A clenched fist raised in the air freezees the crowd for a split second before they explode as the battle cry rings and the beat drops. In this same moment of focus everything dissappears and all you remember is the conductor, our vocalist, as euphoria erupts and the crowd goes wild. I was the official photographer for a small outdoor venue. From stage to ground, I kept moving and looking for powerful moments of different perspectives. Shot on a Nikon D300. Circa 2010. 2550x3840. www.dougf.ca

Order and Chaos are strange bedfellows. They are more entangled than we wish, leaving a fine line to divide them.

As I relax on a chair in the quiet warmth of window light, I am brought to the realization that what I sit on are just atoms arranged in sequence to create what we know as a chair. The same is true for everything in the universe.

The planet I am on, born out of chaos, is spinning at about 1000 mph near the equator while orbiting at 67,000 mph around a white dwarf burning ball of gas powered by nuclear fusion, all while our solar system is orbitng within the Milky Way galaxy at 514,000 mph. Insane as those numbers are, it still takes over 225 million years to make one revolution within the galaxy. Oh wait… add that our galaxy is moving through the universe at a rate of 1,200,000 mph due to expansion. Yet for all this chaos, gravity brings order to our experience.

Join me for a moment and ponder — what if chaos would replace order? If the atoms of this chair disband, even if for a microsecond — would I fall into the chair and become part of it? How would the atoms I am made of fuse together with the atoms of the chair when order returns? Would I still be me? If the planet stopped spinning, would the chaos of that event create winds near 1000 mph and walls of water that would be civilization altering?

It’s just water rushing over a ledge creating a chaotic wash. Right?

Gone is the chaos of intersecting lines, mega towers and transmission yards. All that stands in front of me is a simple country road hydro pole, made of wood, carrying 3 lines. This is what I grew up with on the Canadian Prairies. Absent of urbanization, this is one of the few constructs that kept us connected.

Simplicity. Symmetry. Power. Freedom.

It was a cold morning when I captured this last winter. The trees were covered in hoar frost. The sky was perfect white. The air was still. But in this moisture rich cold, my sensor fought to not fog up as my hands battled the elements as I adjusted my settings. Converted to black and white and then inverted into a high contrast finished piece of photographic pixel, this was born. No complex patterns and endless perspectives, just simple peace. Shot on a Sony A7R5. Circa 2023.

The sun is searing everything in its path this afternoon beyond this sanctuary of glass, chrome and leather. Within here I sit back and close my eyes in the cold stream of air and listen to the idle of the engine. I try to block the light, but it has become too intense, blinding my vision as my pupils lose the battle. Squinting, I search for my shades -- it's time to ride. Shot on a Nikon Z8. 3000x2000. Circa 2024. 1/1 Edition.

The side light leak and glow by the shifter are not after-capture processed. They are in camera effects of changing my lens on a +45c high humidity day and the sensor began fogging up, creating this unique, never to be recreated look naturally.