Photography Archives - Page 3 of 23 - Books by Eric Douglas

Home of the novel Cayman Cowboys

December 10, 2013 By Eric Douglas

In honor of the second edition of Cayman Cowboys, I thought I would post some photos from Grand Cayman and the location of most of the book, Sunset House. I took all of these photos in December 2011, with the exception of the one of me by the Mermaid. That was taken by Steve Barnett in 2004 or 2005. He was kind enough to give me a copy.

Check out yesterday’s blog on the second edition of the novel or read the book’s description. You can also get a copy in print or as a Kindle ebook directly from Amazon.

mermaid and me — With the Sunset House mermaid. By Steve Barnett

Beverly taking posing tips from the mermaid.

Waves over the iron shore. This is a scene from the book.

Celebrating the last Chemo session

November 19, 2013 By Eric Douglas

Resplendent in her Wonder Woman t-shirt (complete with cape) and her Wonder Woman necklace, Jean Hanna Davis was celebrating her last chemotherapy session yesterday by playing a few songs on her guitar.

Of course, this was just the last planned chemo session. The chemicals will be doing their job in her body for up to two weeks, continuing to kill the cancer cells that grew in her chest. After that, there will be tests and examinations. And if this series of relatively mild chemotherapy didn’t do its job, there will be more treatments.

The last treatment comes with its own share of doubts and worries.

“My gut tells me everything is okay. But I’m not sure I trust my gut. This is the part where it gets scary, when you’re done with treatment. You start thinking of all the things that could be wrong. What if this “mild” form of chemo wasn’t enough. That’s where you just have to trust your doctors, trust they know what they are doing, and have done the most they could do in the best possible manner. This is part where I start getting scared. You’re no longer actively treating.”

“When you get done with this; that is always the weird thing. You get done with this and you are done. You generally can’t get by to see them. You develop such a close relationship with these people, and they become your friends, and then you are done and you don’t see them anymore and they move on to their next patients.”

Later Jean had the chance to ask two of her oncology nurses about their perspective on their patients and they both said, while they are told not to get attached to their patients, they still do and their patients remain in their prayers for a long time afterward. They often get updates on patients from the doctors.

Jean sang Circle, a song she wrote for her grandmother Geraldine Loyola Hanna as she was dying. “Grandmom” fought breast cancer the year Jean was born and Jean was named for her.

The second song she sang has become something of an anthem for breast cancer survivors. Melissa Etheridge, a breast cancer survivor herself, wrote the song “I Run for Life” about running to raise money, awareness and support for breast cancer research.

She also did a bonus song, just to have fun.

Jean hopes her story, in the form of these blog posts, and a book this spring, will help to inspire, encourage and entertain people dealing with cancer. She wants them to know that they are not alone and cancer is not something you have to let beat you.

Jean gave me access to each of her chemotherapy treatments while she worked to rid her body of cancer for a second time. I wrote a series of six blog posts, five during October for Breast Cancer Awareness Month, about Jean’s experience and her thoughts on cancer.

You can see the entire series on the Breast Cancer Page in the non-fiction section of my website..

Making a Diveheart training program

November 18, 2013 By Eric Douglas

From 1998 to present day, I’ve developed adult education training programs, mostly for the recreational dive industry. I’ve participated in photo and video shoots, and written scripts to teach people to use everything from AEDs to Dry Suits and a lot of stuff in between. Working with Diveheart to produce training videos to teach Adaptive Dive Buddies and Adaptive Scuba Instructors how to work with divers with disabilities was definitely a new one for me, though.

Probably the most important skill a prospective Adaptive Dive Buddy learns is empathy. It takes an amazing amount of nerve for an adaptive diver to trust her Adaptive Dive Buddies to care for her underwater. Day-to-day, a person who uses a wheel chair might rely on others for help, but failure to receive that help does not result in the person drowning. Or suffering through the pain and trauma of a burst ear drum. Or any number of other potential problems.

The second most important skill is handling task loading and stress in the water. As an Adaptive Dive Buddy for a disabled diver, you have to be ready to take care of your own buoyancy and equalization, while handling buoyancy and equalization for the Adaptive Diver as well. With the Diveheart system, you’re never alone in the water with an Adaptive Diver, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to be prepared for emergency situations.

To simulate the potential challenges Adaptive Dive Buddies will face, we filmed (above and below water) divers with blacked out masks or with their legs strapped together and their arms immobilized. There is nothing that will teach empathy more effectively than taking a diver underwater without any ability to swim, control his own situation or even pinch his own nose to equalize. Once you’ve lived through that once, you will forever have a healthy respect for what an Adaptive Diver does every dive.

To capture the video and still images we need for the manuals and online training, we brought in two industry experts. There is practically no one better at shooting video in the Florida Keys than Frazier Nivens. He has years and years of experience shooting in the local waters, equally distributed between shooting critters and divers. Ken Berry worked for 15 years as the Executive Producer at PADI and then a few years at DAN and now for himself at LivingWater Media. No one in the dive industry knows more about producing training videos and organizing divers to perform, and repeat, skills above and below water.

We shot video for a week in the Keys, including a day and a half on dive boats provided by DJ Wood at Rainbow Reef. The staff there was great and really in tune with the needs of Diveheart and Adaptive Divers. Every time you see three divers on the screen, there are at least five people in the water including the three divers, the director and the camera man. Often, there were seven or eight to make sure everything was done correctly and to capture behind the scenes photographs and video at the same time.

One of the most amazing parts of this process was that the on-camera divers were all volunteers. They were all Diveheart Instructors and Adaptive Dive Buddies who donated their time to polish up their skills at a dress-rehearsal and then even more time to spend time underwater being put through the proverbial dive-ringer to perform and repeat skills underwater. They had to do skills over and over, allowing the camera to capture “establishing shots” (wide angle) and then the same scene from medium and then close up to allow for “cut-aways”.

Often, when you are teaching, if you sit back and pay attention, you can get more than you give. This was one of those situations for me. I learned so much from the divers who gave their time to volunteer for this unique organization it was incredible. And I realize just how much every day.

This is the second of three blog posts about Diveheart and the development of a ground-breaking set of training materials to train adaptive divers and adaptive dive buddies and instructors to learn to scuba dive. The first installment Diveheart: Imagine the Possibilities (November 13), discussed the idea of taking Adaptive Divers diving. The third installment (November 25) will include lessons I’ve learned from working with Elliot and some of the Adaptive Divers I’ve met through Diveheart.

On November 25, I’ll also be releasing a new Jackson Pauley/Withrow Key short story with a character inspired by Diveheart. The story is called Caesar’s Gold..

Visiting the Manassas battlefields

October 27, 2013 By Eric Douglas

The civil war was a truly terrible time in American history. A young nation nearly tore itself apart, brother fighting against brother and father against son. We should never forget those who died on both sides and the sacrifices made to keep this country whole.

I thought it was interesting that after the battle, most of the dead were buried in shallow graves on site. After the war, most of the Union soldiers were transferred to Arlington National Cemetery and the Confederate dead were buried in a local cemetery.

For West Virginians, this is the battlefield where native son “Stonewall” Jackson earned his nickname.

Talking about cancer

October 2, 2013 By Eric Douglas

Note: The interviews and the columns became the basis for a book: Keep on, Keepin’ on. It was published last spring and is available through Amazon.

Jean Hanna Davis is a wife, a daughter, a mother, a musician and a teacher. She is also a breast cancer survivor and a cancer patient.

In April 2003, Jean was diagnosed with cancer while pregnant with her second daughter. She was faced with taking chemo while pregnant. She survived that process and gave birth to Juliana who is now growing up, bright and happy.

Nearly 10 years later, the cancer is back. Over the regular beeping of the device hanging beside her bed, she takes a series of chemicals designed to kill the cancer. In the process, it tears her body down; something familiar to every cancer patient and every family member. Not unusual for cancer patients, she knows the formulaic name for each of her medications and what they do. She knows which drugs will upset her stomach, make her nauseous and all the other side effects that come with letting toxic chemicals into your body. (The nurses and technicians have to use special gloves so they don’t get chemicals on their hands and get burned.)

Throughout the process, though, is laughter. She makes jokes, entertains, talks and knows the first name of everyone involved in her care. During a recent chemotherapy, she coached the patient in the bed beside her, reassuring the woman who was going through chemo for the first time.

“I’m nervous about this. I’ve already done this once. How could I not be nervous? I’m not happy to be doing this again. People have said “You are so lucky you found it early.” I’m pretty sure I’m a lot of things, but I don’t know if I would call it lucky,” she said.

John Hanna photographs his daughter Jean with the machine that administers her chemotherapy.

Jean is a native of Charleston, but now lives in Princeton and teaches for Mercer County schools. She was diagnosed with cancer in May just before the end of the school year.

“At school in the spring, teachers would stop me and ask 1000 questions in front of the kids. So one day, a half dozen kids asked me at lunch what was going on. So, I got everyone quiet and told them. I told them I wouldn’t be doing any lunch duty next year, or coming out of my classroom much, but that I am gonna be okay. I had several parents stop me over the summer to check on me. I’m not sure that all the parents appreciated that I told the entire fourth grade class, but the parents I spoke to were fine with it. I just think knowing is better than not knowing.”

For Jean, while cancer is something to deal with and work through, it isn’t something to hide or to be depressed about.

“I ran into someone this morning that I haven’t seen for a while. I used to teach with her. When I told her the cancer was back, her face just fell. I tell everyone this and I told her this morning, my take on this is it’s been 10 years. If I get nine good years and one crappy year, those are pretty good odds. The last nine years have been really good. If I get nine more good years out of this, that’s pretty good,” she said. “I really want people to know that cancer is not, in many cases, a death sentence. Even the chemo as you’re going through it, it’s not fun, but I’ve always said my chemo days are my spa days. They take my blood, but they bring me blankets, they bring me breakfast and lunch. They take care of me. There is power in taking control of your situation. For me it has always been important to put a positive spin on it.”

Her motto, that you hear whenever you talk to her, is “Keep on keeping on.” She is not about to let cancer get the best of her, even on the bad days.

This is the first of a series of blogs for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Jean Hanna Davis has given me access to each of her chemotherapy treatments while she works to rid her body of cancer for a second time.

Jean lets her friends and family know what is going on with her life on Facebook. That will be the topic for the next post: Living Out Loud. The other topics will be:

Follow this link to find out more about Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It is a clearing house of information with links and connections to many of the major players in the fight against breast cancer.

This series is dedicated to Jean and her family, along with all the women who have fought breast cancer—patients and families alike..