Personal Vision

A 1950's Pontiac shows the way to the future.

I reach out, but nothing is there. Nothing has ever been there. Nothing will ever be there again.

Pain doesn’t turn you into something noble. It turns you into something unrecognizable. I don’t know when it happened. I don’t know when I stopped being a person. But I know I’m not me anymore.

I gave everything to a world that took everything from me. My sons died, and I was told to accept it. To move on. To find peace. But what does peace mean to someone who’s lost everything? I let the hatred in. I let it fill every hollow space inside me. I wanted the world to suffer as I have. I wanted to break the gates of heaven and take back what was mine. This is the other side of me. 

I thought faith would save me. That’s why I put it on my back—so I could carry it, so it could carry me. But when I lost my sons, all I felt was the weight. My parents told me to pray. I told them I was done. I ripped it away in my mind long before I ever touched my skin.

Kay Borkowski (Left) embraces newly announced Appalachian State University Chancellor Heather Norris (Right). Kay is the wife of former Chancellor Frank Borokowski, who passed away just over a month ago. 

While photographing campus after a light snow storm, I flew a drone over a somewhat hidden pond on the edge of campus just to see if it was frozen over. I was fascinated by the shapes caused by small trees and plants breaking through the partly frozen surface of the water.

A winter swell lashes Oahu's North Shore with twenty to thirty foot waves as my nephew gazes out upon the enormous surf. 

A local Hawaiian boy flips off a perch of lava rocks into a shallow lagoon as friends look on on the island of Oahu, Hawaii.

A sliver of morning sunlight highlights the drapes of a historic home that predates the Civil War in Macon, Georgia. The view now looks out onto a wraparound colonnade of peeling paint broken bannisters.