PHOTOSYNTHESIS

Living within one's means is an individual (and ethical and spiritual) responsibility.

I learned economy of means from when I was a kid, when my imagination (in science, electronics, chemistry, natural history) reached far beyond my limited material and economic means and resources. You use imagination to make what you have fill your world.

Living with what I can do with limited/limiting energy and material resources has created a conserving ecological presence in my photography, music, and writing.

Photosynthesis is the name I have given to my efforts to create photographs, music, and writing using solar energy. I have assembled a portable (fits in a backpack) system of folding 30w solar panels (2), camera battery chargers (12V), rechargeable storage batteries (a variety), and cables to provide camera battery recharging, computer power and battery recharging, and USB power for synthesizers and other devices.

Creating photographs, music, and writing with solar energy collected from home, and from some other places, become photon exchanges - sunlight to pictures, music, and words. Photonic embodiment.

With the available (and affordable) portable solar panels, solar charged batteries provides limited working time power for some of my creative endeavors. In some cases that works fine, but in others the charge times for batteries are much longer than the discharge times for some needs and uses.

Solar charging (multiple) camera batteries works fine, but less so for computer photo storage, composition, and editing (Photoshop) depending upon imaging needs and computer usage. Writing works well on a computer with solar recharged batteries.

Portable battery-powered synthesizers, small MIDI keyboards, small portable battery-powered instrument amps (a pair), and hardware audio interfaces for music composition and/or live performance with computer audio software (ProTools, Ableton Live, Reason, Reaktor, and others) work only for limited amounts of time depending upon usage.

More recently, iPad-based software synthesizers (some using a small MIDI keyboard) for composition, recording, and performance work fine with solar recharging.