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On Beauty

I recently returned from filming an endurance event called the Never Quit Challenge, which this year was a 600 mile jetski ride down the California Coastline, from Morro Bay to Shelter Island, with laps out to Catalina made from Long Beach Harbor. The event was created and led by K38 Rescue’s Shawn Alladio and is a charity benefit fund raiser, but at it’s core, is more of a means to honor the Men and Women who have served in our military, both alive and dead. It strengthens those people and families, testing both resolve and ability to connect to each

Waging Peace: Cultural Alchemy

Most of us have thought along the same lines at various points in our life’s timeline. The answer to our question “why?” usually bounces right back in similar fashion as it is asked. “Because that is just the way it is.” Here is a dynamic Ted talk by Ron Edry, who as an Israel based graphic designer (and former soldier) eschewed convention, and created a shift Does it matter? Only to those who moved. There are a lot of them. Art changes things. The book Blue Mind, written by Marine Scientist Wallace J Nichols made the NYT best seller list

David Pu’u Does Not Text

The above image is a screen grab of me placing a camera on a vehicle. What that means exactly, is that as I was pre editing motion clips for a music video I saw this, stopped the roll and hit Apple-Shift-3, which saved a jpeg image of my computer monitor screenview to my desktop. That is called a screenshot. It is a nothing tech tool you learn the first week using a computer as a work platform. I admit to being a geek and nerd. Though I love my little Go Pro cameras for some work, I am the very

A Faithful Paradigm

  A close friend sent me a story about a researcher who was suing to get a university job position restored, after getting fired for being different. Here is that news piece.  Nothing remarkably enlightening about the story. But as is frequently the case, the informative bits are found in the post article commentary left by readers, who for the most part are more concerned with the deployment of ridicule on the researcher, than the larger question of illegal termination of the man due to discriminatory bias and personal agendas of school staff. In fact, it appears that not only

Sense of Place

I have not spoken with many on this subject, though some of my closer friends have touched upon it with me on occasion. They do so in such a manner as to cause me to assume that most people, by and large, understand what “place” means, and how we ought to be when we visit one that is inhabited by another tribe, as it were. “Another” meaning simply a group of individuals who had not specifically invited us into a place of significant meaning to themselves. The process is endemic to Photo Journalism as we venture forth, to see what

Independence Day was Born on the Fourth of July

Not vice versa. This is why we consider the Declaration of Independence to be the blueprint for Liberty. It covers the underpinnings necessary for the pursuit of happiness. It is the God given and legal architecture of these united States, with which what I term “The Suck” (which applies to those who endeavor to control and suppress independence) battles, in ever more brazen fashion, these recent decades. Below is some beautiful verse written by my friend and colleague, photojournalist and soldier Jon Louis Blackburn. He is a proud Scot in heritage and tone, and a perfect example of what America

D Day Retrospective

  June 6, 2014, Today in the US, we look back on an event in WW2, remembered as D Day. Here is the original historic dispatch from Associated Press. CNN brings us a fantastic retrospective on D Day in this Op Ed history based feature   If you were a young American, British or Canadian soldier landing on the shores of France on June 6 1944, chances are you went into a very well defended series of kill zones in an early variant of an AAV. You can read a bit on the history of the LVT craft here. Or

Memorial Day Is….

A culture which does not connect accurately, reverentially or beautifully with it’s past, is akin to a rudderless boat: doomed to be at the whim of waves and weather. So today is Memorial Day. So what? Why should you or I care? Only because to not do so, is to engage in our personal demise and that of our families, and in turn, our Nation. Wiki does a great job with relating the History of Memorial Day. In the course of my work, on a somewhat regular basis, I get the opportunity to serve the various Military Communities which heed

Relevance

Sean Tully dropped me a note the other day, which had me scrambling to find an image file we created awhile back. I could not locate the high res finals, only some low res jpegs. So I referred to the original shot file where the camera raws reside, and had a little look. What I found was a slew of work we had not really put out into editorial at that time. I think maybe two or three from this series had become magazine covers, but the rest, had just not been relevant as far as I could tell. But

Foundations of Change

In the aftermath of the horrible events of Sept 11, 2001 I had found myself faced with a crossroads of sort which was quite unexpected. On one hand was the road to being immersed in the disaster and shooting that. On the other was quite a different tack. That of leveraging the change which I would like to see in the world. I was unaware of the consequences of the choices before me as I settled in to create some imagery in the week after the event for Sygma News service through my agent, Corbis Images. I found myself shooting

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On Beauty

I recently returned from filming an endurance event called the Never Quit Challenge, which this year was a 600 mile jetski ride down the California Coastline, from Morro Bay to Shelter Island, with laps out to Catalina made from Long

Waging Peace: Cultural Alchemy

Most of us have thought along the same lines at various points in our life’s timeline. The answer to our question “why?” usually bounces right back in similar fashion as it is asked. “Because that is just the way it

David Pu’u Does Not Text

The above image is a screen grab of me placing a camera on a vehicle. What that means exactly, is that as I was pre editing motion clips for a music video I saw this, stopped the roll and hit

A Faithful Paradigm

  A close friend sent me a story about a researcher who was suing to get a university job position restored, after getting fired for being different. Here is that news piece.  Nothing remarkably enlightening about the story. But as

Sense of Place

I have not spoken with many on this subject, though some of my closer friends have touched upon it with me on occasion. They do so in such a manner as to cause me to assume that most people, by

Independence Day was Born on the Fourth of July

Not vice versa. This is why we consider the Declaration of Independence to be the blueprint for Liberty. It covers the underpinnings necessary for the pursuit of happiness. It is the God given and legal architecture of these united States,

D Day Retrospective

  June 6, 2014, Today in the US, we look back on an event in WW2, remembered as D Day. Here is the original historic dispatch from Associated Press. CNN brings us a fantastic retrospective on D Day in this

Memorial Day Is….

A culture which does not connect accurately, reverentially or beautifully with it’s past, is akin to a rudderless boat: doomed to be at the whim of waves and weather. So today is Memorial Day. So what? Why should you or

Relevance

Sean Tully dropped me a note the other day, which had me scrambling to find an image file we created awhile back. I could not locate the high res finals, only some low res jpegs. So I referred to the

Foundations of Change

In the aftermath of the horrible events of Sept 11, 2001 I had found myself faced with a crossroads of sort which was quite unexpected. On one hand was the road to being immersed in the disaster and shooting that.