People Who Matter

Sometimes it is worth it, saving a post in Draft, especially if you wait a little longer and find a happier ending for it!

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April 19, 2013

There is this one website that I would visit from time to time, for the last five (six? seven?) years or so.  Not on a regular basis, not even on a once-a-month basis.  It was a wallpaper/photography website, and I visited it like I would a museum, very rarely but with a degree of awe, so far as it was just not a website I could contribute to, but one to inspire.

And there was this one British photographer whose gallery I was invariably drawn to.  Presumably retired, he would go on country drives and take photos of the English and Scottish scenery - it didn't matter whether he was an amateur or professional, he had a sense about it, had a knack for bringing out the warm colors and general feel of the places he was photographing.  Among the new images on the site, I started to look for his wallpapers especially.  He gave them humorous captions; his was a down-to-earth brand of humor that let his conversational voice come through.  He gave his art personality; his gallery was a homey, bright place in the internet, because it was there and didn't tangle itself up with the real world.

Today I didn't see any captions on the new wallpapers that I could recognize as his.  I had to locate his profile, where he had removed his gallery and posted his last image around Christmastime.  It appears that, like many great internet communities, this wallpaper website had changed in a very bad way.  Someone like him, who had contributed so much, had come to a point where it just wasn't working out anymore. The point of removing his beautiful gallery, compiled over the course of about eight or nine years, and saying good-bye to his photography friends there.

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That was all I wrote at the time, a bit emotionally unedited, as you can see.  (Well, I was upset!  And shocked besides.)  Fortunately, that's not all there is to it.  The photographer is back, and, while I think his best shots are still offline, it is good to see he has a gallery again.  I'm guess the lesson (for me, a frequent one) is that you can't understand how much you appreciate something or someone until they're gone, with no certainty of their coming back.  It just reminds me how grateful I am for the people I know over the internet, whether they be bloggers like you or artists I admire from "afar."  Keep up the great work, won't you?