Maine

Every mid-September for the past 3 years I've headed east to Portland, Maine and met up with my good friend Woods Wheatcroft who is an amazing photographer with an ever creative and quirky eye. We always go early for a few days of surf and hang time before the annual Aurora Photos retreat. Woods and I have a great vibe flowing and this year was no exception -- we caught some fun waves on the tail end of a hurricane swell and found some great hills to skate.

The retreat is held on Sebago Lake and is attending by a variety of the photographers that Aurora represents, as well as some key speakers from the industry. This year, Karen D'Silva of Spark Visual Research gave a comprehensive inside look at today's image market and the senior Photo Editor at National Geographic magazine, Sadie Quarrier, presented an inspiring look at some of the recent projects she has managed.

The event is a rare opportunity for photographers from all paths to come together and share story and be inspired--minus the ego. I feel so fortunate to work with an stock photo agency like Aurora where I am part of a family of photographers rather than just another name.

The Great Sebago Canoe Race was held again this year and Woods, Peter Dennen (Aurora's creative director) and I had a title to defend. Sadie and I had a little pre-race trash talk because of our common backgound with rowing crew, so she grabbed the two tallest photogs, Ilje Herb and Richard Hallman, for her team. But, alas, it was again no contest and Woods, Peter and I held off everyone with the help of Lisa Seaman. Sadie's already calling for a rematch.

Andrew Kornylak is a good friend and great photographer from Atlanta, and he captured many moments from the event using the high frame rate on his Nikon D3 and created this unique video from the stills, great work man!

Central Oregon bouldering

Sometimes I forget how lucky I am to live in a place where I can leave my door and be out somewhere peaceful in a matter of minutes. Yesterday I shot some bouldering near Bend with my friends Greg Garretson and Logan Carr along with Brooke Sandahl of Metolius Climbing. They are all incredible strong climbers and as with most of the Oregon scene, relatively unknown.

It was great to escape the barrage of negativity in the news about the economy and just be outside in a beautiful place with good friends.

Incredible.

I've always been impressed by the simplicity of Platon's work as well as his ability to use wide angle lenses for portraiture, but his image of Willie Nelson might be his best portrait yet.

One By One

This past spring and summer I had the opportunity to shoot and edit a music video project with my friend Micah Wolf, who is a songwriter and musician based on Maui. Micah wrote a song called 'One by One' after reading an article on the immense amount of plastic trash collecting in the worlds oceans, most notably the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch" located hundreds of miles southwest of the western United States in the Pacific Ocean. This area where the four prevailing currents converge is known as the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, and there are estimates that 3.5 million tons of garbage has collected here from North America, Asia and, Hawaii, 80 percent of which is plastic. Sunlight causes the plastic to break down into smaller and smaller pieces, and seabirds and other wildlife mistake it for plankton or other foodsources. Tens of thousands of dead birds have washed ashore, many of their stomachs packed with these plastic reminders of our throwaway society.

Captain Charles Moore of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation was the first to bring this issue to the public's attention and has revisted the site many times to gather further research. Many articles have been written and Bill MacDonald filmed a documentary called the Synthetic Sea.

As a father of three himself, Micah felt that producing a music video of his song could raise greater awareness among the younger generations. Algalita was excited about this opportunity to further spread the message about their work and were generous enough to let us use some of the footage of garbage and the raw plastic "nurdles" that they had in their archives. I filmed Micah recording the song on Maui at Grace Recording Studio while making his latest record called "Beyond the Shores" that will be released this fall, and gathered additional footage around Oregon and while on a couple of surf trips with Belinda Baggs-Peterson and Gerry Lopez, and shot a lot of video portraits along the way.

I gained a lot of respect for video production while editing the footage and learning how to use Final Cut! Rick Tyner is Micah's partner in Blockplane Records as well as his bass player. He also just moved down the street from me in Bend, Oregon and put in many long days with me on the production. Carol Feinga over at the Kokua Foundation was invaluable with her insights and advice. The final result can be seen below.

Many thanks to everyone who helped out with this project!



Here are a few images of Micah while he was in the studio recording One By One: