Welcome

Hi, welcome to my Flickr stream and thank you for your visit. My name is Michael Cessna and the photography bug bit me when I was a young teenager from Kansas visiting Colorado Springs, CO; I had been given our family's Kodak 126 camera to document the trip. Very quickly, I fell in love with Colorado...and photography. And several years later I received a Canon AE-1 for graduation and quickly used my income to add lenses, filters, and accessories; studying diligently along with way. In the days of film it was very expensive to buy film and have it processed, so each shot had to be thought out carefully and executed as perfectly as possible. Composition, manual focus, manual exposure, and mastering DOF were topics I studied very seriously. Photography has been a great friend and passion.

Photography Led Me

Photography eventually led to a BS in Printing Technology (today called “Digital and Print Media Technology”), which eventually led me to the graphic arts industry, where I fell in love with lithography and became a lithographer (stripper). As technology changed from the manual art of lithography to the digital world, including digital photography, I chose to study computer science on my own...because I saw the future and wanted to operate one of the high end digital Unix workstations of the day (having computer experience would be a plus). Eventually, I was fortunate to be selected to work in the digital department of a great printing company, where I operated a high end digital Unix workstation...putting together all kinds of printed materials and being educated by the exceptional digital photographs I worked with along the way. The inspiration from that computer work and my continued studying of computer science eventually led to my current position as a principal software engineer, where I design, create, enhance, and repair software. It's been an interesting trip over the years, and my love of photography led me in every positive direction.

Flickr Genesis, Exodus, and Rebirth

After film gave nearly complete way to digital...my wife bought me a Nikon 5100 for Christmas in 2012. Eventually, she and other photographers inspired me to participate in what is known as a “Project 365”, which is where a photographer captures a new photograph every single day for 365 days. My Project 365 began August 1, 2013 and ended July 31, 2014. It was a great experience to complete my Project 365; however, my extremely busy work as a software engineer during the second half of my project made it incredibly difficult to capture a compelling image by midnight each day, but I persevered...though wasn't able to post every day because it was so difficult to keep up with the Flickr social obligations associated with a 365. It was an exceptional experience and my passion for photography never waned. Eventually, work got too busy in 2015 and I stopped posting photographs...but never stopped clicking. Cancer also intervened in 2016 along with incredibly stressful events that followed...but photography was still my passionate friend and I captured many photographs during this time. It wasn't until December 7, 2019 that I decided to start posting again, using as inspiration a poem I wrote as a passionate teenager (broken up in 11 parts); it starts with: This Dream and ends with: My Heart Remembers. I've got thousands of photographs in my queue...and my hope is to keep clicking and posting, though it is still difficult to keep up with Flickr social obligations (the ones I place on myself). In order to keep myself inspired, I decided to associate as many photographs as possible with the topics of friendship, romance, and love. These are topics that have always inspired me...and no doubt, many millions of others as well.

Flickr Spotify Playlists

If you are interested, you can listen to one of my Flickr related playlists on Spotify. These playlists are composed of songs associated with photographs I've published to Flickr since December 25, 2019:

Flickr (All)

Flickr (My Favorites)

Flickr (Instrumental Favorites)

All of my Spotify public playlists.

Copyright

All of the images in my Flickr stream have the following copyright: Copyright © 2013-2020 Michael Cessna. All rights reserved. The images may not be used for any purpose without my personal express written consent. However, don't be afraid to ask; I've never turned anyone down for images destined for personal use.

Note: The poems of Victoria Erickson, referenced in many of my photographs, are used with the permission and are Copyright © Victoria Erickson.