PixelatedImage Blog

Self Portrait, iPhone.

There are rules for engineering bridges, and flying airplanes. There are laws about how you drive a car and file your taxes. There are no rules or laws in art. Art is a beautiful anarchy, a place wherein we express – or try to – the inexpressible, to “eff the ineffable” as author Nick Hornby once wrote.  Art is a place where we play and do and create, and share, according to our will, our whim, and our stubborn determination. It is the one place in which we can ask the question “What if?” with near total abandon, and (mostly) free from consequence. There are no art police, and no authorities, and those who would be should be eyed with suspicion or torn from their high places.

Your art, the thing that stirs from your heart, mind, and soul, the thing that moves you, and I hope, moves others, is a free agent, and the moment you begin to ask “What should I do? or “How should I do this?” you allow you art to teeter, to lean towards conformity and away from authentic expression. Unless it’s the muse herself to whom you direct the question. The same is true of your path in the creative arts if you make your living there; why do we do this at all if not for the freedom to beat that path into whatever direction that suits our fancy, or to paint the cobblestones any damn colour we please? To do what we should in art is bondage. To tell others, with our art, what they should think or feel or do, is propaganda. And to tell other artists how they should do their art is presumptuous, and unkind, and tells the muse we’ve learned nothing at all under her influence.

We need more anarchists in photography, more people willing to abandon the stupidity of megapixels and brands and red stripes on their lenses and get back to making beauty for the sake of its joy. We need more people that make photographs that surprise us, not mimic others, and more people creating simply to create, and to share their work as a gift, not a request for praise. We need a resurgence in pinholes, film, wet plates, and any damn technique that makes you happy and in which you find your muse. We need to scrap the word “professional” because it implies authority, and simply allow everyone to be an artist, their work judged by its own merits not the camera used to create it or the clients that paid for it. We need people who understand how composition and light makes us feel, not which third of the frame to use, or which light is “bad light.”

Photography is still young. As an art it is still in its awkward, beautiful, childhood, but we stunt its growth, and our own, when we seek and follow the so-called rules, instead of just getting on with it and doing our work: making and sharing photographs that please our eyes and our hearts, that say – even imperfectly – the things we can’t find words for.

I’m about to get on a flight to Milan, via Frankfurt. 3 days of private lectures in Switzerland, a week with an old friend and my camera in Stockholm, then to Italy for 2 weeks of Within The Frame Adventures. If I’m quiet, that’s why. Maybe just sign out of Facebook, close the browser, embrace your inner anarchist, and go make some photographs…  See you soon!

Ladakh, India, 2008.

A year ago, on Easter weekend, I fell 30′ from a wall in Pisa, Italy. Most of you know that. I shattered both feet, cracked my pelvis and was told I would never walk the same again, and would “always have a limp, though you’ll limp with both feet, so it won’t look like a limp.” Whatever that means. A year later, after a couple surgeries, extensive rehab, and now the help of my chiropractor and trainer, I walked to dinner last night without the trace of a limp. It comes and goes, to be sure. Some days are better than others, and some days I need my cane. But through this year I’ve learned that I can do damn-near anything. So can you. The human spirit is a remarkable force.

I hit 40 this year. In those 40 years I’ve hit the ground more than once. Among other shining moments, I was diagnosed with diabetes when I was 20. I’ve divorced twice. I’ve gone bankrupt once. Each time I thought I’d never survive, would never live the life I wanted, would end up living in a box under a bridge, would wither from the shame of failure. But we bounce. We don’t have to, of course; we can choose to wallow, allow ourselves to be victims. Or we can say, F*ck it, take a deep breath, lean into the pain, and the fear, and move forward.

Have you seen the Honey Badger video on YouTube? (warning: NSF, rough language.) If I had a spirit guide, it’d be the honey badger.  We don’t all have bodies that do what we need them to, can’t all lean on good looks, or have above-average intelligence. But we can choose to endure, to persevere. I don’t want a perfect life; I want the courage to keep going, to sleep off the venom, to keep going, to bounce back. What’s Easter if not a celebration of the possibility of resurrection, and return from the darkest life has to offer?

We bounce, but it’s usually a choice. It’s that way in life, and it’s that way in art. And when bouncing isn’t enough, the truly blessed have friends to catch them, and you all carried me through moments this year, especially last May, that I didn’t think I’d come through. So this short post is simply to say “Thank you,” to remind you that you too will bounce back from the fall, whatever that is for you, and to wish you, from the bottom of a grateful heart, a Happy Easter.

A couple large prints would look great on these walls.

Photographers are a funny lot. So easily distracted. I just came back from the camera store where I came within an inch of buying the new Fuji X Pro 1. I resisted and had a cupcake instead. But as I drove home I thought about it. I had been working – happily printing my Antarctica series at the Loft – when I got it into my head that I needed to look at this camera. Not sure what I was thinking. I mean, it’s a nice camera, but I don’t need one. What I need to do is my work. The work. Anyone who’s read Pressfield’s book, The War of Art, will recognize this as what Pressfield calls Resistance, that self-sabotaging force that convinces us that almost anything is more important than doing our work. What is that work?

Create. Then Share. Then do it again.

Sharing is a theme I’m thinking a lot about, and you’ll hear more about it in the coming month. The truth is, I’ve neglected sharing my own work the way I want to, for a couple years. Yes, I put it in books and blog posts, and a monthly wallpaper, but I want to do more. I want to show bodies of work, I want to print large, I want to curate my own collections and, in the words of Rabbi Hillel, though I’m taking him wildly out of context, “If not now, when?”

The amazing thing about sharing our work is that it keeps the gift moving. But it does something else. It improves our craft. The feedback loop that is created when we print our work large, for example, sends us back to the negative to print it better, to be more attentive to the small things. It also makes us aware of mistakes we make chronically; in my case I routinely underexpose by a stop or more, and I pay about as much attention to the cleanliness of my sensor as I do to the Easter Bunny. The only difference is the Easter Bunny doesn’t keep showing up in my final photographs.

Sharing can also force us to heed our edits. Knowing others will see our work, though this is not true, it seems, of hundreds of thousands of people on Flickr, pushes us to be more selective. Printing does this even more. When you know each print costs you $20, you think twice about whether you need to print every one of the 100 frames of your cat that moments ago, while you were posting up a storm on Flickr, were all pure gold. A collection of a dozen well-selected photographs is usually much more powerful than a loose collection that you haven’t taken the time to edit.

Perhaps now’s the time to get your collections in order, cull out the dross, do a second edit to find missing gold, and then share them. In the past 5 years I’ve done Blurb books, put carefully curated albums on my iPad, made large canvases, and made and framed fine-art prints. I’m beginning to put new work up on Google+. Today I saw greeting cards made from MOAB fine-art papers – why not print up a dozen and give them to people as gifts, or one at a time when someone does something nice for you? My new loft has given me other options and I’ve just put a cable up to easily hang a large print on a rotating basis in my entry-way. Where can you show your work at home? I even heard of one photographer who prints up a new collection of work every couple of months, installs it in his home, and does a one-night gallery evening with wine, and invited his friends, many of whom buy and collect his work. Why not take some time to finally get that 500px account you’ve been talking about, and post a dozen images. How about looking into MOO.com to make cards showing your best work. Even if you never plan to work as a photographer, how great would it be to give people a card with your phone number and one of your photographs? Get your work out there, give it room to find a life outside your harddrives.

How do you share your work? I’d love to hear from you.

Monument Valley, 2011

With the advent of digital photography, and even more importantly, the internet, our ability to share and experience photographs has changed dramatically. The wet darkroom, once so necessary for creating prints we could touch and feel, is much less common than it once was, and if I were a betting man I’d wager that the majority of digital photographers out there have never printed their own work, and never had the joy of seeing their work large and framed, never felt the richness of a rag paper with their art on it. That impoverishes all of us. High tech, but low touch.

I have always printed my work, though there have been notable hiatuses in my printing, the last 2 years among them. Sometimes I’ve done it myself, to varying degrees of success, and at other times I’ve had anyone from mPix.com to professional printers do my prints. But no matter what, sharing photographs on paper is a beautiful experience. That alone is why I print, and have returned to printing as a student. But there’s more.

I think photographers, and this is something my girlfriend taught me, need to live with their work. Not just on an iPad or laptop, but printed. Large. You need to feel it. Need to live with the lines and tones and moments. Feel the colours. Doing so reveals the flaws (dust spots on the sensor, anyone?), and the weaknesses. Could those lines be stronger? Could there be more tension? Are the colours right? In short, it can return us to craft. It can focus us on more than the momentary experience of seeing a photograph on Facebook, and give the image the dignity of being created in the real world.

For me, this return to printing has pushed me back from the edge of laziness. To see, in 17×22 inch detail, the flaws in my work, has pushed me to become more diligent. Not because I want perfection, but because my art deserves better than to be treated with the flippancy that digital can encourage me towards. And because, like the rest of this past year, it slows me down. It forces me to pay attention. It opens me to renewed receptivity. And, perhaps this is the real reason, the prints are simply more beautiful in my hands and on walls than they will ever be on my screens.

I encourage you, even if you never print at home, to print your work. The artist’s life is about creating and sharing, not creating and hording. If you don’t have a printer, look into mPix.com or WHCC.com and do some test prints with them, or go to your local Costco and try them out. But print your work. Do one a month and at the year’s end you’ll have 12 beautiful prints. Do two of each and at the year’s end you’ll have 12 to keep and 12 to sign and give away as gifts. The ability to see and experience the world, and express that experience through your work, is a gift; keep it moving.

If you’ve not read it, and printing your work yourself intimidates or frustrates you, take a look at Martin Bailey’s ebook, MAKING THE PRINT. It’s $5 and worth every penny. I wish I’d had it 5 years ago.

Iceland, 2010

I spent part of today doing a second edit – nearly two years after the first one – on my Iceland 2010 images. These second edits are important to me, for two reasons. First, we miss images on our first edit, and the closer that edit happens to the moments of making the photographs, the more we get seduced by those moments, our expectations, and our disappointments. A little distance, like a few months or years, can help bring some objectivity. Or a broader perspective to our subjectivity. Either way, at least for me, it reveals images I had once passed over.

The second advantage is that while the images may not have changed in two years, our vision has, and so has our technique. Revisiting the images for a second edit can allow us to work on those images more slowly, and with an improvement in our craft that we didn’t have two years ago.

Take some time in the coming days to revisit your libraries and give your images another glance, you might be surprised what you come up with. I discovered a dozen images from Iceland and a whole B&W series that was just waiting to be discovered. These are some of them.

Shooting sunset in the Maasai Mara, while a ranger keeps an eye out.
Photo credit: Regis Vincent.

When Nicole S. Young’s ebook on MicroStock came out last year on the Craft&Vision site, we caught some flack for “supporting the microstock model.” We were told how unfair the model is, how it’s going to put photographers out of business, and how irresponsible it was to put out a book that helps people navigate these waters, unfair as they are. Then I read some bits and pieces of woe about the state of journalism and the decline of print media. Then this morning I spent time reading the blog of Joe Konrath, also not a photographer, but a well-known self-publisher in the fiction world. The pieces came together.

In VisionMongers I said that our businesses should be an act of creativity as much as our photography is. I believe that more now than I did before. So, if you’ll indulge a rant/sermon, hear me out on something. This rant’ll get worse before it gets better, so read through to the end. I promise to try to end without completely shipwrecking this.

One of the currents I detect in the arguments against microstock, though this rant is not specifically about microstock, is the same one I think I’d get from a whiny teenager whose father won’t let him use the car, except in the business world there is no father and if you want a car, you have to buy it. No one is going to hand it to you, no one owes you anything, most especially not a business model that’s just like the so-called good old days. The good ol’ days never were. The world changes, it’s not easy, it’s not fair, but it’s the same playing field we’ve always played on. People whining about the unfairness of the microstock model, or __________________ (insert random unfairness here) have forgotten that if they are self-employed, they are the rainmakers. No one else. So bitch about the lack of rain or get out and pound the button on the cloud-seeder like a rented mule. The question is not: is it fair? The question is: how badly do you want it?

Yes, once upon a time you could wait for the phone to ring and someone would pay you $500 for a photograph of a plate of pasta. ChaChing! They would tell you how to shoot it, when to shoot it, and you’d do it with a stylist and art director hovering over you, making you wish you were photographing drooling kids against wooded backdrops in KMart instead. But now the phone doesn’t ring. So some photographers, wanting to spend their time creating instead of bitching, still shoot the pasta. And pizza. And, well, whatever the hell they want. No art directors. Few stylists. And no, no one writes them a cheque that takes 6-8 weeks to arrive after you’ve invoiced them twice. Instead, they post those photographs to a microstock site, and they make $1. But they make that dollar 500 times. Or 1000 times. Or they don’t make a penny because their photograph isn’t remotely as good as others available to the same market, and they have to go back and do it better, get a little more creative and make a photograph that hasn’t already been shot. Unfair? It’s the fairest it’s ever been – it’s fair because it relies on how good your work is and how hard you hustle. But let’s be honest, the business world isn’t about fair. It’s about responding to how the world functions, and the needs of the people in that world, and finding a market for what you offer within that world. The ones who meet this challenge in the most creative ways, and with the most amount of elbow grease are the ones who make it, not the ones whining over a latte in a Starbucks somewhere.

So why did I mention self-publishing? Because the world of publishing is changing the same way the world of photography is. Is there as much money to be made by authors? Absolutely! In fact, there’s more! But it’s different. The same is true of journalism. Things are changing. Is it easy? No. Is it fair? Does it matter? EVERYTHING is changing. It always has. It always will. If you are in business for yourself as a photographer, your job, as the CEO of You Inc., is to meet those changes head on, to navigate the rough waters and do it in a way you love, while not sinking the ship. No one promised you safe passage. No one owes you a waveless voyage. You will get “there” (wherever there is) not by how good your photographs are (there are a lot of amazing photographers out there, have you noticed?) but by how creatively you engage your market, and how hard you hustle. Read that again. If you are floundering, it’s not because you don’t have a better camera or the same 85/1.2L lens that that other, more successful, photographer on the other side of town, or the other side of the internet. It’s because you aren’t being as creative as you thought you were or you aren’t hustling. That’s a broad brush to paint with but I believe it with all my heart. Everything I’ve learned in business tells me that. Stop buying gear and start buying books about business and new media. (BTW, how good your art is matters tremendously, it’s just a different conversation about a different thing.)

Yes, things are changing. They always have. But you can either make the change or react to it. Either way you need to be creative. You can do two things with your time on this earth – play the cards you’re dealt with all the energy and conviction you can, or whine and moan about how lousy your cards are. But whining and moaning never once changed the cards in anyone’s hand. Yes, Detroit was decimated by the economy, and it was left in literal ruins. But it’s making a come back. Not because it sat there feeling sorry for itself (ok, some did, but they aren’t the ones making the comeback), but because they got creative. They stood up, dusted off the seat of their jeans and looked the situation square in the eye and said, “OK. Now what?” It’s hard work. It’ll take time. And if you don’t love that work, give up now.

The opportunities to make  a living doing something you love in the creative arts has never, ever, been like they are now. The same things causing the massive shift away from old models (insert whining) are the same forces allowing us these new opportunities (insert creativity and hard work). There are more opportunities to show and sell our work, whatever that is, to more people on this planet, than any photographer or artist has ever had in any previous generation on this planet. If you want to make a go of this, the time has never been better. Assuming one of the reasons you want to do this is to be creative, to sail your own ship, and to enjoy the journey. There is no path waiting for you. You have to make it. There are no charts for where we’re sailing to, these are unknown waters. No one promised us a safe passage, and anyone that thinks they’re owed one will never get there – not because the waters are rough but because time spent whining and feeling entitled is time wasted while others are creating new sails and patching holes in the boat so they can sail a few days longer, or a little faster. It’s not easy. If you want easy, you signed up for the wrong journey. But make no mistake about it, everyone is on a boat. You can sail your own, or you can work for another captain. The difference is merely in who makes the decisions, not how rough the water is. We all weather the same economic weather, and ride out the same waves of change in technology, history, etc.

I want to say “you can do it!” and be really encouraging. And some of you – no, many of you – can do it, and can do it brilliantly. But only you can decide how badly you want it, how hard you’re willing to work for it, how creative you’re willing to be to get it, and how wet you’re willing to become in order to get there. To get to the other shore you need to let go of the one you’re leaving, accept the unpredictability of winds and waves, and shout into the raging storm at times, “is that all you’ve got?!” and then pull the sails a little tighter. I wish I could tell you more. But all I’ve learned from my journey that universally applies, is that the journey is worth it, and that it’s often harder than we wish it were. You’ve got a handful of years to do your work, don’t you dare waste those moments whining instead of creating something amazing. Don’t leave a legacy of risk-aversion and “I wish I’d…” to your kids. Don’t settle for hours in front of a large screen TV when you can have a larger life. Don’t settle for watching great stories when you could spend your time living one. Whether you can or can’t, whether you do or don’t, is up to you.

I want to join my little penguin friend in wishing you a very Merry Christmas. If you celebrate Hanukkah, like much of my family, then a happy Hanukkah to you. If you celebrate something else, or nothing at all, then I wish you the same: peace, joy, and a new year that is filled with the same. I still celebrate Christmas, and I celebrate hard. It pains me that it’s so commercial, the heart of it being so much the opposite of all we seem to strive for at this time of year. Christmas to me is deeply personal, a celebration of the possibilities and hopes of the deepest longings of our hearts: peace on earth and the making right of all that brings us sorrow. It’s the annunciation of the angel to the world that God sees our tears and chooses not only to wipe them away but to share them. Some days it takes more faith than others to believe. Still, I believe.

2011 was a rough year. Like all years. It was also amazing. I lost, to cancer, a friend who was dear to my heart, and gained others. I mourn her loss, and celebrate the others. I celebrate this world of wonders in which we live, and the fact that not only can I still walk, but I’m still alive. I love this line from a Marc Cohn song: Maybe Life was curious to see what you would do with the gift of being left alive. Indeed. And I celebrate you all, gifts to me from a God whom I still believe to be good and kind, despite evidence to the contrary at times. In this season I am profoundly grateful for what, and whom, I have, both to God and to all those who by choice are gifts in my life. Thank you for every comment, every email. Thank you too for supporting me and my Craft & Vision team; every eBook you buy is a gift to me, keeping me and the 13 other authors and 5 others on my team at least partly fed. Your purchase of my books not only gives me an audience but a livelihood, and I don’t take that for granted, either. From the bottom of my heart thank you. And from all of us over here, we wish you the happiest of holidays, the merriest of Christmasses, and a 2012 filled with peace, joy, health, and the fullness of a life lived in gratitude. Merry Christmas, Friends.

I am a Ninja. Antarctica, 2011. Photo by John Birch

I am officially going off the grid on December 19. No more twitter, FB, blogging, or otherwise. I turn 40 on December 24, and will be offline, cuddled up, and celebrating 40 years. I’ve already got a wallpaper posted for January 01, and that’ll go up as the new year turns on the east coast of North America. From there I’ll post postcards as I can; I’ll be in Ethiopia and Kenya and Tanzania until February 01, then I’ll be back in full force. See you then. And until then, my very best of the season. Cheers!

Over a year ago I released Vision Is Better, essentially an eBook version of this blog, and it’s become one of the best-selling titles under the Craft & Vision umbrella, which I think is (a) awesome and (b) amusing. I’m not quiet about the fact that Vision Is Better, and now Vision Is Better, Volume 2, is really just a great re-hash of this blog; the last thing I want is to quietly sell you something you could get for free. The reason we offer it is because, well, you really can’t get this for free. We’ve taken the blog, pulled out a ton of the somewhat dated content, announcements, and general chaff, then we added a couple previously unpublished essays, took out some (but not all of the original typos) and had our Design Ninja, Luke Taylor, re-package it. And it’s yours to access on your iPad, or laptop, whenever and wherever you like. No surfing, no frantic looking for a wifi signal, no huge data bills just to find that essay you want to re-read.

Vision Is Better 2 is similar to the first in that we’ve collected the best essays from the blog, and bundled them together. It differs because this year was profoundly different for me, and so there’s some of that journey too. If you read this blog (and you do, don’t try to tell me you don’t!) you know this year wrapped itself around an unexpected life-changing adventure for me, and some of that is in there too. So is the Life is Short stuff. And the usual rants. And bigger photographs than what you get on the blog. Frankly, it’s what this blog should be, but isn’t because I’m busy and these walls don’t just fall off themselves, you know. (Inside joke which you will totally find hilarious if you buy this ebook.)

If you read this blog (see comment above!) then think of this as your yearbook. If we meet in person I’ll sign it. If you do not read this blog (ahem), then you’ll still want it because, I believe, it can make you a better photographer. No, not like that new lens was meant to do. If there’s one thing I believe will make us all stronger photographers, it’s mindfulness. Intent. (Please don’t make me use the word “vision” again.). The subtitle for Vision is Better was Free the Mind, Free The Camera. This time it’s Free The Mind, The Camera Will Follow. Same, same, but different, (as they say in S.E. Asia) because the reason I continue to write remains the same: the way we think is the way we see, and we’ll make better photographs when we spend as much time honing our minds and our hearts as we do memorizing the buttons on the camera.

As you can imagine, there’s a ton of pages in this thing. If you love this blog and don’t want to shell out $5, it’ll still be here as it always is. Free. But if you want to access this content over and over again, in a format that’s easier to read, a little more intentionally curated, and includes a couple essays I’ve never published, then it’s all yours, as it always is, for only $5. Unless you buy it this week, then it’s only $4. And of course, those of you with a subscription to the Craft & Vision Community, this is yours to download for free this month.

Save $1 – Pay just $4 if you use coupon code VIB4.
Save $3 – Get the Vision is Best Bundle for $7 if you use coupon code VIB7.
Save 20% – Get 5+ PDF eBooks for less if you use the discount code VIB20.

These discount codes expire Wednesday, December 21 at 11:59pm (PST).

Emily, just back from the final trip to the outfitters and ready for February.

A friend once told me to watch the Pixar movie UP. Aside from the fact that I was crying like a little girl within the first 10 minutes (be warned), there was something about it that resonated powerfully with me. Part of that was the exploration of the idea of adventure. The phrase “Adventure is Out There!” is sounded often in the movie, like an anthem, and while that adventure generally refers to the journey of the unlikely heroes to Paradise Falls, South America, it’s also clear that, for at least one of the characters, the greatest adventure was love. It’s touching, and it should be no surprise to anyone the comes here once in a while that I’ve come close to having Adventure is Out There tattooed over my heart.

In February, a year after I started the adventure that went wildly off the rails, I’ll resume my road-trip, but it is not a resumption of the adventure; the adventure never stopped. No adventure ever goes to plan, and if it was adventure I wanted when I set out in my ’93 Land Rover Defender, JESSIE, it’s adventure I got. I made photographs in the rain all the way down the Oregon coast with my friend Dave Delnea, until he got into the Poison Oak, became so hideously deformed he was scaring children, and had to leave the country. I photographed and camped in Death Valley with my best friend and manager, Corwin, and then through Monument Valley and Zion, and into New Mexico, camping the whole way, and photographing as we went. I drove to the Gulf of Mexico. Spent time in New Orleans. Hung out with friends in Atlanta. I flew to Italy and fell in love. I also fell off a wall and shattered my feet. I came home and crawled my way through healing until my bones mended and I went to rehab. And then a couple days after they let me go home I jumped a plane for Laos, Cambodia, and Thailand, where, among other things, I joined 8 new friends as we floated down the Mekong River in a long-boat. And then there was Oaxaca, and Roatan, and then Antarctica. So much of it was unexpected, so much didn’t go to plan. And all of it was gloriously life-giving. And as strange as it sounds, I truly wouldn’t change a thing. This has been one of the most extraordinary years of my life.

I don’t want it to end. Being nomadic is teaching me so much, and while I’ve been sojourning at my family home for the last few months, and while I learned to walk again, I got more time with my family than I’ve had in 20 years. You can see why the idea of returning to so-called normal doesn’t really appeal. So on February 01, I return from travels in Ethiopia, Kenya, and Tanzania, and pack EMILY (above. I’ll do a Jeep-geek post some other time) and head out.

Adventure is out there, but it’s also in here. It’s an inner game. What separates adventure from the mundane is an openness to the unexpected and a willingness to embrace it, laugh your way through it when you aren’t gritting your teeth, and learn from it. It’s not a freedom from fear, it’s an unwillingness to let it have even one day of your already beautiful, short, fragile, one-of-a-kind life. It’s being present, 100% in your art, your relationships, the way you raise your children, and the way you open your heart to strangers. You can do that from a hospital bed, unable to move, and you can do that from the base camp of Everest. It’s a choice, a posture of the mind and heart. It is not the exclusive domain of the privileged, the healthy, or the strong. It is for all of us that, if you’ll pardon the worn cliche, are willing to hear the music and have the courage to dance without shame.

Tonight we launch Vision Is Better 2, the follow-up of the first one of the same name. It’s 44 essays, almost all previously published here on this blog, about the photographic life and craft. It includes much of my own adventure from this year and lessons learned. And it includes a couple un-published essays. Essentially it’s a sweet re-design of the best blog posts from the last year, available in one place, off-line, and always available. It’ll be available right here on the blog, with discounts as usual during the first week after launch. Whether you chose to buy the book, or not, thanks to you all for being part of this amazing adventure. Some of you were with me, in this blog, Twitter, and FB, through my darkest times, and made them lighter. Some of you were with me in Italy when I fell, in Laos when I made my first scared steps back to traveling, or in Antarctica as I experienced what it feels like to create work I love for the first time in a long while. Thank you so, so much. You remain my fans, friends, and family, but more than that you remain, in the most sincerest terms, my heroes. Thank you.

Mangroves in the waters just outside my front door in Roatan. Spent 20 minutes last night sitting in the warm shallow waters. Gitzo Ocean Traveler tripod, small aperture, long exposure, Singh Ray Gold’n'Blue Polarizer, and a gin on rocks waiting for me beside the hammock 30 feet behind me. For all my bitching about how hard this craft can be, including my last post, there are days it just all comes together. Hard to do anything but be grateful right now. These are the days I love my art more than almost anything.