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Voice

Lone Voice Extreme athlete Garrett MacNamara has been visiting, and we are working on a few projects. He sat next to me as I rapidly did a search for a print file that a client had requested. In ten minutes this is what I pulled out of one of this season’s file folders. I doubt many, if any eyes have seen them or hearts heard the songs these images sing. In my files they are nothing particularly unusual. So does the fact that many people do not know they exist matter? What about the other thousand or so similars? Oh,

Crazy Is

as crazy does. But sometimes it is really all just a part of the ebb and flow of the creative process. What appears to be madness on the surface or at the least, just a bad idea, is often the seed of something quite remarkable. I have learned to always have my ear to the wind. The song it sings may carry that which I seek. My friend Kara Block, who is about to receive her Master of Fine Arts degree from Brooks Institute, had stopped by for a visit and to contribute to the planning of an expedition that

Inherent Risk

On this Fourth of July, a short note. As we memorialize our Nation’s birth it is a point of honor and gratitude that we recall the quest to embrace and engage in risk. Forward momentum and a new horizon would be found for those willing to set foot and family on a leaky ship. The amount of passion, victory, birth and new life that is our country, well it all began with that first risk taker. There is much ado about American Imperialism these days. I just returned from a short visit to camp Pendleton and a Navy corpsman told

Flaming Arrow

In my travels and also in my work here in the US, I often have projects and events thrown at me, or that I simply stumble across. Some I embrace, some I do not. Behind each of these somewhere is a person holding a bow. They have started a fire. They do this with a flaming arrow. I have a friend here who works for the Ventura Visitors Bureau. Her name is Kathleen Fitzgerald. Her bedroom name (the name we all use for her in private) is Firestarter. What she does is identify the need, come up with a potential

Is That Real? An Authentic View

Maldivian Blue I get asked this question a lot. When I have finished answering in the affirmative, the second response which has been repeated with enough frequency that I no longer take offense comes: “Is that Photoshopped?” The line of query says a lot about our over stimulated, content crammed, media saturated world, as it exists today. If one were to slip into the dusty cobweb strewn dark recesses of what passes for my mind, you would hear the little bitch echo of a voice I spend a lifetime trying to stifle, saying in a soft clear tone: “Um, get

Fifty Waves to Leave Your Lover For

I live in a place many consider to be California’s Gold Coast. The term conjures up images of glassy warm Winter days, and crisp blue green lines which swell and pitch into morning light, flashing golden with a brilliance that is breathtaking and addicting as it sets an emotional hook in one’s soul. Dolphins reflecting dawn on glistening lean muscular bodies are syncopating rhythmic reflections which dart into the pull of northwest groundswells and burst into amber flecked projectiles as energy and joy erupt in the life pulse of a distant storm, that ebbs on the shores of this place.

A Father’s Note

It occurred to me some time ago that each one of us is a note to the future via our relationship and connection to our Fathers. Mine died this past year. Though we were not ostensibly involved in each others daily lives, I felt it the moment he left earth. I had been on the phone with a friend and had commented on it, at what turned out to be that instant. Family connections are like that. He was a complex mix of Hawaiian mess some times. But under all of the issues associated with being the son of a

What is Surfing: Fifty Views

Each day lately, begins with me wading though the e mail file. Today I opened a newsletter from an organization which I support, by lending them usage of some of my images. The subject header was “International Surfing Day”. A “Cool, we have our own day” impulse when I pressed the “read” icon, rapidly transitioned to less than kind post read thoughts. The newsletter yielded the cyber floor to a new surf magazine editor from Orange County who I had never heard of, and who communicated his chronologically and geologically biased adolescent view of what Surfing is. But it occurred

Vtown Introspectus

The town I live in, like many in the US is faced with stark fiscal realities as money supplies shift and real estate markets go someplace no one thought that they would. It is a time for my little town as well as myself to consider how the future should look. In a historic review of many great cities, you will generally find that decisions made in times of calamity later proved to be what defined the town. Our neighbor, Santa Barbara is a great case in point. When an earthquake leveled much of downtown Santa Barbara not long after

World Oceans Day

I awoke late this Sunny Sunday, having spent the night wrapping a job on the computer and getting to sleep at 6:30 AM. I pulled myself away from my girlfriend Donna who was doing her best imitation of a dead woman at 9:15 am. I had some coffee and rolled down the valley into downtown Ventura for a haircut appointment at 10:00 am with my Samoan pal Danny Moa. By twelve, after we had rapped out and talked a lot of story and I stood squinting in the broad light of high noon, I felt different. It wasn’t the haircut.

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