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The Good Day

When we arrived on Bali, our first phone call was to Gusti, who Donna has worked with and known for close to twelve years. He was distraught. His Mother had just returned home from a walk (at 80 she was a vital part of the family) and collapsed in the driveway. He was taking her to the hospital. He later told us that she had a stroke and he had stayed with her, and two days after that conversation, she died. We actually spoke with him the moment after her death (weird how this all works). So we knew the

Bali Journal, Week 2

We left Ubud by taking a winding route by our friend Gusti’s home, and then made our way out to the shore of E. Bali to spend a bit of time at the beach, as well as catch up with Michael Lorenti, a fellow member of 1% for the Planet with his company Sensatia Botanicals. Ketut, and her husband Willie drove u,s and we made sort of a family type outting of it, with the four of us. The tempo of life while being much more leisurely here, is pretty intriguing on several levels, especially when we got to have

Running and Gunning

Whew, just off a series of e mails with Lorenzo De Stefano, who is Director of the film Hearing is Believing which I am the Director of Cinematography on. The crew will be down at the Blue Whale in LA filming a performance by Rachel and the remarkable Taylor Eigsti for the project Thursday night. I on the other hand, will be on Bali working on some development projects for my wife’s company, and meeting up with a couple film makers there to possibly create something rather exotic. Life is hectic in a good way. This week saw a fantastic

Ocean Ohana: Guardianship

The other night my wife and I were at a friend’s home in Ojai. A bunch of us regularly get together and cook for each other. An eclectic mix of artists, musicians, scientists, researchers, doctors and ex or current military operatives, we spend the evening into the night, just enjoying the fok out of each other, and strangely enough, in spite of the laughter, challenges to each other’s knowledge bases, great food (each person is a remarkable chef-cook) and some interesting wines, we actually learn stuff that can be carried with us from that point onward. One such gem which

Another Year: NYE

The Holidays seem to never change much in our family. Generally speaking, they are a time of deep reflection and great personal growth. It has always been this way. I am not sure if it is because so many in the tribe were born this time of year, or what, exactly. But it has become an unsought tradition: that of looking inward and subtly shifting focus, often with dramatic results. As Creatives it is an obligation to do so: set our house in order. So that the work we produce may be a benefit to others, and not just

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

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