A couple years ago I went for sushi with Chase Jarvis and as we sat across the table talking about art and commerce and life and stuff, he expressed an idea that I’ve loved and played with ever since – that the task of an artist is this: to create, and to share, and to do whatever you need to …
New Ideas, New Directions
Today is one of those days. And this is one of those rambling posts. Feel free to skip it if you’re looking for something with a single coherent point that’s easy to follow. We’ve just said goodbye to my mother at the airport and I’m settled on the couch in our new place in Victoria, surrounded by light and birdsong …
Enough.
Bull Kelp, Queen Charlotte Strait, British Columbia When I dropped into the waters of Queen Charlotte Strait a couple weeks ago it was a bit of a graduation for me. I’ve spent a year working towards it. Four different SCUBA certifications, a lot of reading, research, and far too much dreaming about the photographs I hoped I would make. And …
Below
What an unforgettable week. Last Sunday I closed the door of my Vancouver loft for the last time, threw my SCUBA gear into the Jeep and headed to the airport to pick up one of my best friends. We got on a ferry to Vancouver Island and headed north to Port Hardy, camping for a night along the way to …
Back to Sucking.
This weekend I’m off to the northern tip of Vancouver Island to dive in the giant kelp forests with sea lions and octopus. I can’t wait! After a year of taking SCUBA courses and, forgive the pun, immersing myself in a hobby more bewildering than even photography, I am finally taking my cameras into the water and it feels like …
Four.
This is a short note to long-time readers. It’s unedited and is, simply, a reflection and a thank you. Four years ago on Easter weekend I fell off a wall in Italy and changed my life forever. That I lived at all is wonder enough, but that I now look back on the last 4 years as some of the …
Tend the Fire
Most of us have a fire in the belly, a passion or desire that burns brightest in us. It’s the heat and energy from this fire that moves us forward, gives momentum to our projects, and authenticity to our voice. It’s one of those things, sometimes the thing that makes us feel alive. Only you know what this thing is, and …
Hungry?
“When your hands are full of thorns but you can’t quit groping for the rose…” ~Bruce Cockburn. I feel myself getting hungry. Or perhaps I’m always hungry but only now recognizing that gnawing feeling for what it is. I get that way when I come out of a time of gorging myself creatively, as I have recently in Kenya. I …
Glory Days
Ethiopia, 2006 It might surprise some of you, and to others be a shocking reminder of how fast time flies, for me to tell you it was only 10 years ago I stepped off the stage as a comedian for the last time and returned to my dream of being a photographer. Comedy, which I did for twelve years …
Make It Now.
This moment, this light, in Cape Churchill last week: it didn’t last long. You can photograph it, or let it pass you by. But you may never see it again. Last week I was sitting in a tundra buggy not photographing polar bears. The bears, driven by a months-long hunger were out on the sea ice, hunting seals. If we’d …