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Running and Gunning

Whew, just off a series of e mails with Lorenzo De Stefano, who is Director of the film Hearing is Believing which I am the Director of Cinematography on. The crew will be down at the Blue Whale in LA filming a performance by Rachel and the remarkable Taylor Eigsti for the project Thursday night. I on the other hand, will be on Bali working on some development projects for my wife’s company, and meeting up with a couple film makers there to possibly create something rather exotic. Life is hectic in a good way. This week saw a fantastic

Essence

It is in recognition of the ironical that I communicate essence via digital connection. But here is the deal, if we get what essence is, we walk into balance as human beings and digital becomes an asset of high worth. The note above was written during the last days of my friend Justin Doty, as he eyed his end here. It was shared by his life long love, Harmony Scott. Breathe, then take it in. What he says on the note pad is exactly what I said, as I launched into my career in Photography. Solitude created me as an

Labor(ing) Day

I posted this blogpost early this morning, on Ocean Lovers Collective’s website. It is a look at the Alchemy of Change. It has been a darned busy weekend. Work in the office on Art, Writing, Photography. Designing a new optical system for my 5DM2 water housing. In process I also found myself doing a bit of image collection work out along Coast Hwy 1 south of where I live. The assets of our Coastline and local waters get a lot of pressure placed upon them as the hordes descend,

Be the Enlightened

This morning as I prepared for the workday, it was all hustle and bustle in my home. Wrestling with twenty pound cats, charging camera batteries. Organizing my gear for a shoot. Scanning weather data. Reading a Chapter of Michael Kew’s new book, “Crossings”, and perusing Facebook a bit. Adding a few posts, while monitoring my tone, as best as I am able. I was surprised to see the face of a rather chubby and notorious “pundit” on the walls of many of my “liberal progressive friends”. These are people who normally would never allow themselves to be in the same

Surfing is for Everybody

William Orbit gets it. Click on this link if you want a soundtrack for this blog Had a gal come by yesterday who was working on a College thesis at Syracuse, and had asked if she could interview me about the changes that I had seen on the coast in my lifetime. Wound up talking about how, in spite of the ocean doing pretty well, (My homestretch of coast used to be littered with innumerable oil piers which were dark, pitch stained fingers, laying across the bright blue of surf lineups. They are all pretty much gone now. Removed.) that

Golden

It is always the scarcity of a thing which imparts value in the perception of a viewing public, so artists tend to withold showing too much of their hand at once. I remember a photographer with whom I worked years ago, who would hoard his work, and release it one image at a time over the period of his career. His fame and fortune wound up being centered on approximately 9 great images. I do not think he saw the time we are in coming, where with new tech, and refined approaches, a higher bar for acquisition and communication than

Modus: Light and Water

“How many shots did it take to acquire this one?” It is a good question. I hear it a lot. Here is how it works… Learn your craft. Buy the right camera and lens setup. Build-acquire the housing. Figure out optics in water. Watch weather. Select a swell, tide, surf break, weather pattern with the correct potential combination. Wake at 4 am, Prep your gear. Have a little coffee, but not too much because you do not want to pee in your wetsuit during morning feeding hour, and sharks feel the charge from your camera body and sometimes come for

Swell 3

Just when we all thought we were safe and no more responsibilities would be shirked, the life of the California based surf community turned on it’s axis from the arrival of swell three of the 2009-2010 El Nino Season. The storm which spawned our most recent pulse, began in similar fashion to the prior. It was another early season storm. It began life as a series of somewhat unimpressive low pressures, which were all affected by a series of high pressures. The storm initiated at a latitude that gave it an ideal fetch angle for a 290 degree WNW swell

Wonder

It has been a very busy year. So busy in fact, that I have needed to learn how to recharge my creative battery while on the fly. Fashion, Video projects, TV projects, motion pictures, my penchant for documenting beautiful things, travel, new tech, literary projects, commercial imaging, social projects, community, and hopefully some of me for my wonderful girlfriend and family. All of these things have beat a tempo never experienced in the realm of my career as an image maker. It comes at a time when the economy is without a doubt at one if its worst places in

What is Surfing: Fifty Views

Each day lately, begins with me wading though the e mail file. Today I opened a newsletter from an organization which I support, by lending them usage of some of my images. The subject header was “International Surfing Day”. A “Cool, we have our own day” impulse when I pressed the “read” icon, rapidly transitioned to less than kind post read thoughts. The newsletter yielded the cyber floor to a new surf magazine editor from Orange County who I had never heard of, and who communicated his chronologically and geologically biased adolescent view of what Surfing is. But it occurred

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