While the phrase “shed light” has entered the lexicon as an innocuous term that puts a brighter face on the word “explain,” rarely do we think about light literally. Light is sometimes shed in interesting ways; broadcast, even. It floats around us. Sometimes it’s interesting enough to give the walls of the home office their own signature design. As creative people, it’s part of our job to point out that interest. More importantly though, mundane things sometimes strike the conscious mind and they become engrossing. Those things change perception in forgotten seconds. As an artist, one would hope that over time the whole of those forgotten seconds might add up in some creative account where seeing the world in broader, brighter folds pays off in bolder and more brilliant creative work. As citizens we are unencumbered by interest and accounts. We have, simply, the primary joy of seeing.

One can’t help but to be engrossed sometimes.

As an artist, there’s the hope, the fun, of seeing something cool, spending 20 minutes figuring out how to capture the best image of it, and ushering it off into the world like a child to his first school. Only there are hundreds of children. Some that don’t even make it from the napkin where they were scribbled to the notebook where their siblings and cousins are. And some that grow up and find their homes in the hearts and minds of other people.

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Let’s just say that I’m more than a little bit proud of the extra-long exposure (six seconds) that it took to capture the nighttime dance that happens behind the Code Breaker. Those interesting shapes that reveal themselves by streetlight are part of the reason I haven’t decorated that wall.