Not That Kind of Photographer
What’s in the frame of the photograph matters artistically, to be sure, but what’s outside the frame can destroy it. ~Philip Hyde One of the most pervasive problems facing creative photographers, and especially those of us working with natural aesthetics, is that many assume we all do the same thing—spend our days in pursuit of […]
Unknowable Unknowns
Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its questions, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the […]
Art, Existentialism and Freedom
I found these words in my archive recently. They were originally written a few years ago but never published. At the time I wondered if it would be premature for me to espouse such provocative thoughts. In the years since, my confidence in them has only grown stronger. ~~ To create is likewise to give a […]
Lens & Pens: A Writing Workshop for Photographers
The act of writing, when it goes well, gives me a pleasure, a joy, unlike any other. It takes me to another place–irrespective of my subject–where I am totally absorbed and oblivious to distracting thoughts, worries, preoccupations, or indeed the passage of time. In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until […]
Rewarding Creativity
To award prizes is to attempt to control the course of another man’s work. It is a bid to have him do what you will approve. It affects not only the one who wins the award, but all those who in any measure strive for it. ~Robert Henri A few months ago, some who follow […]
Special Edition Prints
For anyone interested in my Special Edition prints, please be aware that I intend to raise their price for 2017. You may still order them at the current price of $79.99 for a couple more days. Happy New Year, everyone! Click image to see other prints available as Special Editions.
Twenty Sixteen
Putting things off is the biggest waste of life: it snatches away each day as it comes, and denies us the present by promising the future. The greatest obstacle to living is expectancy, which hangs upon tomorrow and loses today. You are arranging what lies in Fortune’s control, and abandoning what lies in yours. What […]
Treasured Lands: A Remarkable Book
A book gives you the intimacy of the images, the wall gives you the grandeur of the stuff, and you can’t usually get both at the same time. ~Minor White I write this post hoping you will not consider it as a veiled promotion. It is not meant as such. I feel compelled to pay homage […]
To: That Young Photographer
No one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life. There may be countless trails and bridges and demigods who would gladly carry you across; but only at the price of pawning and forgoing yourself. There is one path in the world that none can walk […]
Legacies in Peril
Consider this a plea to the Weston family, to the Adams estate, and to anyone who owns rights to the works of great photographers of the past to please make the investment in making these available in electronic format.
LensWork Monograph: The Least Impossible Way
I am proud and grateful to announce the upcoming publication of my LensWork Monograph, The Least Impossible Way.
Holiday Offering: Special-Edition Prints
New $75 special-edition prints now available for ordering as holiday gifts.
The Meaning of Places
There is a world of difference between a place as experience and partner in a lasting relationship, and a place considered as just a photographic subject. The latter does not interest me much.
Conflicts of Interest
The following article was originally published in On Landscape Magazine. Save a piece of country like that intact, and it does not matter in the slightest that only a few people every year will go into it. That is precisely its value. Roads would be a desecration, crowds would ruin it. ~Wallace Stegner, Wilderness Letter Most […]
Contemplation, Meditation, Mindfulness
I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. ~Pablo Picasso The great photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson characterized photography as recognizing “simultaneously and within a fraction of a second both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning.” I sometimes joke that if Cartier-Bresson tried to make […]
Desert Summer Afternoon
Here I possessed nothing in the world. I was no more than a mortal strayed between sand and stars, conscious of the single blessing of breathing. And yet I discovered myself filled with dreams. ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery It’s summer in the desert. The intense silence on a hazy afternoon broken only by the soft whisper […]
Making Meaning
It’s all so meaningless, we may as well be extraordinary. ~Francis Bacon As I have before, I found myself again struggling with the term, “meaningful.” It is a term I use quite frequently in my writing when relating to the things I want to experience and to express in my work—the things I consider the most profound and important […]
Forget The Ages
That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an […]
Time Management
A version of this essay originally appeared in Landscape Photography Magazine. ~~~ For art comes to you proposing frankly to give nothing but the highest quality to your moments as they pass, and simply for those moments’ sake. ~Walter Pater Among the reasons I prefer to work alone in the landscape is that I like […]
Spirituality Beyond Platitudes
When the things one seeks to express in art are rooted in real, moving, inspiring, life-affirming, experiences; a constellation of spiritual effects converge.
Restlessness
I believe that curiosity, wonder, and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways less intense emotions can never do. ~Kay Redfield Jamison I had to visit the canyon again, not for any reason I could […]
Moab Photography Symposium: Personalizing Place
What makes a place personal is not the photographs you take from it, but the experiences and moods and lessons you associate with it.
Must I Photograph?
Nobody can counsel and help you, nobody. There is only one single way. Go into yourself. Search for the reason that bids you write; find out whether it is spreading out its roots in the deepest places of your heart, acknowledge to yourself whether you would have to die if it were denied you to […]
Zen And the Art of Landscape Photography
The most interesting aspect of these arts of Zen, as D. T. Suzuki has said, is that they don’t exist for the sole purpose of creating a work of art, but they are rather a method for opening the creative process. They comprise means of training the mind and of living our lives. ~John Daido […]
My Idea of Good Art
In a thoroughly commercialized society, an artist is respected if he makes money, and because he makes money, but there is no genuine respect for the works of art by which his money has been made. ~Bertrand Russell In a neighborhood where I used to live, for a short period of time, there was an Indian […]
Positive Negativity
There is nothing so wrong as accepting a thing merely because men who have done things say it should be so. ~Alfred Stieglitz Among the most rewarding and liberating things I have come to accept about my work is that much so-called “common sense” advice is entirely not applicable to accomplishing my creative goals. In fact, […]
Announcing: New Workshop Offerings
Following on the success of our Visionary Death Valley workshops, Michael E. Gordon and I are proud to announce additional dates for 2016 and 2017. By participant demand, we decided to also add a new Processing and Printing offering following each Visionary Workshop, for those who wish to extend their stay, or for anyone who is interested […]
Twenty Fifteen
People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we […]
The Expressive Photograph
Pictures are exciting when they say something in a new manner, not for the sake of being different, but because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself. ~Harry Callahan It seems there are three classes of photographers who venture to instruct others: there are those who teach technical skills and offer simple formulas […]
More Than a Rock Book Now Shipping
The print edition of my book, More Than a Rock, is now shipping from Amazon and other book sellers. PDF and other eBook editions are available from the publisher, Rocky Nook. From the publisher: Ostensibly about landscape photography, More Than a Rock: Essays on Art, Creativity, Photography, Nature, and Life is a passionate and personal book […]
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