Vision Beyond The Lens by -J.J. McQueen-

When I was a little kid growing up in Trinity, North Carolina, I would sit on the front porch and wonder what the world was like beyond my neighborhood.  Surrounded by old cars, failing home structures and loving people, it was there that my imagination began to take shape.  There was an old air field that we would ride past sometimes to get home and I remember wondering what it would be like to see my house from the sky.  Fast forward to now and I stay in the sky and can't see my rooftop at all, lol.  As I get further a long in my career my friends and family often ask me how do I see the things that I see...  How do I process the images in front of me?   After I clear the air with a joke or two, I pause to give the proper perspective on the question.  I share with them the feelings/emotion of what I see vs the visual side of what I see.  In every environment most of us use all of our senses to survive.  The same goes for capturing imp...

Recently, I spent some long overdue time with an old family friend.  Needless to say the time that we spent together was priceless.  I was reminded of why it's important to preserve the past while enhancing the present and the future.  Post our conversation, the theme that resonated with me most has been accountability.  If a person decided to research the history of the pioneers and settlers all across the world, most would find that they all shared in the responsibility to build a solid today and forecast good things for tomorrow, all by holding one another accountable.  Accountability is characteristic that is rapidly fading to black.  I mean that in a very literal sense.  Some may say that I'm out of touch because of my expectations...  Arguably, that may be a valid point.  However, having high expectations of people is unrealistic period, because people change as much as the wind blows.  In the my early days of training to b...

THREE years ago when I decided to turn my passion for photo-journalism into something with it's own identity, I never factored in how the world would receive me.  I often reflect back to my childhood growing up in a Southern Baptist Church, focusing on the things that we were required to know.  I had to learn hymns because my mom was the choir director, a ton of black history and the other was a scripture.  For some reason out of the three the scripture is what I held onto. Don't ask me how because most of the time I was day dreaming about scoring touchdowns.  The scripture that I was most fond of was from the book of Proverbs 18:16; It read,  "A man's gift makes room for him, and brings him before great men".  The translation for me as a kid was if I had a good job I'd get paid and meet famous people. Needless to say that my childhood interpretation wasn't to far off the mark. More importantly   the one thing that I've grown to learn about that part...