The moon is radiant and clear bathing the ground in her pale light.Under a cloudless sky, the trade wind blows through the Koa forest and only the brightest stars are visible.Regulus and Leo take my vision, their light captivates me.Light that started its journey before I was born to reach this earth.Rarely has the lion in the sky seemed so luminous as it does tonight, but perhaps it is just my vision that is clear this evening.
I am happy to announce that Rikki Cooke has started a blog which can be found here. I for one, am certainly looking forward to his insights, photographs and other words of wisdom as he has time to share them with us. Please take some time to take a peek. You won’t be disappointed!
The happy week has been a blur.Old friends, new friends, good food, good wine, good talk, and lots of laughter – the sum total of being alive and open and free. Tonight we gave a slide show of the images everyone created during the week, and the images sang with this joy of being alive, and participating in this world with good company, food and the occasional cable release. I can only speak for myself, but my greatest lesson of the last six days has been to understand at a deeper level what it means to take the experience of making a photograph as the reward.Sure it is thrilling to ‘snap a good pic’ as my Indian students would often say, that’s the gravy, but if you are not falling in love with the experience of making the image – what’s the point?This lesson translated into something amazing as I watched my images come up on the screen in the darkened room this evening.Rather than feeling critical judgment of my work, I felt the joy of being there in the moment and was reminded of something my friend Paul Liebhardt would often say. “The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep looking.” I, for one, am looking for joy.
4:30 am alarm.Dark outside.Sleep fills my mind and whispers for me to stay in bed.Come back, it says.You don’t really need to get up.You can stay in this comfortable bed.Wouldn’t you rather dream than take photographs this morning?Then something wakes up just enough to swing my legs off the bed.If there is anything photography has taught me, it is that the pain of getting up early is never a waste.Today proves to be no exception.The morning air is still and heavy.Unusual for this island that seems to have a perpetual breeze.Dawn begins to break over the ocean.Water, light, rocks, sky, the elemental simplicity of the earths visual poetry.My gift for getting out of bed.
A long nondescript path rolls gently downhill through the moss filled forest where sound is dampened and all that remains is the hiss of the ocean wind through the treetops. Although they cannot yet be seen, the 2000-foot precipice diving down to the Pacific Ocean alerts my soul as I walk towards one of the more spectacular spots on earth known as Mimo’s pasture. It is an unusual walk in so far that the trail often comes within meters of the edge of the cliff, yet visually never leaves the security of the dense forest. Glimpses of the ocean over the low horizon accompany the regular rhythm of my feet walking in the forest. Soon the tree line breaks open into a vista. A small window of branches opens to the cliff face. Further on the trail spills out into a magnificent green pasture that wraps over the edge of the cliff and tumbles down to the ocean floor. The reward for the walk.
As a metaphor, this particular hike is poignant. How often have I, as a photographer, walked a path with my vision that chooses to remain within the visual security of the forest of my successes? How often have I felt the cliff edge of visual risk call me to take a peek into something new? Most importantly, how often do I have the courage to follow this risk to the edge and see what lies beyond the trees.
Today, I step to the edge and raise my camera to answer this question one frame at a time.
Lab Day. I look out on the faces in front of me. Some nodding in comprehension, some frowning in seeming disbelief, some blank as Buddha’s face waiting for enlightenment under the bodhi tree. Unfortunately enlightenment seems to have mis-read the schedule for the day and is getting a massage instead. I am speaking about Photoshop in class. For some the word photoshop sends chills down their spine. For others it conjures a feeling of somehow being able to digitally cheat a photograph into existence. For me it is simply a tool that I have become more familiar with then I ever dreamed I would sitting in my first photoshop class at Brooks with the blank look of Buddha on my face.
I find my mind wandering even as I speak to what lies beyond the technique and into the meat of the whole reason we do this. The vision. If technique without vision is meaningless and vision without technique is blind, Photoshop is the ultimate conundrum! Gaining a mastery of its tools takes months to years depending on ones skill, and very few programs I know have the ability to instantly jam someone’s creativity more than Photoshop due to its simple complexity.
I think of the story Dewitt tells in his lectures of the two stone mason’s. A man asks one mason sweating in the hot sun what he is doing, and he replies ‘I’m chipping stone’, he then asks a second mason what he is doing, and he replies ‘I’m building a cathedral’. Vision. It all comes back to vision. Can you see the image you want? Can you see it before you put the camera to your eye. Can you see it before you turn on the creative kill zone of the computer? Can you see the cathedral from the clone stamp?
Before heading to bed, Rikki drops a philosophical cluster bomb on my brain. He says, “You know, all this stuff about art affecting the viewer is rubbish. The art has to first affect the artist. If your working in photoshop and it is not resonating with your soul, your images sure as hell aren’t going to resonate with anyone else’s.” Or, to say it in the words of Nikki Giovanni, “I cry when i write, so that those reading my words can cry when they read them.”
Nothing. I have nothing. I have no camera, yet i have access to every camera i could ever need. Vision. I have nothing, but have access to a landscape and a world that excites me every time i see it. Empty. My vision feels empty until out on the rocks something turns my head. How bad am i willing to be today? Another thought is running through my mind. A good thought. The thought is “Risk is the essence of it. You’re only as good as you’re willing to be bad.” 1 I wander out onto the volcanic rocks lining the bay towards four rounded rocks balanced beautifully on a post feet from the crashing waves. As I walk, I am wondering how bad I am willing to be this moment. The wind is blowing in gusts strong enough to make me tense my muscles, yet the rocks on the post don’t even wobble. Balance. How the heck do those rocks stay balanced in all this wind? The answer, they are rounded. Click. I feel a bubble of excitement rise inside me. Click. There it is again. Click, click. The sun is disappearing and reappearing in regular intervals behind the clouds. Ahhh. There it is. That’s why I do this. For this moment and a hundred thousand others like it.
Rekindling the Creative Spirit - the title and intent of our week on Molokai. Today, enough baco bits of wisdom have been sprinkled on the proverbial salad bar of life to float us for the rest of the seminar — and we are just getting warmed up! It is an interesting week for me, because I come unarmed. My sword, my professional camera passed away two weeks ago and with no home to take a second mortgage on to finance a replacement, i am left with my pocket panasonic and less baggage. While my wallet mourns its loss, I love the idea and the reality of being free from the weight and judgment of carrying all that metal and glass and circuitry. To paraphrase a good friend, ‘There is a mistaken belief that some special gear is necessary to take good pictures, Whereas the only real requirement is the ability to see clearly and objectively. Plus of course having the urge to take photographs.’ 1 In a fantastic presentation this evening by fellow instructor Dewitt Jones on focusing the vision, a video of Sir Ken Robinson at the TED awards lodged in my mind and would not leave. I will leave you his thoughts on how we are being educated out of our creativity so that all of you not sharing this time on Mother Molokai can take a peek over the edge of the rabbit hole we are tumbling down this week.
There is rain on the window of this giant jet plane as we push back and roar into the sky. My eyes close in sleep before the plane reaches cruising altitude. Six hours later the wheels chirp as they hit the pavement. The door opens onto the sticky sweet warm air that instantly forms a sheen of sweat on my forehead. Luau sounds spill over the pa system in the terminal. A few tourists walk around with sweet smelling lei’s around their necks.
The first and second jobs I had out of Brooks Institute of Photography were directly due to Paul Liebhardt. While there were many instances during my first job in India that I couldn’t decide whether he was playing an elaborate joke with me as the unwitting victim, Paul set me on a trajectory that I have been following to this day. He once said “The best pictures are taken by those who feel some excitement about life and use the camera to share their enthusiasm with others.” Please – do yourself a favor and share some of Paul’s enthusiasm for life by viewing his images. Click on the image below to go to his site.
A successful week in Ketchum/Sun Valley Idaho and the “Masala of Digital Imaging Techniques” workshop. The above image was produced by Marcia Duff after a introduction to digital montages in Photoshop CS3. Photoshop is such a complex behemoth of a program that it is very refreshing for me to see my participants artistic vision emerge like it did during the workshop. Great job Marcia and all the other participants who produced fantastic images during the two day event!
Tremendous story here by Marcus Bleasdale, VII and Media Storm on the terribly sad events happing in the Congo. Click on the image below to see the multimedia project titled “Rape of a Nation”.
I will be teaching six photography workshops in 2008. Other Photoshop courses out there focus on techniques that aren’t applicable to everyday shooting. In my courses, Photography is at the heart of every bit of instruction behind the lens and the computer. The complete workshop schedule with links is posted below. I hope to see you there!
Last year I had the privilege to work with National Geographic photographer Flip Nicklin, videographer Jason Sturgis and whale researcher Jim Darling in Maui. Along with a few other dedicated people, they facilitate research for The Whale Trust - an organization that supports marine research, education and conservation. One of the many “wouldn’t it be nice if…” conversations we had during my time there was for a pro level camera that had GPS built directly into it for geotagging your location when you pressed the shutter. Well that hasn’t happened yet - but a couple of interesting devices has appeared recently that are almost as good. One is the GeoPic II here that works with Nikon cameras, and the other is the ATP device here, that looks like it will work with any device as long as the respective clocks are synchronized. Technology is a wonderful thing!
Nine years ago this January that I dropped everything and moved across the country to attend photo school. I can’t believe almost a decade has passed since that decision, for as I sat down to redesign kingstonimages the memory of pressing the shutter in almost every one of the frames is so clear it could have been yesterday.
On the site I have added an underwater photography gallery, an adventure sports photography gallery and a link to some of the documentary projects I have worked on in the past few years. The world map has gotten a makeover and links all of my travel photography galleries. I hope you enjoy the amazing people and places life has led me! Business wise, I am beginning to do fine art prints on a one off basis as well as on a corporate art scale. More information on obtaining a custom signed fine art print of my photography can be found here.
For the first time since owning Lightroom, I have experienced a Lightroom catalog becoming corrupted. Fortunately under File>Catalog settings>Metadata, I have been writing my metadata to my .xmp side car files. Unfortunately, I did not realize when a .lrcat file becomes corrupted, the metadata does not include virtual copies of the images, or references to what catalog sets they are in. I hope Adobe changes this in the next release of Lightroom. Continue Reading »
‘All right Jacque - lets see who stays down the longest!’, Enzo smiled at me.We had been playing the same game for the last four weeks, Beau and I were on the final dive of a five-day trip and we had built up a friendly rivalry pretending to be Jacque Mayol and Enzo Maiorca, the free divers made famous in the movie “The Big Blue”.We were about to dive a site known as Silverbanks that sits on the southeast side of Santa Cruz Island.Silverbanks is a massive kelp forest in 30 to 60 feet of pure pacific blue.Swimming through the tall trunks of the aquatic trees, it is easy to momentarily forget the water and imagine how bird must feel in flight.
It is unusual for me to feel uneasy in the water, but during the dive I was unsettled — the submerged hairs prickling on the back of my neck.Determined not to let Enzo beat my bottom time, I found an uninspiring reef to photograph and slowly burned through my roll of film, taking small sips of air to conserve my tank and wondering if my friend had finished his dive.The commotion started as soon as I surfaced.“GET ON THE BOAT NOW!” my frantic friends faces yelled at me as I lazily swam towards the swim step “SHARK!”. Continue Reading »
The ride out to Santa Barbara Island had been rough on the Truth. Our intrepid 40-foot craft labored over the uneven terrain that the pacific presented. Some passengers had the expected rounds of sick, but fortunately for me the Marezine was working like a charm. After an all night ride set to the sound of the hull slapping the base of each wave, it was a welcome prospect to dive into the cold water of the Pacific.
The underwater terrain of Santa Barbara Island is not unlike an underwater rock castle bordered by a sandy plain with sea lion sentinels patrolling its rocky ramparts. On more than one dive I would see the aquatic animals move in pairs move along the outer rock wall of the flourishing pinniped rookery like sentinels in search of sharks. Continue Reading »
Aaron and I heard rumors of the whale sharks after multiple military checkpoints and a dusty three day drive down Baja California Sur’s roads to La Paz. It was here that Steinbeck chose to set his novel “The Pearl” and here that we had come to search for our own pearls, those perfect moments in the clear warm waters of the Sea of Cortez to depress our shutters. My 1985 VW bus was loaded with tanks, camera gear and little red plastic gas cans strapped to the roof that had been inspected with some incredulity by the machine gun toting fedarales in their fatigues and sunglasses.
Three days of diving with hammerhead sharks and manta rays in La Paz was unable to erase the rumor from our unconscious moments. Some divers spend their whole life to find the filter feeding Rhincodon Typus, and here he was waiting at the edge of a story from a stranger where a long dirt road touches the Sea of Cortez. And so we drove north through checkpoints and hot asphalt with the VW engine struggling against the steeper hills in search of the rumor. Soon after stopping to buy extra gas we found the unmarked road that the source had spoken of. A road that quickly deteriorated from pavement to potholes to dirt and 100 miles later a small fishing village next to a beautiful half moon bay. Continue Reading »
