Adobe Photoshop Elements 14

Adobe Photoshop Elements 14, Released September 24, 2015

With an image that has one foot in Norman Rockwell and the other foot firmly planted in the dark sense of discovery that is both childhood and parenthood, I couldn't have been more surprised when Adobe approached us about this project. 

Why would they want to brand their product with this image? What does it mean? 

A friend suggested that the image might be about making something out of nothing, sending a d.i.y. message of infinite possibilities with the simple power of vision. 

And with that in mind, this inspired use doesn't seem surprising at all.

Stanford Physics Department With Stand Ins

Every shoot needs a stand in.....correct?

Happy to have Eli and Wilson hanging out on this day to help me scout the location and navigate the lighting for the legends of physics I was about to photograph.

Thanks to Monica Bradley of Scientific American for this thoughtful collaboration.

From My Window

Summer Slams On The Brakes, 9/2015

Augusta Lee Collins / The Stratosphere

So sorry to hear about the loss of Augusta Lee Collins.

As a photographer, you meet a lot of people just once. The meetings slip through your fingers and life very quickly. Some people stick with you, stay in your stratosphere, always reminding you that you had once crossed paths. Augusta was exactly that.

Onward ⚡

Augusta Lee Collins, 69, made a name for himself as a session drummer with numerous bands coming through the Bay Area, including sitting in with jazz greats Herbie Hancock, "Cannonball" Adderley, Sun Ra and Bobby Hutcherson. But over the last 30 years, Collins reinvented himself as a blues singer and guitarist and was a fixture at farmers' markets and blues jams in the region.

While he never achieved great fame, his long career left an impact on local musicians who remember him as influential and inspiring but very humble. In the course of his reinvention from drummer to singer and guitarist, he overcame a drug problem and homelessness but always remained an icon, Bay Area Blues Society executive director Ronnie Stewart said Wednesday.

In 2010, Collins was inducted into the West Coast Blues Hall of Fame. Collins' musical career dates back to the thriving West Oakland music scene of the 1960s, when his band the Metropolitan Sound Company would play downtown clubs, high school dances and outdoor concerts. Stewart said he first became aware of Collins while attending Fremont High School in 1966, when he would jump on an Alameda-Contra Costa Transit bus in East Oakland to go out for parties and dancing. Metropolitan Sound Company was among the bands he'd see.

"He was part of that whole era of young musicians who were making that crossover from blues to R&B," a movement that defined what came to be known as the "Oakland sound" in funk and R&B that drew the attention of artists nationwide, Stewart said. That first band played until the early 1970s, according to Stewart. After that is when Collins embarked on a career as a session drummer playing on albums and live for numerous artists working in and visiting the Bay Area.

Tanium : Not Far From The Tree

Inspiration ?

Well I guess it's where you find it.

When Forbes called with a story about start up company Tanium, I was focused on the father/son relationship of founders Orion and David Hindawi.

An elaborate image setting them on Treasure Island, with San Francisco behind them was planned out, but to me the most honest image was found in their conference room.

During a staged moment where I asked them to get into an actual discussion, they fell into what I can only describe as "father and son body language", a personal dynamic programmed into the two of them from the very beginning. Two special people who have their own system, I was just thankful they allowed me to see into it for that afternoon.

Read about Orion and David in Forbes Magazine's feature HERE. 

The First Americans / National Geographic

Combing thru a hard drive and I came across this image from our week with Jim Chatters' team up in Seattle for the National Geographic story titled The First Americans. Haunting and almost human, this face of Naya was created by the team over the arc of a week. Lots of images of the process, but this ending image always seemed to inhabit a human quality that never settled in the others.

Again I Formed Whole / Patrick Mahoney

The most compelling story of the year landed on my plate during the first week of 2015.

Patrick Mahoney's story of a bike accident, brain damage and poetry will resonate with anyone who has peaked over the edge of their own mortality. A day of photographic collaboration staged in a reborn Berkeley house yielded so many life lessons I'm not sure how to spell it all out sufficiently, so I'll simply share a poem written by Patrick titled "Heaven".

Heaven 

Where I want to be
until I find out

I’m already there.
This world beyond

is inside the wool
sweater my mother knit,

behind these eyes
my fingertips touch

each morning. I live outside
lands long settled and embrace

minutia—I smell the coffee
ground, then taste it brewed.

I feel the dirt road with my feet
through my black faded Chucks.

The end of the road
goes well beyond sight.

So I turn on tips of toes
and I am breathing deeply—

the air, tasting of oak-moss,
my eyes—still closed.

Read Patrick's story "Again I Formed Whole" written by Kara Peters HERE.