realized that I loved capturing the spirit of birds.

Even though I still sometimes shoot a row of trees, or an occasional leaf in the water, or a bee that is working hard to remove the sweetness from a blooming flower, the birds call to me the most. I hear their varied cries, the singing of their wings on the wind, or the stillness of their silence when they perch or roost.

I practice no particular method or particular schedule. I go where God leads me, and I am respectful of the birds’ presence. I try and blend into their world without distracting them or messing up their routines. God has given me a most important thing: time…time to focus, time to distance myself from distracting elements, and time to walk away with a satisfying captured moment.