I never feel so much a part of something bigger than myself than when I am here, in this wide open red soil, under this vast African sky. Completely out of my context, but totally in my element. I’ve nothing here but a few personal belongings in my backpack, my cameras, and enough Kiswahili to be politely useless. What I …
Rambling Postcard from Kathmandu
Rubbing the sleep from my eyes, I pull on my down vest and head downstairs. I’m amazed I slept until 6:30 but with the uptake of the day’s usual din, there seems no point in pushing my luck, and with the sun coming out, part of the day I love most here is just before me, and fleeting. Reluctantly I …
The Voice of Fear
I tell my students at the Vancouver Gatherings that fear is the greatest barrier to creativity. I tell them to bring their fears into the light, to give their fears a chance to say their piece, then to call bullshit and move on. I tell them this because the alternative is to leave our fears muttering to us from the …
Real Moments
I took my Jeep, Emily, over to Vancouver Island this weekend. We had a festival here in town and the thought of being in the city at all, yet alone having to deal with throngs of people set me to hyperventilating and looking for a cat bowl to fill with gin. So I jumped on the ferry and within a …
Stop Waiting.
Marshall Eagle, Kenya, 2012 Perhaps because I spend so much time with creatives I spend more time with frustrated people who feel like they were meant for something more. Perhaps if the default in this culture was to make a living in the arts, we’d be seeing plumbers that just wanted to quit their job painting so they could …
Vancouver Island
Emily in the mud. Vancouver Island. Click to enlarge. What an amazing weekend. It was Canada Day weekend here, north of the 49th parallel, and I celebrated with friends by driving 600 km up Vancouver Island, through old growth forests, logging roads, mud puddles, and coastal views. I went as the new guy on the block, signing up for membership …
Make It Happen
My mother was an officer in the Royal Air Force, a nurse who trained at Florence Nightingale’s St. Thomas’s Hospital in London. She met my father in Cyprus. She’s where I get at least 50% of my wanderlust. This weekend we were wandering around Coal Harbour, in Vancouver, when I made an off-the-cuff comment about jumping on a float plane. …
Above the 45
Thiksey Monastery, Ladakh, India. 2008 Click to view larger. This is a bit of a rambling one. A couple years ago I was headed to Bosnia, in the process of buying Jessie, my Land Rover Defender, and planning to leave my home for a year in pursuit of stories, adventure, and some fresh air. The day I left for Bosnia …
Photographing My Father
This fall I took my girl and my camera to visit my father. We drank some wine, watched the leaves change colour, spent some time riding around the back roads in his 1949 Willys Jeep, Patches. And we went off for an hour to do a portrait project I’ve been wanting to do, more and more urgently as my father …
We Bounce
Ladakh, India, 2008. A year ago, on Easter weekend, I fell 30′ from a wall in Pisa, Italy. Most of you know that. I shattered both feet, cracked my pelvis and was told I would never walk the same again, and would “always have a limp, though you’ll limp with both feet, so it won’t look like a limp.” Whatever …