When I was 14 I picked up a camera at a neighbour’s garage sale, a little Voigtlander rangefinder that changed my life. Quickly I wanted what we all want at the beginning – more control, more lenses, more gear. My mother gave me a Pentax Spotmatic and a gadget back full of stuff, acquired from a co-worker who had recently …
OverSharing?
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 …
Poetry & Imperfection
The third in a trilogy of opinionated editorial articles about getting past the craft in order to express vision. I’m heading back to the Khutzeymateen this weekend and have 3 days with the grizzly bears and the wilderness and with any luck the bee in my bonnet will take his leave and I’ll return with a renewed calm. This article …
The Place of Craft
“Sharpness is over-rated. No one has ever looked at the best photographs of this century and been moved emotionally because it was tack sharp or because the histogram was perfect. We suffer, not from a lack of technical ability, but from a lack of visual literacy, imagination, and the willingness to connect emotionally – and vulnerably – with our subjects.” …
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 …
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 …
You Matter More
I should have known better; I should have known that I can’t just say, “we give our cameras way too much credit for their part in the photographic process,” on social media, toss it out over left field without further commentary and not get some yeah-buts and some push-back. My bad. I should have known that there will be those …
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 …
Forget Practice
Boat under Snow. Hokkaido, Japan. 2015. Yesterday I linked my social media accounts out to an old blog post – Toward Mastery. One of the replies I got was refreshingly honest: I’ve hit a brick wall, and no amount of practicing is working. Twitter isn’t the kind of place to reply meaningfully to that kind of candor, so if you’ll …