New Photographic Studies Of Maine’s Rocky Coast

November 2, 2019 | Leave a Comment |

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Wherever I go I explore the world visually with a camera. Sometimes this is during a walk. Sometimes this is during a workshop. Other times it’s while I’m making a body of work. You might think it distracting to think about one thing while you’re doing another but I find that working on two different ideas at the same time often leads to a fertile cross-pollination. I find new ideas this way.

Of course, you’ve got to stay flexible. Recently, while I was leading a photography workshop in Maine’s Acadia National Park I went looking for the cairns so many visitors leave behind. I don’t like them in public lands, because when I go there I want to be able to experience the land uninterpreted. Still, I appreciate the playful contact people have with the land when they make cairns. So to work on my ambivalence I started making art out of the cairns. But this time, they weren’t there. I was pleasantly surprised and a little disappointed, which also surprised me. So I started to make my own cairns to photograph, intending to scatter them before I left, and never got to it because the first two stones I picked up were all I needed that day. The relationships between them and their environment were much richer than I expected. It felt like arranging still lifes, which I did for hours – and I’m sure I’ll do it again.

These studies relate to my series Alignment.

View my Maine Cairns studies here.

View my studies of Maine Artists here.

View more studies of Maine here.

Find out about my Maine fall photography workshop here.

Category: Images - iPhone
Tags: Images - Photographs, iPhone, maine, stones

Land In Land – When Studies Turn Into Finished Works

November 2, 2019 | Leave a Comment |

LandInLand_XXV

For years I’ve used my iPhone as a sketchbook to play, make images more spontaneously, and explore ideas. I’ve always been fascinated by how the tools we use change our perception. Yet, knowing it wasn’t the tool that made the difference between a study and a finished work, I’d been challenging myself to create a series of images with my iPhone that had as much depth of content and feeling as the images I’ve made with cameras that make higher quality files. Land In Land is the first series I’ve done this with. Here’s a quick look at how it developed.

LandInLand_I

I knew I was onto something when I saw this first image in New Zealand.

I got confirmation that the idea could be sustained with this second image.

LandInLand_II

I found that meaningful variations could be found in other locations like California.

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This process of discovery was repeatable in Utah.

LandInLand_LXVI

LandInLand_LIX

LandInLand_LIII

This new way of seeing finally became intuitive for me, leading to increased productivity in Spain.

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LandInLand_LXXVII LandInLand_LXXXII

LandInLand_LXXIX LandInLand_LXXXIX

My mother (an artist, a picture editor, a designer) has an exceptional eye. When she asked for a print of this last image and hung it near a prized Tibetan tanka, it was confirmation for me that I’d achieved a real depth that carries through to others.

View the suite of images from Maine here.

View the video here.

Listen to the statement here.

Category: Images - iPhone
Tags: ended as finished work, Images - Photographs, iPhone, land in land, multiple exposure, near and far, series, started as an experiment, two views simultaneously

My Top 12 Photographs Of 2018

December 26, 2018 | Leave a Comment |

Constellation

Antarctica

Land In Land LXXIX

Land In Land LXXXIX

Land In Land LXXVI

Land In Land LIII

Land In Land LXXVI

This is a selection of my top 12 images of 2018. This selection doesn’t reflect sales, publication, or activities on the web. It simply reflects my opinion. Click on the titles to find out more about each image.

Geography

The locations include Antarctica, Spain, Arches National Park, Scoresbysund Greenland, and Maine.

Process

Continuing the momentum from the previous year I completed my first seriesof finished works with my iPhone – Land In Land. Processing images on location, sometimes seconds after making exposures, is a gamechanger. Even more interesting is the sense of seeing the image better at arm’s length, allowing me to see the composition and the subject simultaneously.

I was pleasantly surprised when another experiment worked as I combined images in the public domain from the Hubble telescope with my own exposures, expanding the images in my series Constellation to add images of deep space to those of stars observed with the naked eye.

Concepts

I continue to explore presenting many moments in time simultaneously to see one aspect of land through another. In more recent work, the detail and the overview are united in a single integrated experience. As ever, what’s behind and beyond shows through.

My use of abstraction has expanded from minimalism to include more complex maximal patterns.

Magic Moment

Perhaps the most sublime moments were found in Greenland’s, Scoresbysund, as the weather shifted to winter conditions creating dramatic katabatic winds and unusual ice conditions found only at the beginning of the season. Being on the only boat (a three-masted schooner built in the early 1900s) in the fiord system heightened the sense of adventure.

It was a very productive year; more than 75 new works released; more than 150 new studies made.

It’s challenging to choose so few images from so many – but it’s insightful. Try selecting your own top 12 images. Try selecting the top 12 images of your favorite artist(s).

View more of my Annual Top 12 Selections here.

View more images in my ebooks here.

View my full Works here.

View my Series videos here.

View new images in my newsletter Collectors Alert.

Category: Images - Annual Top 12
Tags: Images - Photographs, photographs, selection, top 12