Think about photography for a moment… Remember the little Kodak Instamatics, with the tiny film cartridges that I never seemed to have enough allowance money to buy. And then there was the trip to the FotoMat, which took even more allowance. Suffice it to say that I didn’t take many pictures on my own when I was growing up.

That’s not to say that I wasn’t IN a lot of photos as a kid. My mom had a photography hobby and my uncle Don was about as close to a professional photographer as you could get while still working as a nurse. I still love to look at all of those pictures of vacations, my horses, my family and all those other things people thought important enough to risk a single frame of film on.

Then came that interesting moment in time when the disposable camera came into play, which also coincided with the birth of my daughter.What could be simpler? I mean, the disposable cameras were in the checkout aisles at all the grocery stores and relatively inexpensive. Suddenly I was at the photo counter every few weeks dropping off that camera to trade for a packet of photos and negatives.

Then the miracle of digital photography made its way to the masses and suddenly everyone is a photographer. I think that is wonderful, as photography is one of the easiest and most expressive forms of art… a literal extension of one’s eye. It gives each of us a glimpse into the vision of someone’s world in the most elemental way.

I enjoy taking pictures, but I’ve never felt that I was overly inspired to do so. A pretty tree, a sweeping vista, a breathtaking sunset…. I take a photo because I feel like I should. It’s just what we do with the technology that we have and makes it so easy. However, I recently became fully, overwhelmingly inspired to take photos…. and I did.

Huanchaco, Peru inspires me. Greatly inspires me. And what it is about Huanchaco that inspires me is not what I had expected. The doors and windows here inspire me. The brightly varnished wood, the crumbling plaster covered bamboo, the rusting wrought iron, the faded ads painted on doors hanging from broken hinges.

I loved the process of taking these photos. I loved feeling an impulse to do so. I love that there’s so much more Peru to inspire me.