Herb Segars Photography Blog

Our son, Tom Segars, has entered five color photographs into the Creativity Expo 2011 being held at Raritan Valley Community College in North Branch, New Jersey. The Expo runs from July 9th through July 17th, 2011. This is the fourth year that the expo is being held and participation has increased threefold. The show features 35 artists, all of whom have survived either a traumatic or acquired brain injury. The Creativity Expo is a non-profit event designed to support the creative aspirations of persons with acquired or traumatic brain injury.

Tom entered five photographs. I loved them all. Tom’s favorite is this  one. This is Duke, a hound dog owned by one of the employees at the Brick Reservoir, Ryan Pharo.

This one was a favorite of some of the visitors and Expo participants, It was taken at Deep Cut Gardens in Monmouth County, New Jersey:

I loved the composition in this photo:

This was another favorite also taken at Deep Cut Gardens:

Deep Cut Gardens is located at 152 Red Hill Road, Middletown, NJ 07748. It is part of the Monmouth County Park System. Tom found some beautiful flowers in a field and made this image:

Tom has always had an interest in photography and one of my favorite shots of his is of a red-tailed hawk that he took at Spring Meadow Golf Course in Farmingdale, New Jersey. Tom was playing golf and saw two red-tail hawks land on the golf course. He rode his golf cart back to his car and got his camera. He got as close to the hawks as possible and then crawled on his belly until he was close enough to get the shot. One of the hawks moved out of the picture but he did get two great shots. Here are those two shots:

I really love these two shots and considering that they were taken with a point-and-shoot camera impresses me even more. The Creativity Expo 2011 is a wonderful happening for all of the people that participated. It is hard enough to recover from a brain injury so any avenue that they can find to express themselves is great.

One of the things that Tom and his Community Skills therapist, Nina, realized after a few photographic excursions to parks was that “ACCESSIBILITY” does not mean full accessibility everywhere. I talked with Tom and Nina and we talked about how great it would be for physically challenged individuals to share their experiences about accessibility in the places that they visit. It would help them decided if an “accessible” venue is correct for their situation. This could be an excellent idea for an accessibility blog. It is something that an organization like the Brain Injury Association of New Jersey might be interested in. If you have any thoughts on this, please post them here or post a link to the article on web sites that might undertake such a blog or build an accessibility database.