I couldn’t bring myself to shoot a single black and white image in Antarctica last year. To me the place was all about colour. This year it was very different. Last week I was on Deception Island in Antarctica, walking around an old whaling station in the crater of a still-active volcano. It’s a fascinating place, full of texture, contrasts, …
Mara Impressions I
Mara Impressions I, Kenya, 2012. Click it to see it larger as the smaller image really does it no justice. I made this in the Maasai Mara, still under the spell of my friend Wendy’s expressionist / abstract work. What struck me most about her work is the effect of motion and light to create new lines, almost brush strokes, …
Faking It.
Ice Abstract, Peggy’s Cove, NS. 2012. Every artist I know, particularly those who feel uncomfortable calling themselves artists, feels like they’re faking it. In those moments when I’m totally transparent and feeling brave, I’ll tell you it’s one of the two fears with which I wrestle daily – the first that one day I’ll wake to find my muse has …
My Next Book – The Print & The Process
My next book just went up on Amazon. It’s always a little surreal because no one tells me these things and suddenly I’m looking at a cover of a book that looks suspiciously like mine. The less coffee I’ve had, the longer it takes me to figure it out. Wait! That’s MY book! 🙂 The Print & The Process began …
A Beautiful Anarchy
Self Portrait, iPhone. There are rules for engineering bridges, and flying airplanes. There are laws about how you drive a car and file your taxes. There are no rules or laws in art. Art is a beautiful anarchy, a place wherein we express – or try to – the inexpressible, to “eff the ineffable” as author Nick Hornby once wrote. …
Portraits: Some Questions Answered.
Old Havana, Cuba, 2009 I got some questions after we released the latest eBook, Forget Mugshots, 10 Steps to Better Portraits, that I thought I’d answer here. Some of this stuff was answered in Within The Frame, The Journey of Photographic Vision, but I don’t expect everyone to have read that, so here’s some additional ideas that have come up. …
Don’t Stop.
Agra Fort. Agra, India. 2008. I rediscovered this sequence of photographs while putting together Photographically Speaking. In the book I discuss one of these images and explore the elements and decisions that make the photograph what it is. But looking at the 3 together I think there’s a lesson along the lines of the stuff I’ve been talking about lately, …
Originality Part II
A week ago I left what might have been my shortest post ever: Originality is Overrated. It generated some good discussion, and from the comments it seemed to really resonate and get some thoughts going. My own thinking has been stirring too, but before I tell you where those thoughts have -for now – settled, I wanted some ghosts to …
Do The Work
“The artist is nothing without the gift, but the gift is nothing without work.” ~Emile Zola Lately I’ve had nothing but time. My feet are still weak and the closest I come to walking is fearful crutch-work across the kitchen floor as I put more and more weight on the feet. I have visions of the screws and plates popping …
Originality is Overrated
There is much talk in artsy circles about being “original”. I’m not even sure I know what that means. (Or if it exists.) Of all the places to put our energy, I think this is among the more futile. It’s the wrong answer to the right question. Is desiring originality (insert vague personal definition here) a good thing? Yes. Of …