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:

Pictures And Sound

As most of my good friends know, music is one thing that I am pretty passionate about. I don't usually care much what the genre is, but if it is good, I'll listen to it... and if it is really amazing, I love to share with anyone who will appreciate great music.

When I met my good friend Luke Reynolds over a year ago, he and I quickly realized that we shared a common interest in great music, 16mm surf films and sushi. We also happen to the same birthday and both grew up in the woods--he in Vermont and myself in Michigan.

Luke founded the band Blue Merle several years ago, and after the group went their separate ways, he moved into a tent in Vermont and began writing new material. Three years later, he is releasing an album on Vanguard Records with his band Pictures And Sound. Jacquire King (Modest Mouse, Tom Waits, Kings Of Leon) produced the album. I guarantee most of the tracks will eventually be on many of my favorite mix CDs.

The new record is available for pre-order now here, and will be available on iTunes and elsewhere on August 19th.

Check out his website to listen to a few tracks, you won't be disappointed.



Here is a couple of short films about the Luke's writing and recording the new album:

Be here Nau.

Thanks to the good folk at Horny Toad apparel, Nau is back.

Stoked.

NorCoast surf -- a road trip

Two weeks ago I drove up the Northern California and Oregon coastline with Australian surfer Belinda Baggs-Peterson. Last year I had traveled a bit with Belinda and her husband, Dane Peterson, during a photo trip for Patagonia in Australia. Sonnie Trotter, Will Stanhope, Paul Bride and I took them rock climbing, while Dane and Belinda showed the climbers a thing or two about surfing. If you've ever had the privilege to watch them surf or seen them practice their art on a longboard in surf films such as Sprout, it is a lesson in style and grace that you won't soon forget.

Belinda and I didn't score any epic waves on the trip, but it was good to explore sections of coast I had never seen and discover a few remote breaks along the way. This was Belinda's first time to both Northern California and Oregon, as well as her introduction to cold water with the full gloves/hood/booties setup! Here are a few images...

Nau is but a fleeting moment

For the past two years, a substantial portion of my creative energy has been focused on creating imagery for a Portland, Oregon based apparel brand called Nau. It was a line of sustainable clothing imagined by a group of forward thinking individuals, many who had spent a number of years at another of my favorite companies, Patagonia.

The images that the Nau art director Eugénie Frerichs and I created were a substantial step away from the outdoor adventure niche I was accustomed to. We did not just set out to make pictures of athletes in beautiful locations, but instead sought to interpret a feeling of clean design, calm emotion, and simple goodness into the photographs.

After a solid year of solid designs that bridged the gap between outdoor and urban apparel, a fantastic collective of stories and video, and a thought provoking blog, Nau suddenly shut down all operations in early May.

David Gonzales shot a video about creating the visual imagery during our Joshua Tree shoot last fall... it was set to go live May 5th, but since the new Nau website never launched, here is the clip:



Many thanks to Hal Arneson, Eugénie Frerichs, Mark Galbraith, Alex Hamlyn, Karen Wolf, Ian Yolles, Peter Kallen, Rick Albano, Otis Rubottom, Caitlin Murphy and the rest of the great team of creatives and fantastic people at Nau that I had the privilege of working with these past two years. I am grateful for the friendships and the growth that this collaboration stimulated, both in my work and my confidence as an artist.

Kudos to the other photographers who were are part of this project: Daniel Sharp, Jimmy Chin, Gabe Rogel and Tim Kemple... your art is a continual source of inspiration for me.

Thank you.

The end of Polaroid?

With the recent news that Polaroid is shutting down its factories that produce their film, I thought I would share a few candids shot in Oregon on this low-fi medium these past few months.

All are of good friends and musicians just goofing around: Lucas Reynolds (Pictures and Sound), artist Emilie Lee, John Butler, Brett Dennen, bassist Danny McKay and drummer Randy Schwartz.