 My name is David Patton. When I started photography, I wanted to make art. But with bills to pay and a family to feed, I decided it would be better to be a working photographer than a starving artist. So I took a job as a photojournalist. 25 years and thousands of assignments later, it was time to go back to my first love. Come along as I follow my passion trying to create art that shows the essence of nature in a photograph. I'll be sharing my successes and my failures in hopes to inspire and educate. This is my journey. This is right in the edge. When I looked out the window this morning, there was fog. So I packed up my gear, grabbed my dog Nori and headed for the lake. And as it often happens, just about a mile before the lake, the fog had lifted. So I decided we'd just go ahead and take a walk anyway. I grabbed my camera bag, just in case I saw something to photograph. As we headed back to the car, I did see one composition I thought I might try to make. It wasn't a lot of photography and it was a nice walk. Today while on our daily walk, Nori and I walked past a leaf that I have photographed many times since it fell on a blackberry vine in the autumn. I thought I'd go ahead and make another photograph. I think this is becoming a project. I think the day it finally decomposes and make this way back to the soil, I'm going to miss seeing that leaf. Well today we've got the Nikon D5200 and the 85 millimeter. It's kind of cold. I'm hoping we might see some ice out here. Might make an abstract photo or something. Well I've gone and done something that might seem a bit irrational. I've pulled my YouTube channel out of the Google AdSense. I've basically demonetized my own channel. I know it seems kind of crazy. After all, a lot of channels are trying to get to that mark where they can monetize their channel. I've decided that that's not a good fit for me. I've been thinking about this for quite a while. It just didn't feel right having ads on my videos that I have no say over who I'm promoting. This channel is really to promote my own art. I shouldn't really be promoting something unless I feel good about promoting it and I don't like feeling like I have to press for subscribers so I can make more money on YouTube. I think that pulling out of that ad revenue makes it to where I don't really feel obligated to press for subscribers. I mean of course I want more subscribers but I don't feel like I'm going to be making videos just for that. Now I might make dumb videos at times but it won't be driven by trying to get subscribers. Now I can't guarantee that YouTube won't run ads on my videos. I think legally they can. But I'm hoping they won't. I think it's a much more enjoyable viewing experience if I don't have to have ads popping up during the videos even before and after the videos. It would be nice if we didn't have the ad there. I may not be able to control that but I've done everything that I can do to keep that from happening. My fingers across that the viewing experience will be improved and while I don't make money through ads on YouTube anymore I do still think it's important to subscribe and hit that like button. That's one of the biggest most important things you can do for me because it gets my workout for more eyes to see and that's why I'm here. I want people to see my photography. It's all about the photography. It's funny how things kind of craft to be photographed. Just this little leaf the way it plays with this fern down here walking by it said hey over here take my picture. Now I won't really know if it's going to be worth showing until I get back to the house but I'll probably show it anyway. But it's just funny how there's that little boy saying oh what's that? Is there something there? That might be a photograph. You just got to stop and take the photograph. I've got my camera set to 2500 ISO. That's pretty high for a crop sensor camera but I'm finding that these Nikon cameras their noise has a very grainy film-like look to them at least to my eye. Uncanny how much they look like film. This allows me to shoot handheld and get these kind of shots and I'm getting that aesthetic that I like. I've got a nice little frost this morning so it brings out the textures and some of these leaves and ferns. I really do like that about winter. These really cold mornings everything's got this little light rim around them. It's hard not to stop and take a photograph. Before we end this video I want to ponder a little bit on this abstract photo. Typically I'm not drawn to abstract photography unless it has some kind of subject matter something that a little bit recognizable. I'm rarely attracted to the just patterns like you would see in the sand. But what draws me to this image is the design of the image. When I was making the photo I could see the design. That big circle at the right hand third of the image. To me that almost looks like some kind of eyeball of a creature. I also like the diagonal lines that go through the frame. And if you look really close this image has thousands of little bubbles. Little white dots. I just find that extremely interesting. In fact I think I like this image enough that it might end up on the wall someday.