Article archive / September 1, 2014
Originally published: . Volume 5, No. 13. Source pages: 12, 13, 14.
Editor’s note: It will be a real treat to explore the creativity in Dr. Ed Chandler’s photography, this month’s Gone Fishing feature. Be sure and study the photo before you read the caption, so you can get the full “aha” experience.
Dr. Ed Chandler, and his wife, Dr. D’Lane Miller, both graduated from the LSU doctoral program in clinical psychology in 1981. Now they operate their clinic, Turning Point Center for Psychological and Family Growth, in Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
Ed purchased his first digital camera in April 2008, though he’d played with cameras from his boyhood days in Grand Island, New York, a few miles upstream from Niagara Falls, he said.
“My psychologist friends will no doubt delight in one of my repetitive dreams as a child, of my island breaking loose from its underpinnings and floating irreversibly downstream, as I awaited the horrendous endgame,” he admits.
Years later, in the digital age, he was “freed from the expense of developing every frame of film,' and “I could and did experiment at will,” he said.
In recent years, Ed has nurtured his avocations in photography and stained glass, allowing him creative expression and garnering some well-deserved acknowledgements along the way. “My macro shots produced the nicest surprise of my artistic life,” he explained, when he won 'Best of Show' for a body of work at the 2009 Southeast Regional Juried Fine Arts Show.
He noted a parallel between artistic expression and the process of psychotherapy, stating, “Following the impulses arising from one's creative spirit is a process which fuels psychological recovery. In psychotherapy, you must learn to listen for feelings, impulses, and memories which arise from within, even from dark corners, rather than discarding such unwelcome feelings into a disowned subconscious junkyard. You must also learn to access the wise, loving, and creative side of yourself to heal the most damaged parts of self,” he said. “So it is when conceiving rectangles of reality, whether they be photographs or stained glass panels. Following feelings, impulses and spontaneous associations down the rabbit hole leads to inspirations which can then be tempered by the dictates of realistic and conventional thinking.”
In his photography Chandler engages his keen eye for what is waiting to be discovered, and invites his audience into an experience he has named Aha! reactions.
To do this he sometimes zooms his lens inside the boundaries of an object, removing perceptual cues from the observer. Other times, he uses water or mirrored surfaces to achieve the desired degree of distortion. “I enjoy the distortions of reality offered by reflections, via puddles, chrome, tubas, mirrored skyscrapers, or whatever,” he noted. “When possible, I like to invite you into an ‘Aha!’ experience, where you find yourself wondering what in the world you are gazing at, but only for a few seconds, before your perplexity yields to surprise.”
Another target of his camera is The Micro World. These are shots with a macro lens that bring the smallest of creatures details of everyday life into clear display for the viewer. “I enjoy the small world,” he said, “the unnoticed details of life that delighted us as children, as well as the small gems that a macro lens can bring into focus.”
In another vein, he noted that "Unusual combinations are also intriguing, whether it be a dragonfly on a string of barbed wire, a lottery billboard intruding over a graveyard, or ice encased azaleas in February,” he explained. “Conventional shots can be beautiful or inspiring; atypical ones can be arresting, perplexing, and convey unexpected emotions.
Ed has also branched out into stained glass which allows him even more freedom for expression, in a more painstaking art form. He has been creating portraits over the last few years, using geodes for eyes, ears, and mouths. One is a representation of Katrina, with swirling white and black glass for the face, Mardi Gras doubloons for earrings, and jugular wound covered with a FEMA band aid.
In the Glass Gallery in his online photo website, one can find portraits of various icons who require only a first name, Pablo, and Albert, with an atomic blast rising from his face. “I guess I can’t escape my 60s political angle,” he said. The glass work gives him the chance to creatively work without language. He finds it a “good getaway from the abstract, verbal, and social world of psychotherapy,” he said, “escaping to the more tangible, visual world of glass.”
“You know you’re in a more concrete world when if you make a mistake, you bleed.”
To see Ed's full gallery of photos and stained glass works go to www.ahaphotoandglass.com.
Front Row Seat © Ed Chandler It was sunrise on New Year’s Day morning, when Ed came across this scene. He took 200 shots that morning, he said, but this was the very first, as he was crossing the railroad tracks at the levee in New Orleans. See his “Cityscapes New Orleans” Gallery with 94 views of the Big Easy, at his website.
Holy Veil © Ed Chandler A Baltimore park revealed through the open spaces in a waterfall, frozen in 1/3200th of a second.
Streaming Leaf © Ed Chandler The beauty of Maine in October was captured by Ed as he spotted this maple leaf floating toward him in a “tiny, pebble strewn stream.”
Bridge Quake © Ed Chandler “I was traveling around Baltimore with my daughter, admiring this bridge, but I couldn’t find the right perspective until we were on the way to the airport for my flight back to Florida. I spotted the bridge reflected in a mirrored skyscraper and yelled “Stop!”
Silver Nitrate Cubed © Ed Chandler The photo is one Houston skyscraper reflected in another, at sunrise. “You can play with and adjust colors and hues in these shots as if they were virtual abstract paintings,” Ed explained.
Geaux Tigers! © Ed Chandler “What set of reflection shots by an LSU grad would be complete without a game day shot into the mouth of a tuba?”
Stained Glass Katrina © Ed Chandler “I had my doubloons from many a Mardi Gras, my sadness for my friends in New Orleans, and my outrage at the Bushwhacker and FEMA to inspire this one.”
Footprint © Ed Chandler Ed was writing a psych eval at his dining room table when he heard rustling noises from a plant he’d brought inside for the winter. He grabbed his camera when he saw this chameleon poke his nose over the red-leafed edge, for this shot.
This article is part of a historical newspaper archive. Read the original issue for its original layout, photographs and graphics.