A Quiet Calm

A deep breath of air.  A quiet calm.  Sublime observations of minute interactions between light and shadow pulse through the minds eye.  I stand unfettered, patiently accepting the pace at which the natural world unfolds before me.  I stand and stare, lost in peace as my subconscious mechanically calculates the scene.  A slight breeze blows from the East, and I awake in time.  Composition is right, light is balanced, exposure calculated, image taken.  I slowly pack my gear, sling it over my back and continue the slow march deeper into the desert, into nature, into myself.  I take a drink of water and a deep breath.  A quiet calm.

Architecture Design | and all that

A whirlwind of activity over the past several weeks has yielded a substantial new portfolio, a fresh direction, new clients, and a healthy respect for design.  Heavily focusing on a single photographic subject forces you to evaluate it in extreme detail, to learn its' subtle nuances, to see it in a light that perhaps is unconsciously ignored by the passerby.  Until I started to truly look at architecture through my lens, with eyes honed from years of patiently photographing the landscape, I failed to appreciate the level of manufactured grace that comes from the understanding of space and how to fill it with man-made constructs.  I've come to be inspired by something that compositionally resembles the natural world, but otherwise is the exact opposite.  I now see architecture as a three dimensional canvas that has two very different, yet symbiotic, functions.  It must be usable, and at the same time visually powerful.  The space must tell a story, whatever that story may be is up to the architect.  Perhaps it's one of integration into the surroundings, or a narrative on the use of sustainable materials.  I see it, as an architectural photographer, to capture all these things in two very simple dimensions.  To show the viewer the power of a building or beauty of a space, to communicate the architects intent.  I love my job.

The Astronaut and the Humbled Photographer

I love all things space.  Space travel, history, ships, rockets, trivia, telescopes, moons, pulsars, the list is almost endless.  The Right Stuff is the first move I remember seeing in the theater, well maybe Empire Strikes Back, but they're both about space travel.  I'm a whiz at space trivia, or at least space history trivia, the science can get a bit tricky.  I have old school mission patches, including from my favorite astronaut, Cooper.  Yes, I have a favorite astronaut.  Check him out, he was the definition of one cool customer.  I follow the NASA missions with intense interest and mourned when Spirit got bogged down for good on Mars.  I find it all so incredibly fascinating and wonderful.  Last October we went to the Academy of Sciences building in the Golden Gate Park here in San Francisco.  Each Thursday night the museum puts on an a party, they dim the lights, serve drinks, and even have a DJ.  Which is a bit odd walking around a modern science museum with the thumping base beat pulsing in the background.  Sometimes they have a theme, and bring in special people and displays in honor of that theme.  So last April they celebrated Yuri's night, the anniversary of Yuri Gagarin's historic space flight with a slew of different events and speakers.  Buzz Aldrin was abound as were other NASA astronauts. They showed an amazingly cool planetarium show, basically about how very small we are, and how very big the universe truly is.  Trust me, it's big out there.  I have to say now, I've never met an astronaut, and for me it's definitely a 'star struck' kind of thing.  Place any A-list actor in front of me and I could almost care less, but an astronaut, well that's a different ball game.  After a few hours of wandering, and taking in the humbling planetarium show I finally met my first astronaut.  I was a little star struck.  But, as we got to talking he mentioned he did photography as a hobby, and I immediately thought okay now not only do we have something in common, I have a little edge up.  I blabber on about this shoot and that, images I got in far off places and he patiently listens and then chimes in with this.  He was on the first shuttle flight after the Columbia accident and one of his jobs was to spacewalk underneath the shuttle and check for heat shield damage, where he tells me he has a little extra time and so decides to bust out his cameras, yes plural, he likes to shoot what's called stereoscopic images, essentially 3D, and photograph the distant horizon line of the earth.  Trumped.  Astronauts, they just do everything a bit cooler.

Buildings, Spaces and Interiors

The past month and a half has been a hotbed of architecture activity.   I've shot, edited and shot some more.  Traveled from Napa to Stanford and many spots in between to re-brand my commercial portfolio.  From research centers to museums, houses to office spaces, I've shot a little bit of everything. Outside, inside, big vistas and small details.  I'm extremely happy with these new images and with this direction.  The visual elements are very similar to landscape photography in terms of light, composition and design.  I've been meeting with architects, interior designers and builders to get the word spread around.  This particular portfolio will be updated quite frequently as I'm photographing fresh images almost daily.  Stay tuned...

Coexistence

Canon's 5D mark II DSLR has been out on the market for quite some time.  Long enough for several high end videos to get shot through its HD video capability.  Some are almost feature length, most I suppose are merely add-ons to already exhaustive shoot days.  With this simple affordable camera, high end video has come to the masses, or at lease to the myriad of photographers who have one.  A once well defined boundary has suddenly blurred.  Still photography has always existed separate from that other world.  The world of Burbank, Hollywood, DP's and unionized card carrying member-only workforces.  That line seems to be vanishing fast.  I wonder how Hollywood will react when most still shooters can offer motion picture add-ons to the products they are already photographing still.  Turn the well established system on its head?  I think not.  Even though the likes of National Geographic TV is now excepting some of its footage from this camera, it'll always be a completely different medium from still photography.  They have coexisted for more than a century.  Both have their creative and commercial use and the simple fact that technology is racing to bring both mediums into the hands of a single person doesn't change that fact.  Regardless of what piece of equipment either form is shot from, broken into their most basic principles, one is still and one moves, and that will never change.

Observation

I think it's necessary for a photographer to be an acute observer.  Even more so than participation.  To learn observation, with and without a camera takes patience.  How many times have you sat and watched the immediate world around you.  The unfolding scenes surrounding your perimeter.  Whenever I do this the first thing I notice, if I happen to be in a populated area, is how fast people move through.  As I sit and watch I also become aware of emerging patterns within my little world.  How light and wind interact with my little scene, insect life, which at first seems random but eventually patterns emerge even there.  Without touching a camera I learn about this patch of world by simply watching, removing myself from participating in what I see.  I've always considered myself a watcher of things, a self described, or prescribed, naturalist.  After sitting awhile I decide to wander on to my next patch and I come to recognize the innumerable places I myself have simply sped by, never taking the time.  But once in awhile it's good to stop, sit down and watch.

Short but sweet, cheers all!

Legion of Honor

Two posts ago I talked about a redirection in my work towards architecture photography.  Well I've been shooting a ton and am having so much fun with it.  It's incredible to watch dusk creep up slowly and see these buildings come alive under their own illumination, and has a photographer balancing the two.  I'm still building my new portfolio, but below are two images I did at the Legion of Honor Museum last night.  More to come so stay tuned:

Context Revisited

A response to my post on February 10th.

On a cold Winter day in December 1944 Pablo Picasso was sitting in his Parisian third floor studio when the German Gestapo paid him a visit.  This wasn't a new thing, they'd been harassing the artist for months with allegations of hiding Jewish friends and distributing works of art that had no place in the ever increasing fascist Europe.  On a little wooden table there laid a pile of postcards depicting his 1937 painting Guernica, the brutal depiction of the German fire bombing of the Basque country town of the same name.  One of the German's picked up a postcard of the painting and asked, did you do this.  Picasso simply said, no you did, go on take it, it's a souvenir.   Sixty-six years later, on the eve of the American invasion of Iraq, Colon Powell gave a speech at the UN drumming support for the illegal invasion of Iraq which was to be followed by a press conference.  At the press conference, behind his podium, hung a life size tapestry of the painting Guernica, 12x22 feet in all.  This, as it turns out, just wouldn't do, so instead of heeding the deep symbolic message that lives in the painting, they covered it up.  That by my definition is the power of art.  A grotesquely, cubist rendition of a Nazi war crime, not photographed but painted in oils, remains as relevant today as it did sixty plus years ago.  


Modern art can be the most powerful of mediums, but I still detest blank pieces of paper pinned to the wall.  
Cheers All!

New Directions

I've decided focus on a new commercial direction with my photography, architecture photography.  I feel it could be a wonderful commercial outlet for this humble landscape artist.  After all it's essentially urban landscape, using a lot of the same techniques as photographing the natural environment.  San Francisco is a hotbed of cool architecture; classic, contemporary and ancient.  I plan on taking full advantage of this.  This is one area of photography I never considered.  I had always envisioned my commercial outlet to be a combination of nature and people, but as the years have gone by I've photographed thousands of landscapes but no people.  Unequivocally telling me perhaps I don't like to photograph people.  The brain can be such a powerfully manipulating device.  So far it's been fantastically interesting and I'll post fresh images as I shoot them.  The morning after thinking about this I went out and photographed a few buildings at sunrise, nothing spectacular, but as I grow into this new role I think they'll be getting much better.  Landscape artist, architecture photographer.

                                 The Academy of Sciences Building
Cheers All!

Two Poems

Today I wanted to simply post two of my favorite poems, both speak with simple words, but are deep in eternal meaning. The first is by the immeasurable Walt Whitman, who in my humble opinion can eloquently write more in a single sentence than most authors say in entire books.  The second piece is from the poet laureate Robert Bly, which speaks clearly to how I feel when I'm out buried in the landscape.

A Clear Midnight by Walt Whitman
This is thy hour O Soul, thy free flight into the wordless,
Away from books, away from art, the day erased, the lesson done,
Thee fully forth emerging, silent, gazing, pondering the themes
thou lovest best,
Night, sleep, death and the stars.

Solitude Late at Night in the Woods by Robert Bly
The body is like November birch facing the full moon
And reaching into the cold heavens
In these trees there is no ambition, no sudden body, no
     leaves,
Nothing bu bare trunks climbing like cold fire!

My last walk in the trees has come. At dawn
I must return to the trapped fields,
To the obedient earth.
The trees shall be reaching all the winter.

It is a joy to walk in the bare woods.
The moonlight is not broken by the heavy leaves.
The leaves are down, and touching the soaked earth,
Giving off the odor that partridges love.