There's no denying that climate change is one of the preeminent topics of our day, one of the biggest challenges the current generations have to face, one of the most hotly debated topics on the public stage that has the very very very very real potential of several affecting our lives and the way we approach the future of our species and the future of the planet as a whole. So when the leaders of our world get together to discuss solutions and formulate strategies for tackling this topic, everyone listens. The problem is, no one ever expects anything to come of it. Politics as usual.
If you're still looking for unique gifts for those unique peeps in your life, check out my stores on Fine Art America and Crated. You can get art prints, canvas prints, duvets, pillowcases, phone cases, greeting cards, all of it!
Black Friday. Oh Black Friday. On that bi-polar day in which hundreds of millions are nonsensically encouraged to brutally duke it out for deals just mere minutes after expressing gratitude for what we already have, we decided to get as far away from the madness as we could...as far as our gas tank would take us...to the middle of the Mojave Desert!
So last week was a bizarre week. I got a call last Saturday to see if I wanted to accompany a pair of journalists from Time Magazine's The Drive website as their videographer in a new 2016 Camaro on a road trip from Portland to San Francisco for their Find New Roads campaign. The thing is, we had 36 hours to cover 800 miles...
If I had to map out a perfect photography-centric week, it would not have turned out as well as the week that I just finished. It was overwhelming, encouraging, exciting, inspiring, nerve-racking and glorious all at the same time. I'm not sure how I'll convey it here, but I'll give it my best shot...
I recently spent an incredible week in the Pacific Northwest, the reason of which will come in a more detailed post next week, but while I was up there, I couldn't help but capture a few scenes of the foliage beginning to turn. Coming from Southern California, it's always a treat to be able to capture some fall colors, and just wanted to share those with you here as a bit of a peaceful meditation. Hope you enjoy.
Ok, so this is a bit strange, as I'm not usually the one with the lens pointed at me, but when Samsung asked if I'd speak at DPReview and Amazon.com's inaugural PIX2015, a live streamed photography conference, expo, and interactive photography playground, I couldn't say no! I'll be there on Tuesday and Wednesday, October 6 and 7. On Tuesday, I'm proud to be participating in a panel entitled "Photography and the Environment" at 12:15pm. On Wednesday, I'll be presenting a talk "What Photography Did For Me: Getting Out Of My Comfort Zone To Focus On The Moment." That one will take place at 1:15pm. The cool thing is, even if you're not there in person, everything will be live streamed right on their site, www.PIX2015.com.
And believe you me, there are so many reasons to be at this thing. Along with a cadre of
If you’ve followed me or know anything about me for any amount of time, you know that my heart, head, soul, and passions lie in the outdoors and our natural world. So when car maker Subaru reached out to me regarding using one of my images for a joint campaign they were launching with the National Park Service to clean up the National Parks, you can imagine how my fast my mind was racing to process this information.
So that was a super fun evening! The one, the only Trey Ratcliff from www.StuckInCustoms.com and TheArcanum.com fame made his Los Angeles stop of his TreyUSA photowalk tour across the U.S. last weekend. There were at least 300 photographers crawling the Santa Monica beach and pier area, all of us learning, laughing, and snapping away.
I was privileged enough to have the Portland Japanese Garden's former Program Director Wendy Mitchell, who is now the current Director of Stewardship at the World Forestry Center, serve as my personal guide for a morning at the Garden and I wanted to share some of that experience, so this is a straightforward one.
Not many words.
A series of images.
A photo essay if you will.
Click through to enjoy a Saturday morning at the Portland Japanese Garden.
As I mentioned in the previous post, I just got back from a few weeks in Maine. The main purpose of the trip was to work on a video for Camp Skylemar, one of the most beautiful, efficiently run sleep away summer camps in the country. I’ll post much more about this insanely incredible experience once we’re done with the video in a few weeks, but this post is a quick focus on the 5 days after we were done. Since I had never been to Maine before, I tacked on some extra time at the end of the job to explore the State for a few days.
I just returned from 2 weeks in Maine. 2 amazing weeks in Maine. It was my first time in the State, and I know already that it won’t be my last. The first 8 days of the trip were spent working at a summer camp in Naples, where we were hired to shoot a video for the camp, which I will share here once we’re done editing, and I will talk more about in a coming post in the next few days, but in the meantime, I just wanted to pass along an image I shot at the iconic Bass Harbor Head Lighthouse just outside Acadia National Park a few nights ago. After the job in Naples, I drove up the coast for a few days of image-making and on the first night, I got super lucky as the clouds parted just about an hour before sunset to reveal this fantastic scene. Click here for a high resolution version for your phones and tablets if you’d like. And if you’d like an alternate version for your desktop, click here.
Anyhow, I’m currently preparing a blog post that will explain more about what I was doing in Maine and will have many more pictures, but just wanted to share this one while it was still fresh.
If you remember several months back, Ello came onto our radars with a vengeance. It seemed like within a 2 week period, it went from no one every hearing of it, to everyone clamoring to try to find an invite code. Then, seemingly, it died off. Not surprising in our culture of ‘it’s now or never’ impatience for the latest meaningful Kanye meme or cop-clobber-video. Through that whole thing, I was still curious and became a regular user of Ello despite so many thinking that it was just another passing fad. Well, recently, I got an email asking if I wanted to test out the one thing that was glaringly missing from the Ello experience, a dedicated mobile app. YES! Within 24 hours, the beta version of the app was on my phone, and now that I’ve had almost two weeks to play with it, I’ve got to say, it’s nice. Very very nice.
Although I’ve called these hills home for 7 years, there hasn’t been a single time that I’ve headed out into the Santa Monica Mountains without being pleasantly surprised by what I come across. While the terrain and the topography may prove familiar, the aesthetics are rarely a constant…the same hillside, or the same oak grove, or even the same sandstone rock will look different from hour to hour, day to day, week to week. Much of this has to do with the extremely colorful myriad of climate zones that take residence in this range due to its proximity to both the crisp coastal climate of Pacific Ocean, and the much warmer San Fernando Valley inland. The constant interplay between these various zones provides an ever-changing landscape, especially from the visual perspective.
This was never as evident to me as it was last week.
The driver met me at the house at about 7am for the hour-long drive to the orphanage. I was a bit concerned after reading a few reviews the night before about the treatment of the elephants, and this was something I had to see for myself. As we entered the grounds, the first thing on the schedule was to accompany them during a feeding. This took place in a large open field that was part of the expansive forested grounds. For about an hour, we were able to view the elephants and, if we wanted, to take pictures with them. Something felt way too amusement park-ish for me about the whole charade, as handlers would aggressively reign you in to take a picture, after which they’d ask for a ‘donation,’ so I refrained from the novelties, electing to stand back a bit and just observe what was happening.
So yesterday was one of those 'feel good' days. As a freelancer, there's nothing worse for your psyche than not being booked and shooting, so when I was presented with the opportunity to volunteer for P.S.Arts at Billy Mitchell Elementary School, a school in Lawndale, a small underserved community in Los Angeles between Inglewood, Glendale and Compton, I jumped on it. P.S.Arts is an organization that was started 25 years ago by legendary jazz-man and the 'A' in A&M Records, "The" Herb Alpert, along with his partner Paul Cummings, to help promote arts in schools.
So this was it. I had 3 more days left before I had to make my way back to Colombo and begin my 36 hour journey back to U.S. soil. I had two choices…I can head down to the beach and just marinate for a few days, or I can continue the cerebral stimulation and head to Kandy, “The Cultural Capital of Sri Lanka.” Against most of humanity’s better judgement, I chose the latter.
Like last year, I had the incredible opportunity of being a fly on the wall as a house photographer at this year's PTTOW summit, once again taking place on the Southern California beachside Terranea Resort in Rancho Palos Verdes. PTTOW, which stands for 'Plan To Take On The World,' brings together some of the world's most influential marketing players from companies including Red Bull, Vice, Discovery Channel, ESPN, and GoPro with some of the planet's most visionary thinkers, futurists, and entrepreneurs
Not again. No way was I going to miss my ride this time. It was pseudo-palatable to eat the 10 bucks for ticket I bought for the missed train ride they day before, but after not being able to secure another ticket for the next 3 days, if I was to stand any chance of making it to Nuwara Eliya in the highlands, I would be forced to hire a private driver...
"Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean." -John Muir. Happy Birthday John Muir. And thank you. So so much. Your legacy may very well be the grandest of them all.
