When Don Sucher retired six years ago, he made a goal for himself.
Like most people entering that new phase in life, Sucher wanted something to keep him busy on a daily basis so armed with his camera, he set out to create one share-worthy image for his Facebook page every day.
From his Peterborough home, he would take long walks and when something caught his eye, Sucher would snap a photo. He’d return to his home computer and get to work to create something that showed what his eyes saw in the outdoor scene.
While his goal was to produce one image a day, Sucher said he misses a day every couple of weeks, but there are also times where he posts two or three in a day, so over the course of the last six years he estimates he’s posted close to 2,000 images to Facebook. Now with his extensive background in photography, Sucher could just take the original image and put it out there for people to see, but he wanted this project to be unique and show off his creativity.
He uses Photoshop, Affinity and couple other programs to take his photos and put his own unique spin on them.
“Don’t think of it as photography, think of it that I’m painting with light,” Sucher said.
Some health issues over the years (one of the main reasons Sucher retired when he did) have limited his ability to walk the miles on end he used to, so Sucher is always on the lookout for something around his 29-acre Peterborough property.
“I’ll look out the window and say I’ve got to grab my camera,” Sucher said.
It’s all about the light and how it catches a flower, group of trees or one of the many buildings on his property.
“I like early morning and occasionally the evening because of the light,” Sucher. “It may last just 30 seconds and then it’s gone.”
Sucher usually will go right to his computer and sometimes put a couple hours into reproducing what his brain processed at the moment he pushing the button.
“But sometimes what I end up with is not what I saw or what the camera saw,” Sucher said.
Sucher went to film school and worked in the industry for a while, but didn’t like the business side of things. He ended up in Boston, making the move from New York with his band and got a job as an an imaging specialist at a Harvard teaching hospital. He enjoyed his work, but it was mostly centered around the science of imaging.
“I realized I lost my love of seeing and it became all science and the art disappeared,” he said.
So in retirement, Sucher looked to regain that creative aspect of his life – and put it out there for anyone to enjoy.
“I’ve found myself very fortunate to end up in good places,” Sucher said. “Because wherever nature is there’s beauty because nature creates beauty.”
It started out as a project for himself, but Sucher quickly realized that his friends on Facebook enjoyed what he was doing. Over the years, some of the images have been lost on old computers and wishes he had done a better job of cataloging his adventure.
“It’s the creation, that’s the joy,” he said. “Because like so much on life, we don’t know how it happens.”
Sucher recently created a Facebook group to share his work. To join and see his latest work, search Don Sucher – My Image of the Day.