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Dec 7, 2016

I have some personal history that connects with this day, Dec 7, 1941. In fact, even my name does. When I was about 7 my parents took us to Hawaii to meet our family there. I recall my Dad walking me out to a small wooden bridge which crossed the creek on the family property. Standing me up on the railing, he had me look down valley and through a lush tunnel of greenery I could see Pearl Harbor. As he held me up, he said “This is where I stood when I was about your age, and watched the

Things You Should Know

I was down at California Street the other night to capture a few images of Malibu Surfer Brooke Carlson, the newest member of “Team Betty” for my wife’s company Bettybelts, when I saw someone headed into the water with what looked like a dive housing and a surfboard. It cracked me up. We call that sort of work where you ride and shoot or film another surfer: “board to board” work. It is tricky at best and amazingly difficult at worst. This image is the guy shooting. Again, hard to do. The lead image in this article is a shot

Taking Up the Slack

Compromise in our personal standards is seldom a result of one big, clearly defined, decisive moment. Typically the path which leads to a position of weakness in our lives arrives as a subtle whisper and as a result of laziness, or merely inattention due to the preponderance of distractions in our digitally enhanced culture. The Moby video in my prior blogpost said a lot about being lost in a lost world. Personally I have never wanted to be “that guy”. So I study a lot, train regularly, and try to prepare myself and life systems in order to always be

Studying Life

My education in Art began really early on in life, at crayon and fingerpaint age. My Father had taken up oil painting in what I believe may have been therapy, to alleviate pressure created by his work in Aerospace and Defense. Helping architect weapons that can end Humanity takes it’s toll on some people. I had seen the affect on my own Father. So Art made sense for him. But at the same time, my uncle Joe would come and visit from Hawaii. Joe was a successful and talented painter who also taught Art at UH. He would tutor my

East Bali Poverty Project: Field Notes

The February 1963 to January 1964 eruption of Gunung Agung, Indonesia’s largest and most devastating eruption of the twentieth century, was a multi-phase explosive and effusive event that produced both basaltic andesite tephra and andesite lava. A rather unusual eruption sequence with an early lava flow followed by two explosive phases. (Research Gate) Imagine living in a jungle on the slopes of a massive mountain. Your village is composed of several small huts nestled within densely vegetated terrain. Life flows in the tempo of your mountain culture, and is different from that of the people who live far below you,

Production Field Notes: Bali 2016

It has been a little over year since I began using the Samsung NX1 system for the bulk of my imaging projects in motion and in stills. The inexpensive little camera which Samsung has apparently discontinued, resides in triplicate in my camera kit. It continues to surprise me with it’s dynamic range and versatility while here on Bali. It is without a doubt the single most versatile and bullet proof little camera I have used, especially since I collect time lapse sequences in full 27 MP raw file format at up to 3000 frames per day average while shooting on

Life as a Ceremony

My wife and I are on Bali for almost a week now. Days and nights have been full of image creation. My little MBP is on 24 hour duty cycles processing time lapse sequences. The collection of clips completed on this trip is at 22 and building as I write this. I have been exploring the dynamics of a time lapse program called Panolapse. It is a good asset to have in my arsenal of programs. The developer and I have exchanged a few e mails. I am impressed at what the man has done and is doing. Grateful, actually.

World Oceans Day

Just in the door from a wonderful watery trip to Costa Rica, I found myself in a meeting at City Hall here in Ventura yesterday, with City Engineers, a smart Engineering firm from SF, reps from the California Coastal Commission, Army Corps of Engineers and some members of the Surf Community who volunteered to delve into a solution for an ongoing erosion problem at our town’s main point break, Surfers Point. As I looked around the room, it hit me how significant our people can be. We bring to the table an informed love for the watery world we live

Memorial Day, 2016

I made this piece for my friends in the Phoenix Patriot Foundation. The clock just struck midnight. It is now Memorial Day in the US. I dedicate this piece to my brother RJ Fenwick, who has ended his time here on earth this weekend. Beloved Father, loyal career LEO, lifelong waterman, and dear brother, who understood honor better than most one could ever meet. The song in this is written by another brother in arms, Samuel Shoemaker. I will be off grid this day, but in our Ocean off of Costa Rica, thinking of RJ, praying a bit, and spending

Earth Day: 2016

I am not a huge fan of the entire Earth Day movement. I see it as a politically inspired facade where people masquerading as leaders, do and say stupid shit, and pretend they care about you and I and the blue marble we spin through space and time on. As my colleague, Photographer Chris Burkhard put it in his instagram post of a stellar image shot in Alaska: “Every day is Earth Day”. I see it similarly. The image above was a shot at the end of the day, “Earth Day” 2016. It is a single frame from a time

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