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A California Opus

Chapter 5 in the California Series. I have not always lived in California. My Dad was going to college on the GI Bill in Milwaukee Wisconsin, at Marquette University. I had never asked him why, being from Hawaii, he chose the Mid West. He met my Mother there. That was where my two Brothers and I were born. We were sick a lot as infants. The family pediatrician had told my parents that our Hawaiian genetics may have been to blame, as we did not tolerate the cold of hard, Midwestern Winter very well. In fact, I ended up in

Sliding into 2011: Year in Pictures

Golden Reflections This link is to a new piece by Zuri Star called Keep Holding on. It fits the New Year quite well. It seems that all around us this past year there was friction. In fact, I found myself enmeshed in three massive battles, all at the same time. I did not author those. I simply said “no” to three entities I saw as abusive of my fellow man, community and Ocean Environment. friction |ˈfrik sh ən| noun the resistance that one surface or object encounters when moving over another : a lubrication system that reduces friction. • the

Model Models

Recently, NYC based production company Silent Crow was in Ventura. Two writers with the company happened to have connected with Donna Von Hoesslin of Betty B and learning a little bit about her female inspired Eco Fashion line. They came up with an idea. Producer Matt Bennett showed up to do a little bit of discovery work, and honed a reality show concept that deviated from the norm, in that it endeavors to look at the personalities and lives of the women in both my and Donna’s lives. Silent Crow named the show Bonafide. Donna and I have long exchanged

Swell Five and the Marathon Man

It was o dark thirty on the second day of swell event number five on the Gold Coast, in the middle of the El Nino 2009-2010 season. I was gingerly working my way down the spiral stairway which leads down from the aerie which is the loft bedroom that overlooks one of the beaches I shoot all of the time. Under my left arm was my Macbook Pro. In my right hand my cel phone. Quietly, carefully, I padded down the bamboo shod steps, and my right hand exploded in song. Deftly I snapped the cel phone open. Chuck Patterson

Rinse and Repeat

I have had to watch weather a bit more closely than I usually would this season, because Garrett MacNamara, K38 Rescue, and a few other pals of mine are involved in big wave events and have sort of sucked me into the preparation that goes into being in the right place on the right day. We are in the midst of an El Nino season. No doubt about that now. So when the murmers about a potential swell maker began to filter through, I forced myself to take a close look at available weather telemetry and began my process of

A Fall Fantasy

Nothing deep to share. Or is there? The past weeks have allowed me a lot of time and effort to delve into what many consider to be my forte, which is shooting surfing, nature, beach culture and lifestyle. So this blog is devoted to showing a few of the sights seen this last several weeks of Fall. It is a teensy sampling of over 1200 final images collected. The culmination of a huge number of commercial, editorial and personal interest projects. Thanks to the beautiful place that I live in, and all my wonderful friends, commercial clients and publications for

A Bali Journal: 1

Uneventful smooth sky sailing into Bali, and here we are in one of the most beautiful locations I have ever seen. David Booth and Sam Holcomb of East Bali Poverty project “get it” when “it” means hospitality apparently. The villa they arranged for us to rent in Ubud is far and away the most amazing location I have shot in. I will save the description for the images which hopefully I can scare up time to post. Long days ahead. Colorful and bright, dark and pulsating, with a richness that one from a society with less dimension, would appreciate and

Organic Reprisal

We leave the troubled shores of the US soon, for the exotic environs of Indonesia where Donna Von Hoesslin’s creative muse lies, on the Isle of Bali. We are a tightly knit crew, who all will donate time and our own efforts in a collaborative endeavor to contribute to something that matters, and in the process, create something beautiful and compelling. The excursion will be a little different than Donna’s usual solo pilgrimage to her mecca of creativity and harmonic bliss. This time she brings along a group of young women whose names have become synonymous with her Ventura based

Is That Real? An Authentic View

Maldivian Blue I get asked this question a lot. When I have finished answering in the affirmative, the second response which has been repeated with enough frequency that I no longer take offense comes: “Is that Photoshopped?” The line of query says a lot about our over stimulated, content crammed, media saturated world, as it exists today. If one were to slip into the dusty cobweb strewn dark recesses of what passes for my mind, you would hear the little bitch echo of a voice I spend a lifetime trying to stifle, saying in a soft clear tone: “Um, get

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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