See The World Packing List
On February 11 we’re releasing SEE THE WORLD: 20 Lessons for Stronger Travel Photographs. As I gear up for it, and start packing for the trip to Kenya that follows hot on its heels (I leave February 15), I thought I’d give you a copy of my own packing list. I’ll drop it down at the bottom of this post …
Talking Money with Zack Arias
Months ago I wrote a post called Photographers and Money, We Should Talk. The blog post seemed to get a lot of traction and generated a lot of comments and questions. Since then I’ve wanted to get my friend Zack Arias on the line and record a conversation about this stuff, because Zack’s made almost as many mistakes as I …
Hokkaido Boat Abstracts
Halfway through this last trip to Hokkaido my brain needed a break from all the white, elegant, graphic stuff. Beautiful, to be sure, but I needed something tangental, something different. In part, I think, I wanted something manmade, probably longed for some colour as well. What I found in the old boat yards, the boats all up on blocks, some …
Back from Hokkaido
I got in from Japan yesterday and dove headlong into the blur of jetlag. By now I’m pretty good at the auto-pilot chores and the mindless digging out from the pile of things accumulated in my absence. It’s not just jetlag that makes it hard, but the more whole-body confusion that results from longing to be back where I just …
Postcards from Hokkaido
When I came to Hokkaido for the first time for a wildlife tour in 2013, I fell in love with the place. It’s vast, wild, elegant, and her people live close to the land. I left with a longing to return, so when Martin Bailey asked me to come back and do this trip again, but with a landscape emphasis, …
Venice to Hokkaido via Vancouver
Saying goodbye is hard. When the person from whom you part ways is a city like Venice, it’s even harder. This trip more than any other has been amazing. With my surgery in February, and an uncertain recovery time, I didn’t think I’d get to Italy this year, so to be able to spend Christmas here, in a stunning little …
Postcards from Venice
Venice is, at any time of year, magical. But I’ve never enjoyed it this much, never found so much mood and beauty. The tourists are a little thinner now that it’s cold out, but the light is gorgeous – this morning the sun just let the fog do its thing and didn’t try to get in the way. We’ve got …
Favourite Things
Between you and me, sometimes the whole Gear is Good, Vision is Better thing makes me worry that people think I don’t like toys, but if you know me at all, you know that’s just crazy talk. I like stuff. I’ve been accused of having champagne tastes, by no less an authority than my own mother. So this, not really …
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 …