Walt Girdner shot in color and at close range in the later part of his life. Some weekends, he would take off by himself into the Mexican desert to take photos of found images -- animals, ghosts, letters and numbers -- in the rocks, sand and cactii. He would shoot during the day and sleep under the desert stars at night.

He believed in the power of the spirit and part of that power was the mind's ability to imagine. The shots he took were intended to stimulate the imagination, to make you look for and find an owl in an abalone shell, a ghost in a bit of sea foam, the letter A in a set of sticks.

One of his unfinished projects was to write a book for children that matched up the letters of nature's alphabet with images -- A for the alligator in scars of a cactus or C for the cow in trail of a sea worm in the low tide sand, D for a dog in a dessicated leaf. He believed that the minds of children were much more agile and unfettered than those of adults and had exponentially greater powers of imagination. The photos in the Imagination Enhancer show come from that project.

Dry Leaf e