29 Oct Featured CPAC Member: Rich Caldwell
Rich Caldwell
Member Since: 2021
We’re delighted to showcase yet another exceptional talent within our member community with our final Featured Member of 2024. Rich Caldwell is a proud alumnus of our Veterans Workshop Series, a six-month program of advanced photography courses provided to participants free of charge. Caldwell credits this education for spurring his love of photographic storytelling and building his confidence to share his work with others. His work spotlights the beauty of self-discovery and change, along with the exploration of less traveled paths in life. His continued dedication to pursuing photography since completing the program reflects CPAC’s commitment to supporting artistic growth among our members.
ABOUT THE WORK
By Rich Caldwell
“Some beautiful paths can’t be discovered without getting lost”. This quote by Erol Ozan captures much of what my photography is about, discovering new things off the beaten path. I am new at this. I have always love talking photos, but never had the time to invest in improving my skills or knowledge of photography thinking it was just too much to learn. Most of my work until the past few years I kept to myself, rarely sharing anything with anyone thinking it was not good enough. The CPAC Veteran’s program changed that for me. They showed me things I never considered, like telling a compelling story and not just framing up a good shot. It gave me confidence to move on to doing more challenging work and investing more in my education. Work travels gave me the opportunity to explore places most people don’t get a chance to visit. I would plan out popular photography places to shoot, yet finding myself shooting things away from these sites, places I thought were more interesting that had a story. I would think, there are a million shots of this bridge, but no one ever gets to see what’s under it. From that I learned you don’t need to go far from home to find great photographic story telling. I have not really settled in on a single theme for my portfolio. If there was a theme, it would be the path of the less traveled. I have always been a lifelong learner, now trying different categories of photography to push myself to be a better visual storyteller. I get inspiration from others works all the time it opens my imagination. What I have done in the past are themes and projects around western activities, patriotic events, aviation, nature, street photography and just now playing with architecture and portraits. For me it’s the journey that’s more important to me than the destination, it is there that I have often found the best stories to tell.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Rich Caldwell, a native of Colorado, graduated from Metropolitan State University in 1980 and went into the Air Force. He spent 23 years in the Air Force with assignments in Montana, Germany (7 years), Virginia, Florida, the Pentagon and Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs. He was a communications, computer, command and control officer with squadron command at Hurlburt Field and his last assignment as a Space Crew Commander in Cheyenne Mountain. He got his master’s degree from the University of Southern California and is an avid USC football fan. Following the Air Force, Rich worked with Northrop Grumman for 19 years as a capture manager, chief engineer and competitive intelligence analyst. He worked at Viasat for two years helping them set up a competitive intelligence function. He now consults other companies on competitive intelligence with his own firm part time and is spending his time working on his photography skills. He is a pretty average guitar player, likes to travel in his RV looking for his next photo opportunity and helps out volunteering wherever he can. He gained a lot of photo skills volunteering at his church taking portraits and photos of confirmation and first communion. He has displayed his work at the VA hospital, the Central Parks Open Studios and has other events he is scheduled for. He is married to Maureen Caldwell, 43 years! Has two Children, Patrick and Colin and three grandchildren.