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.

Polaroid revisted

This past week I was on location shooting in Joshua Tree for Nau, a sustainable apparel company based here in Oregon. I've been working with them for the past couple of years and the growth the collaboration has stimulated creatively in my work is incredible.

The exciting thing about this shoot was the creative energy that was flowing, not just between the art director Eugenie and I, but amongst all of the talent. Each and every one was an artist in their own right... photographers, painters, videographers, choreographers, dancers and more. Emilie Lee, a climber and artist out of Salt Lake City was taking a lot of Polaroids, Eugenie Frerichs, the art director, was running around with a Rolleiflex camera. I broke out the Polaroid and my Holga fitted with a Polaroid back and was having more fun than ever.

The photos from the Nau shoot will be featured on their website this spring, and here are a few candids I shot with the two Polaroids!