When the world is a dark pit, and you find yourself locked up with lunatics. Sometimes, a person needs a slice of sunshine. So that’s what this series of photos will try to capture, but alas, it’s hard to catch a sunbeam.

Then again, I don’t need my baseball glove or butterfly net. Not when I have this magical weight around my neck. It’s left the dark room behind, this is true, but I have my own just in case.

I try to explain this alchemy, as if to a five-year-old or my giant German shepherd dog, to these folks on the ward, but they just cock their heads. I talk about apertures, f-stops, and blinking eyeballs.

No respondo, Ernesto just gazes away from me and talks to people who aren’t there. All of their heads turn, and I finally have an audience.

I’m free again, on Antabuse, so I’m back with the camera therapy of nature and sunshine. The technology that I couldn’t explain to them—resting in my hands. Like a thousand picture books.

The shutter is eager to slide over its mechanical eye, snapping pictures of the sun and everything under it, but you have to be careful taking so many pictures of God.

(Farm Sunrise)

(CO OP)

(American Flag-Vet MIA)

(Kestrel)

(Landscape)

Words and Visual Music by Christopher J Ananias