User:CurtisNeeley

CurtisNeeley is the pseudonym Curtis J. Neeley Jr. uses on the Internet. Very early, photography made an impact on CurtisNeeley's life. Curtis’ dad worked for Eastman Kodak. The company Christmas party once included a multi-projector travel slide show. Growing up in the small town of Batesville, Arkansas; - he was amazed to see such well-executed images from all around the world. It was then that Curtis recognized the power of visual communications and wanted to harness that power.

Curtis read everything about photography he could and soon realized photography is expensive, and everyone wants to do it. The realist - Curtis turned to a 'normal' profession and went to school to become a Mechanical Engineer. He worked at TRW Vehicle Safety Systems - the world's largest manufacturer of seatbelt systems - and soon learned mechanical engineering was not for him.

The USMC changes you. If you have not been there - Curtis can't describe it for you. If you have - there is no need to. While stationed in Okinawa, Japan, He returned to his first love - got his first 'good' camera, and probably financed a Fuji film plant learning the ropes. Curtis Neeley enrolled in a photography course and both learned and applied a lot that year. By the end of the year, he was shooting cover assignments for "Okinawa Today", contributing to "Stars and Stripes", as well as working as a staff photographer on the USO "Exploring Okinawa" tour guide. He spent a lot of time behind the camera that year, made a lot of mistakes, and a lot of progress.

Returning to the U.S. - it took several years working odd jobs before he got the chance to again work as a commercial photographer. Along the way he shot sports and news for the "NW Arkansas Times" and honed knowledge of equipment and processing at a commercial photo lab. Curtis doesn't shoot nearly the amount of mass-market commercial material as in the past. CurtisNeeley recently had a major automobile wreck. After years in recovery he is trying to work toward being an art photographer first and a commercial photographer second.

After his car wreck, Curtis was in a coma for six weeks and then his spouse did a DNR order. Doctors figured he would have the mind of a toddler at best because of his traumatic brain injury (TBI). Receiving a severe TBI and having a stroke during surgery to repair his descending aorta, left CurtisNeeley as a paraplegic with full use of one arm. Due to his TBI, CurtisNeeley was no longer able to remember most of his life prior to his accident. Prior to his car accident, CurtisNeeley shot photographs of the nude he felt were art for over a decade. After his car accident, CurtisNeeley continued to shoot nude photography. He used the word figurenude to describe the photographs he shot till April 28, 2012. It is a term he felt was much more exact and appropriate. A neologism is a common occurrence among many with a traumatic brain injury and stroke.

CurtisNeeley finally realized the nude human is a subject intended to be viewed exclusively by spouses of each other. There are many degrees of violating the sanctity of the figure and figurenude photography may have been the least improper presentation of the figure. The tiniest number less than zero remains negative and this realization took Neeley roughly one-quarter century to accept.

Neeley v 5 Federal Federal Communications Commissioners, et al,((5:14-cv-05135)).