The Created Image: Turkana Fisherman
I was swimming in Lake Turkana, just outside of the town of Loiyangalani, Kenya, when I saw this fisherman on the shore mending nets. Lake Turkana, I am told, has the highest concentration of crocodiles in the world, so while the swimming was lovely, this was as good a reason as any to get out. Kura, my Kenyan friend, went …
Northern Kenya on White
The images above are another sample of the photographs from this last month’s work in northern Kenya. I wanted something simpler than the environmental portraits I’ve done in the past. Something that isolated my subjects from their contexts and showed them, and their emotions and character, elegantly. Before I left I talked to the folks at Westcott, and picked up …
Postcards from Nanyuki
After 2 weeks in the field in northern Kenya, we’ve settled in for 2 days at the Mt. Kenya Safari Club to shower up, debrief, and get ready to head home. We’ve been in Kenya’s north, from Archer’s Post to Loiyangalani, photographing in partnership with The Boma Project, among Rendille, Samburu, and Turkana tribes, mostly nomadic pastoralists. I’ll do a …
Postcard from Loglogo
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 …
Long Exposure Light Leaks
I shot the image above in Patagonia this year, my first real work with the new Nikon D800, which always makes me nervous. So when I saw the weird banding you can see in the frame on the left, I got a little freaked out. In 25 years of photography, I’d seen some weird things, but never this. I was …
BOMA Project: Back to the field
On Tuesday I’m heading back to Kenya. I’ll be exploring Tsavo (think The Ghost and The Darkness) and Diani (think beaches) for a week and then on January 17th I’m heading back to work. After what will be a forced hiatus of 20 months, due to my accident, I’m finally returning to client work with humanitarian organizations. I’m thrilled to …
Planning Is Just Guessing. But With More Pie Charts and Stuff.
I taught at VanArts this morning, by which I really mean I talked for two hours and hoped those beautiful young minds would learn something from my string of disconnected thoughts. One of the things I talked about, though with my tendency to digress, I have no idea which rabbit-hole I was down when my time ran out, was poetically …
The Life Creative (4)
Why am I going on about this Life Creative stuff? Most likely, it’s because in my heart I’m a preacher and I’ve always done very poorly at keeping my mouth shut. But it’s more than that. I have loved photographs since I was a kid and that love’s grown to become a love for those who create them. There’s a …
Back It Up!
Here’s your New Year’s reminder: back your stuff up. Do it redundantly, with extreme paranoia, and do it now. If it helps, I’ll even say “Pretty please.” You put so much time into your work, and harddrives fail all the time. So really, this is not paranoia. It’s wisdom. My preference is that every file, including my Lightroom catalog files, …
The Life Creative (3)
Someone just asked me what I do in my spare time. I told them I didn’t have any. I know what they meant, I really do, and I swear I’m not trying to be difficult. You’ll get the same blank look, or blunt reply, from me if you ask me what I do. I just haven’t a clue how to …