“I’m a traditionalist,” announced the e-mail message after I posted my latest photographic experiment. “You should do what you like, I respect that, but I like the pictures you were taking just fine, and I don’t know why you need to change.” That was not exactly a rave review.

She was not alone, although I got a bunch of compliments also. But her question stuck in my mind. I wanted to think about it.

A “traditionalist” is defined as a person who supports the established customs and beliefs of his or her society or group and does not want to change them.

In many native or third-world cultures, change is endemic, supported, and accepted.

In our culture, which is rife with change, things that are new often make people uneasy. Older people in particular – me too, sometimes –  miss the simpler, more personal, and allegedly coherent life they once knew.

I remember, for instance, when editors spoke with writers in person and didn’t merely use e-mail to communicate. I miss that, I will never get used to having an editor I’ve never seen or spoken with.

I think it is difficult for anyone over 14 to fully grasp the nature of much technological change, so much of it requires motor skills, cognitive responses, and technological knowledge we don’t have.

The rest of us are dependent on them or people like them, to get us through. I hate being dependent on other people for the details of my life.

It is too simple to define people as either “traditionalists” or advocates of change.

We are more complicated, and there is a lot of ground in between the two.

A brilliant mentor of mine, both in photography and writing, told me once that I was an intellectual, something I have never called myself and that no teacher or friend has ever called me.

People who write about dogs and animals are not generally considered to be intellectuals.

When I was thinking about “the traditionalists” and my values about change, I remembered what this man said and looked up the definition of “intellectual” tonight: -“an intellectual, according to Wikipedia, “is a person who engages in critical thinking and reading, research, and human self-reflection about society.”

Well, that’s pretty close to me, although I don’t plan to describe myself in that way.

But this matters because intellectuals are notorious for embracing change. So are creatives.

My photography, and to some extent, my writing, pushes me to consider where I stand in my own mind. Do I really like change? Or am I just pretending? A little more than a decade ago, I tore my life apart and put it back together again.

A psychotherapist told me he had never seen a person in his late 60’s undertake so much change. I was surprised to hear it. I was glad I did it. It brought a flood of good things into my life.

To me, creativity is change. It is all about change. And what kind of photographer would I be if I never changed, even as photography is being revolutionized almost daily: digital, cellphone, PhotoShop, and now, AI?

But I know this change makes some people uneasy, I hear from them all the time. These are not social media trolls. They are good and decent people who are uncomfortable with change.

Photography has been re-invented continuously ever since the Chinese poked holes in paper boxes to create pinhole photography thousands of years ago.

Matthew Brady could not have even imagined the changes in photography since he took those grainy black and white images of the Civil War with his black box.

When I stop growing and experimenting, that will be the first death of me. Yet the pace of change in our society – especially culture and technical change –  has been painful, challenging, and difficult for many people, and for me.

Is this simply what all humans are like? Am I suffering from change a mental disorder or compulsion? Or is it just creative? Am I slipping into Old Fartism?

I don’t know for sure. My lust for change has hurt a lot of people over time, including my daughter, my first wife, many of my friends.

Change is not automatically healthy, nor is it necessarily creative. Sometimes it can just be destructive.

According to the dictionary, a “traditionalist”  idea, argument, or organization supports the established customs and beliefs of a society or group, rather than modern ones. Traditionalism is a school of social and cultural ideology, a movement that fights change and preaches “absolute Truth and infinite Presence.”

In one sense, political scientists say this issue – traditionalists versus advocates of change – is at the heart of the political turmoil tearing up the country. Half the country seems to want to stop societal, cultural, and racial change; half the country wants more change.

The historians say this is the unfinished and unresolved business of the great Civil War of the 1860s. Most of us aren’t using guns this time.

Whenever I change my photography, I find myself in the middle of this conversation in a good and even healthy way. To me, the issue is personal and revealing.

I used three different photography editing systems on the Yellow Barn photograph above – Topaz, Luminar 4, and  Apple Photos (whose photo functions are notoriously weak)  as a storage and transmission system. They are all new to me, they all force me to think differently about my photos, the things I see, and how I wish to present them.

I keep reassuring people who message me that I will be sparing in the use of this new technology, my photos will look the same, even as some of them look very different. Am I reassuring them or me? Maybe I’m just avoiding owning what I’m doing?

They insist they aren’t criticizing me, and their messages are gentle and thoughtful, yet why would they be messaging me at all telling me they are “traditionalists” if they weren’t unhappy with my change?

When Apple abandoned my Aperture photo program, I was upset.

I didn’t want it to change.

I think I even told an Apple adviser that I was a traditionalist. He said he didn’t think so, or I would not be trawling for new editing programs.

Aperture was the only photo program I had ever used; I felt attached to it; it was excruciating to lose it, it was a part of my creative conscience, a partner.

The changeover triggered two months of anxiety and frustration. Now, I find that I can be more creative and learn more about photography than I could possibly have learned if I’d stayed with Aperture, which I very much wanted to do.

A closed-door has opened.

While I was clinging to Aperture, time had passed it by. Aperture had become a dinosaur, but I was too close and too fearful to see it, so I hung on well past the time I should have changed.

I am no 14-year-old game player; I have a lot of years of habit to overcome when I change. It was hard.

As many of you know, I’ve only been taking photographs for the past ten years of my life, but photography has become as important to me as writing, I love the way the two complement one another.

And even I sell my pictures once in a while, although I give most of them away for free.

Photography helped to bring my blog to life and keep it there, and it has helped me to see the world in a new way. It has also nourished and expanded my sense of creativity.

I am always looking for new ways to present my photographs, to understand new photographic technologies – especially AI –  and to use them to tell my story to the world in hopefully fresh and challenging ways.

In a sense, I view each photograph as a painting; as a story.

Every image is a personal and individual act of creation. I only take a photo when my heart tells me to; my pictures are all about emotion.

I am always experimenting.

I got an infrared camera, a full-frame color Canon (“the beast”), plunged into iPhone photography, bought a monochrome camera refitted for black and white only,  am experimenting with pinpoint photography and Lomography’s new art lenses and their distinctive Russian glass.

These new editing technologies –  Lightroom, Topaz, Luminar –   are transforming photography once again, as the iPhone and Photoshop did (I don’t use PhotoShop) or as of now, Lightroom.

This experience is, in a way, the story of my life. As a writer, I worked for magazines, newspapers, television, the Internet, book publishers, and have finally landed with my blog and my photos.

I was always running to stay ahead of the curb, to avoid the corporatization of every job I loved, and to feed the creative beast screaming for good inside of me.

I was also always running because I was always scared.

But for me, “landing” isn’t the end, it’s just another beginning. I am always on fire for ways to reinvent and challenge myself, even when I am conflicted about the changes, and terrified of some.

Every time I change, the “traditionalists” are there, gently reminding me that people love what they know, and I should be cautious about unmooring them. I hear them, I do.

I love my big old black Canon camera; it has taken beautiful photos for me. But I can’t use only it all the time; it doesn’t do all of the new things I want to learn and share. It can’t take the kind of stark Yellow Barn photo I can publish now.

Some traditionalists catch the bug.

I have a creative friend I admire who told me several times she didn’t care for my Infrared photos, and then went out and bought an Infrared camera and is taking some beautiful images.

I knew she couldn’t resist over time; she is an intellectual.

This week, as I began to post my AI digital experiments, I got some very polite but unimpressed responses. People look at those photos and either say “great, way to go,” or “I like it the way it is, why are you changing it?” The traditionalists aren’t coming along for the ride.

The questions they ask – why am I doing it? – Are always good questions deserving of an answer. But the answer isn’t simple; it speaks to who I am much more than what is photography in 2019? And the question also speaks to the kind of people we want to be. I know well by now that I need to answer to me, not to them or anybody else.

That’s the path to fulfillment.

I need to say that the messages are never offensive,  cruel, or offensive; they are honest and compelling. They sometimes make me sad, but I have no cause to be angry or take offense. Nobody has to like what I like or want to do what I do. Sometimes I want to write back and say, “wait, I’m scared too, just like you,” but I don’t.

I’ve lived with fear all of my life, and I know this one thing: if you bow down to it, it will suck on you till you’re empty and dry, like a marrow bone with a big dog.

I notice now that in almost every one of these messages, the sender refers to him or her self as a “traditionalist.”

That is one who isn’t looking to change.

Their messages make sense to me. I can empathize. Why did Apple have to dump my Aperture program?

We grow safe and comfortable with what we know, what we don’t know is often jarring and even disturbing.

I think the good news for me now is that I now know where I stand. But you know what?

I was never on the fence.