Pulled by a Vision

I was 20 when I first recall being pushed by enough pain to feel the pull of my vision.

I spent most of my high school years working in a photography darkroom. I managed to take nine classes to gain access to practice shooting and printing: Photo 1, Photo 2, Journalism x2, Yearbook x2, TA’ing, before setting up my own darkroom in the janitor’s closet. Our art instructor, Mr. Remington, sought permission for me to sign up for his class but use my time translating assignments into something photographic.

You might say I was obsessed.

On bad advice, I was told, “Never turn your hobby into a career because then you’ll have to do it and hate it.” Laughable now, but I was miserable at the time... What else could I do? At 17, I watched most of my friends leave for college, seemingly certain of where they were going.

My failed attempt at being a foreign exchange student left me pondering. Each day off, I would pack up my camera and flee east to The Wallowas or west to the Oregon Coast. Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time” nearly wore out in my tape deck on those drives, while I fantasized about shooting for National Geographic.

I loved photographing nature, traveling, and experiencing other cultures. I imagined selling my photography as Limited Edition wall art to fund more travel, all to perpetuate my collections.

I moved to Portland, OR, at 21, certain that someone needed to fill the void left by Ansel Adams... Why not me? If you haven’t already, look up the lyrics to “Big Time.”
Despite my timid introversions, I knew how to dream larger than the life I was experiencing.

I stayed in food retail for another 10 years. Every store Fred Meyer gave me to manage experienced sales increases that defied their history. I was great at it, but that pain came back, and the vision began to pull again.

At 31, I just said, “F*ck it. If I can do this well at something I don’t really enjoy, how well would I do at something I am passionate about?” Call me a slow learner, but in the meantime, I learned to manage people, forecast sales, and read P&L reports. I had unknowingly fed the other hemisphere of my brain—the one it would take for me to survive a major recession, a brain injury, and COVID.

During the COVID shutdown, I discovered I was wired for uncertainty. I was finishing projects and going on walks with my audiobooks. Nine out of ten people I passed lifted their masks and looked away, as if eye contact would spread the virus.

Studio B Gallery Photography & Gallery

While isolation affected everyone differently, I used the silent period to return to the only movie theater still open—the one between my ears.

While others wrote books, binged Tiger King, or mastered bread-making, I was building websites and reconfiguring my studio for the next phase of my photography career. One that I had put on hold for nearly 40 years.

After building a site for www.GrahamSalisbury.com to feed into a new painting site, www.SalisburyPaintings.art, I realized that I was acting out on my own dream while serving his. I decided it was time to market and sell my Limited Edition photography.

I offered to represent Graham Salisbury’s painting hobby under the guise of www.DoubleInfinity.art. Representing other artists was part of my grand vision when I opened Prints Charming Photography & Framing in 1996.

I set up www.gratitudaholic.com (a.k.a. briangeraths.com) for my writing and fine art photography, also represented by Double Infinity Art. I believed I needed this new brand to separate from my portrait business, when in fact—it’s what I had been doing all along: creating fine art photography, except now I was posing people in front of those scenes.

As of 9/12/24, I registered Studio B Photography & Gallery to espouse them both. My thriving commercial photography and portrait studio keeps its name, and Double Infinity Art is simplified to “Gallery.”

In the coming weeks, Double Infinity will be integrated into www.StudioBpdx.com, allowing me to reduce the number of sites to manage while sharing both forms of my work (people & fine art) with all clients and visitors.

When I asked my wife Cathy to marry me, it was no small thing. I was asking her to leave her life in New Zealand. I gave her two great commitments: to stay healthy enough to live to 104 so we could share 60 years and to fly to New Zealand as often as necessary to stay connected to her family.

Leaving everything to be here with me weighs heavily on me—more than I usually let on. While hosting a Lake Oswego Chamber meeting at my studio (9/13/24), I was sharing the business’s evolution when I suddenly lost it. Cathy sacrificed a great deal to be here and contributed tremendous support for me to see this come to fruition.

Though my official business date was 8/1/96, I prefer to celebrate the birth of the idea. Were it not for those daydreaming road trips that began in 1984, I might never have fed the vision that would one day pull me from pain.

Today, I celebrate a brand-new business that stemmed from a forty-year-old idea. As Peter Gabriel kept reminding me... “I’m on my way, I’m making it, huh!..” Though much of the song mocks materialism, it inspired me to think big. Obviously, at my own pace...