Originally from Bellaire, Texas, David Lee Thompson has resided across the Lone Star State, within Western Europe, and more recently, in the back of a Ford Explorer. He was a high school dropout, hippy, soldier, corporate manager, public education teacher, and university instructor before embarking on a photographer’s path. Back in 2002, after 18 years in education, a life-crisis led Thompson on a journey throughout the Western United States where he had hitchhiked as a teenager and camped with his own family later in life. Traveling alone this time, he felt compelled to share the moments of beauty, serenity, and pieces of Americana he rediscovered along the way. Thompson began documenting the experience through uncomplicated picture taking. The color photos that resulted became his journal of a sometimes humorous exploration and a definite self-discovery of how the simple things in life can complete us as humans. The collection of pictures developed into distinct categories that he premised with the word “Just” to emphasize the simplicity of each.

Some of those categories include: “Just…Advertisements, Angels, Animals, Antenna Balls, Art, Autumn, Barns, Bars, Bathtubs, Beaches, Birds, Boats, Boots, Bridges, Camping Spots, Canyons, Cars, Churches, Clouds, Coast Lines, Cow Stuff, Dead, Deserts, Dogs Driving, Fake Animals, Fake People, Flags, Fences, Flowers, Forests, Gates, Houses, Leaves, License Plates, Lighthouses, Machines in the Air, Mailboxes, Motels and Hotels, Mountains, Movie Theatres, National Parks, Objects, Old Stuff, Outhouses, People, Places, Plants, Reflections, Rivers, Rocky, Sexual in Nature, Scenery, Signs, Sunrises and Sunsets, Trees, Unusual Objects, Unusual Stuff, Water Falls, Water Towers, Weathervanes, Windmills and Windows.”

The list continues to grow and Thompson continues to travel and capture part of life through pictures. He opened a fine art photography gallery to display his and other Texas photographer’s work in Wimberley, TX in 2003 but soon found himself roaming and enjoying the uniqueness of the Southeast United States. The road takes him back to the West for the spring and summer of 2004 and maybe back to the Texas Hill Country by winter. He tends to stop only when life’s financial gas gage hits empty.

Of his photography, Thompson says, “There is absolutely nothing extraordinary about my pictures! Very little forethought on the complexities and profession of taking photographs is present when I take a picture. I don’t want to produce anything pretentious or altered. Rather, I try to capture art as it already exists, be it natural or human made. My photographs reflect the ubiquitous simple things, available for all of us to see when we take time in our life to notice. Picture taking brings me great joy and I hope that the results inspire others to take another way home, with open eyes. Life is not good. It’s Great!”