Early summer in Idaho is stunning as the snow melt gives way to hot days and cool nights. In late June I made my semi annual trek to the Sun Valley area to teach some private photography lessons and had the luxury to spend a day with friends kind enough to invite me to their [...]
Ansel Adams once said - I can’t verbalize the internal meaning of pictures whatsoever. Some of my friends can at very mystical levels, but I prefer to say that, if I feel something strongly, I would make a photograph, that would be the equivalent of what I saw and felt… When I’m ready to make [...]
There is nothing is quite as delicious as a day off after working 12 hour days for more than a week. This evening, Dewitt and I headed down to the west end of the island where he has been photographing a beautiful series of wave images. As we set up on the beach, we discussed [...]
Rikki often says it not about me taking the picture, but about the picture taking me. The phrase what will I be taken by today? regularly enters my mind when I am shooting. Its simplicity disarming the inner critic that tells me that I have to go make a good picture. Its a phrase that [...]
Driving the red dirt road to Kamakou preserve on Molokai, one could easily mistake the landscape for western Tanzania. Grassy plains surrounded by wind sculpted trees make my eye look for the giraffe that will never walk into my frame. Today we found ourselves bouncing down this road in spite of the rain that insists [...]
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
This morning it was not the usual cacophony of birds and subtle song of wind chimes that woke me, but rather the melodic drumming of rain on the tin roof above my head. Before I was fully conscious I knew our plans of a field trip to the mesmerizing ancient rainforest had washed away and [...]
A comment by Mr. Miroslaw Swietek in response to these stunning insect photos refused to leave my mind today. Mr. Swietek said Its not the camera which takes pictures but the mind and the heart – and in mantra like fasion his comment repeated itself over and over in my mind during the photography workshop [...]
Ten minutes after I hit the publish button on “nothing endures but change…”, I wandered over to the front porch of the lodge at the Hui for morning check in. Check in is a time for my fellow instructors and I to set the compass for the days workshop and offer a open forum for [...]
As Heraclitus so wisely stated – nothing endures but change. For Photographers, the Image of a Shrinking Path by the New York Times succinctly documents the radical change that has gone on in the stock photography industry over the last few years. Rather than bemoaning this new reality, I happily embrace it — for another adage [...]
A cacophony of birds awoke me on the island of Molokai this morning. Exquisite morning light whispered through the Koa trees as a wind chime sounded out its unpredictable melody to the day. This is my fifth year helping to teach Rekindling The Creative Spirit with Rikki Cooke, Dewitt Jones and Theresa Airey, and like [...]
FISH IN THE FILTER The massive cumulonimbus clouds ripe with rain were well over a month away from rolling atop the blue hills of the Western Ghat mountain range in Tamil Nadu and enveloping the region in the mist of monsoon. My pet project for the dry season at the photographic college where I was [...]
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Last fall Software-Cinema approached me about putting together an instructional DVD on Photoshop CS4. As I write this, the DVD is going to press and should be released within the month. I am making my annual pilgrimage to Ketchum, Idaho at the end of February and will be offering a photography workshop titled “Photoshop [...]
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Even though I have never visited Jaipur before, it is the India I remember… the wild merry go round of life. Full of friendly touts, and mad streets, blaring horns and sensory overload. The India that makes one realize that India is not for everyone. I have many more thoughts to verbalize from the day, but my eyes are [...]
Four years ago, the smog in Mumbai was so bad that walking around burned my eyes and wiping my face with a white handkerchief harvested a black crop of ash and dust after a couple of passes across my brow. According to my former student, now professional advertising photographer Amogh Thakur, two years ago the city [...]
Pushing through jetlag, waking up with the sun. Mumbai is still mostly asleep. India seems tamer, kinder, and gentler than I remember. Children run through the pigeons at the gateway of India as the sun rises. The city slowly comes to life around me…
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Photography warning – all photos taken with my cell phone. India bound. The moving and waiting game begins.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
This morning, I got to visit with some old friends. The friends were images I had created in high school and are some of the first “good” pictures I made in my life. Printing them off for another old friend this morning reminded me of why I love photography — for the simple pure thought [...]
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 [...]
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.
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.
