My friend, I’ve got nothing this week. I’ve stared at this screen for what seems like hours, and my mind keeps getting distracted by the way my heart hurts. It’s been a tough year so far. The pandemic. So many lives and livelihoods lost. So much fear and anxiety. And now the murder of George Floyd, the subsequent protests in …
What it Feels Like
If you got my Contact Sheet on January 23, you’ve already read this, but if you didn’t, read on! Painter Robert Henri (1865–1929) admonished his students to “Paint the spirit of the bird in flight, not its feathers.” His words have echoed with me since I heard them, joining photographer David Alan Harvey’s plea: “Don’t shoot what it looks like, …
Postcards from the Revillagigedo Archipelago
Good morning from Mexico’s sunny San Jose del Cabo! I got off the Nautilus Belle Amie yesterday after 10 days at sea and another astonishing series of underwater encounters that blew my mind. Here are a small handful of them, including one of my dive buddy and good friend Jason Bradley after this one solitary black Jack (the kind of …
The Soul of the Camera [Signature Edition]
**Update – As of May 25, the Signature Edition is now sold out. Thank you so much for the support.** On or around June 15, my next book, Soul of the Camera, The Photographer’s Place in Picture-Making, will be released. I have the first copy here beside me and I haven’t been this proud of something I’ve written in a …
Returning Home, Returning to Soul.
As always, I’m pretty sure I needed Kenya vastly more than it needed me, though I hope I served it in some way over the month I was there. Before leaving I felt like something was missing, like this digital ecosystem I’ve been so attached to was not only no longer fulfilling, but was, in fact, beginning to gnaw holes …
Postcards from Italy
It’s been a while since I said hello, and the last time you heard from me was probably during the chaos of the 5 Day Deal over the last week. Thanks for your patience on that. Together we raised over $200,000 for 4 excellent charities, including The Boma Project with which I am so personally involved. This sale also funds …
The Great Bear Sea
I spent this weekend diving in the Great Bear Sea with friends, among them two people I’ve long admired – Paul Nicklen and Cristina Mittermeier. We dove several times among Steller Sea Lions and forests of white plumose anemone and purple urchins, spending our surface time talking about the state of things in the natural world and our desire to …
Postcards from Istanbul
I remember some point in my childhood hearing the name Constantinople; like the name Zanzibar it conjured something exotic and romantic in my mind. Of this kind of romance there was no shortage in my childhood. Early on my mother had a massive National Geographic atlas, easily the largest book in the house and I’d lie on the floor looking …
Gear for 2+ Months
In a few days I jump onto my first flight of 2016 and head to Johannesburg. From there I drive to Lesotho and then on horseback into the mountains to photograph for a couple NGOs working among shepherd children. This will be the first leg of a trip that’ll take me to Namibia, Cape Town, Kenya’s Maasai Mara, Zanzibar, Rajasthan, …
Holiday Gift Guide
You knew I wasn’t going to be the voice telling you to go buy more stuff for the photographers in your life, right? Right about now every blog out there is starting to release their Holiday Gift Guides and you should probably go there if you are looking for something cool to buy yourself, oops, I mean to buy someone …