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The Value of Story: Mavericks

I am just back from witnessing the spectacle which is the Mavericks Invitational big wave event at Pillar Point, Half Moon Bay, Ca. There are a huge number of stories surrounding this event, and I must select a few, and share those in Editorial. I worked this event with Deniece Watkins Smith who is a budding Photographer, sage Silicon Valley Real Estate Agent and wife to Cary Smith of the Pillar Point Harbor Patrol. We shot the event together. It was a lot of fun, challenge, and rich with story! Here is a great piece on the value of Story.

The Fukushima Recovery

We truly have eaten of the tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil with this massive scale disaster in Japan. Within a short period of time after the initial earthquake, many of my associates were involved in study and examination of just what created, potentially the largest environmental disaster we will ever see. What was studied out is now finally able to be written on. I wrote on that today in Beyond a Blog, one of our educational resources for the Ocean Lovers Collective. You can (and should) read about that right here, in “Responsibility: A Glance at a Solution”

Awards and Praise

The above image was shot a short while ago. For me it is sort of the peak of what is possible with modern DSLR imaging. The detail and various aspects which make an incredibly complex subject rendered to perfection are all there. This is why I am not posting the two images which are being discussed below, in a pasted in conversation with one of my editors at Corbis. My work evolves. It is far better than ever before. If that process was not building in such a way, I would stop. But many who die, who have reached bottom

Oceanlovers, Blue Ocean Sciences, Creativity and Commerce

Note. click on any of the images to see them large and in full scale. In this post are a few images from the past week shooting surf. It has been a remarkable Summer in that I never get to create a lot of high bar work around Ventura and Southern California this time of year. Weather and swell rarely line up as they do during our Winters. A warm and pleasant surprise is occurring! That is one of the great things about Surfing. You never know when the presents will arrive. It keeps your appetite whetted and hones a

Surf Photography and the Super Telephoto

A few of us have been discussing the declining economic validity of Surf Photography and ensuing demise in editorial based content for awhile now. Recently, changes to baggage rates by air carriers have added yet another challenge to those Photographers and Cinematographers whose content topics require super telephotos in the attainment of the rather high bar required in action sports imaging. The image above was shot with the Canon 5DM2 and the 600F4 IS lens with 1.4x v2 teleconverter on a monopod. Add up the original equipment cost of these items (all recently serviced by CPS BTW) and you come

Mothering

It is Mother’s Day. Yesterday I wandered out to create an image that would be illustrative, which I could use as a thank you note through our Ocean Lovers venture site. That image is above. I thought about it prior to building it, and all through the process from design, to copy writing, finalizing, and publishing. Sunset colors. White sage buds. The blossoms unified by the setting sun. An eternal message embedded within the symbology of the compositional elements. Earth, sky, eternity. I had spoken to my friend and colleague West Cook earlier. He was at his post running the

Pursuit of Light: An Easter Message

It is no real news, the Easter message. Neither is it too terribly innovative a concept that we all are children of the light. From our conception, through our birth and time on the Earth through our passing here, the entire mission statement is about renewal and following: light. However to engage and embrace that which birthed us is a choice, and every Springtime as Easter rolls around, I am reminded of a choice someone who called themselves the Son of Man made over two thousand years ago. Sounds like a long time, two thousand years. But it really isn’t.

Sea-Space Summit DC 2013

I head to DC on Monday with Dr. Andrea Neal to participate in the Sea-Space Initiative Summit, which is headed up by Guillermo Söhnlein of Opus Novum. Our intention is to get a look at the ongoing crisis in Japan, and examine some of the socio-political architecture which led to the catastrophic failure event at the six reactor Fukushima-Daichi Power Plant. It is a disaster of massive scale. However, in that lies a great opportunity to create some fantastic change. http://seaspaceinitiative.org/participants-dc13/ The last Summit was at Google, and this was what we did (among other things). I was in Dr. Lu’s

The High Value in Story

All of us as creatives, are storytellers. That is worth something. So the integrity, skill and life experience of a creator, matters very much. We function within a socio-economic system that is quite leery of the increasingly open source access to “their market”. In a conversation with two sage colleagues in Photography today, I had to point out something. Basically it was this. Just because surf publishing has deigned to not let you play, does not mean your voice is not valid. In fact, it is the opposite. Established fiscal entities do not necessarily WANT the broad market to know

High Definition

The other day, I ran across an innovative new little POV videocam, produced by Sony, and posted the info in a link to my Facebook page. It breaks ground in a number of very important areas, oh and check out the price tag. $200.00 Sony HDR-AS10 HD Action Camcorder The conversation that ensued on FB with some of my talented colleagues, underscores how we as content creators, are moving into a new arena, one where POV may be the simplest and most flexible to convey in the history of Cinema, and we are able to do it inexpensively and without

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