“To be curious is to be alive, to sense the wonder in things great and small.”

Welcome to Stillpoint — The Alfred S Jackson Collection.

The Katherine Edelman quote above has been with me for a long time as it was on a poster that hung in my bedroom when I was a teenager. It kept reminding me to stay curious and look for the unexpected. Capturing the wonders we pass each day on film also started back in high school and continues today in my retirement. I recently started sharing some of these images to create a peaceful alternative to social media’s divisive and often destructive content. Today, my hope is that this collection becomes an oasis for peaceful reflection — a stillpoint from the restlessness of today.

My parents and grandparents were all city folk, with origin stories from places like New York City and Madison, Wisconsin. But somehow, I grew up on a small Wisconsin farm in Vienna Township just north of Madison weeding strawberry fields, picking asparagus and cleaning hog pens. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with my dad being a student of Aldo Leopold at the University of Wisconsin, but that’s a whole different story for another day.

A lifelong love of travel was instilled by my parents and has taken me to 49 U.S. states and many parts of Canada, Mexico, Europe, and even one trip to Africa. Today, Sue and I still enjoy tent camping, exploring national parks, and stargazing by a campfire. Skiing, sailing, hiking, kayaking, biking, and reading are all favorite pastimes. But our kids and grandkids are our greatest joy. Adventure is a part of daily life in our family.

I am using a Canon R5 full-frame professional mirrorless digital camera, replacing an old Canon A1 film camera which served me for many years. Captions for each post blends personal knowledge and stories with Google search references, often reflecting my interest in geology and history.

America is beautiful so I hope you can get out there and enjoy these wonderful locations for yourself. And the good news is your phone camera will often capture a great image, so it really is easy to start creating your own collection to help you reflect and remember.

Finally, after spending most of my life in ministry helping kids and adults navigate the mysteries of faith, I will leave you with this quote from Psalm 121, hoping Stillpoint helps you on your journey to find the gospel promise of love, joy and peace.

“I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.”

— Alfred Jackson

P.S. For my fellow photo nerds, a little more about photography… I shoot mostly in “M” manual mode, letting ISO float automatically for exposure. I fine-tune shutter speed and f-stop to control blur and depth of field, and process the RAW image in Adobe Lightroom, using a minimal level of Adaptive AI for true-color correction (i.e. to help navigate my red-green colorblindness). Lighting adjustments mostly include playing with shadow and highlight levels, and I do use the program’s dehazing filter, taking the place of physical polarizing lens filters which nowadays I only attach occasionally. My goal is always to bring out the most natural look that accurately represents the original scene or recreates the mood or feeling of the view. Panoramic and High Dynamic Range image merge is a fun exercise that I will apply when appropriate and I have taken enough overlay images to support this Lightroom function. The high-definition output of this work allows for awesome poster-size enlargements, and as such we occasionally print favorites on metal or canvas for personal enjoyment.