Kyla Basher Creative

Ben Moon is one of those infectious people whose talents implore you to stand back and a take a good look at yourself. And I don’t even know him personally. I know his work, his videos, and some pieces of his personal story that he has shared publicly.

If you want a real tear jerker…check out his tribute video to Denali his best friend and the fuzzy one on the left featured above.

I discovered Ben for myself through Patagonia magazines and literature. I paid attention to his work and realized he was an Oregonian, an adventurer, and just as attached to his dog as I am to mine. His photographs taken of surfers underwater, or portraits, or life were all wonderfully colorful and genuine. Ben Moon’s connection to the things he photographs is what really helped me to go ahead and at least try taking photography a little more seriously.

In my own work’s most raw form I get just as much joy and fascination from spending time out of doors adventuring as I do with people. I think this is why understanding the formula of impassioned activities that makeup our world was so difficult to unearth for me personally. While everyone else I knew seemed to flow on one side or the other embracing linear career paths and in-place lives or total wanderlust with no plan or worry…I felt chaotic and awkward in my pursuits of multiple ideas and attempts to combine my skill sets and feel purposeful.

It became confusing as to why creating a livelihood from two things so intertwined as human emotion and our environments (two concepts both linear and artistic) might not come together for me. Ben Moon enjoys that same fascination with humanity and exploration as I do and I thank him for standing as a fantastic role model in the acceptance of asking our right brains and left brains to dance together more often.

Regardless if I ever get to meet him myself, I like knowing he’s in the same part of the world as me, and we plus hundreds upon hundreds of other Oregonians are skipping and jumping and running and swimming all over the place to try and squeeze the ever-living essence out of life in an attempt to create a bit of magic wherever we go and however far we go into our futures.

So cheers to Ben Moon – MOONHOUSE for fostering a bit of contagious magic. Gratitude dude.