AI introduces entirely new ethical concerns and questions, and as far as the generative tools emerging in the photography space, I’m not remotely interested in using them in my actual work.

Photography has been a vehicle for me to sharpen my mind and observe objective truths - both in nature and in my self …. and generative tools present an existential threat to objective reality.

I would sooner slow down and go back to film because the process means more to me than the product.

Historically I’d be considered ‘old-school’ by always emphasizing ‘getting it right’ at the point of capture — which means my editing approach has always been clean & minimalistic in what I do to ‘finish’ a photo. I work with contrasts, realistic colors, and basic sharpening techniques.

And make no mistake - editing can’t save a photo any more than shoes can make you dance.

I’ve found the best ‘reactions’ to my work to be inner experiences.

Sometimes people truly don’t know how beautiful they are until someone shows them a different perspective.

Sometimes people can’t comprehend the overwhelming and ineffable beauty of our planet until it hits them in the heart.

Conversations are good, but better yet are feelings not easily put into words, and all a viewer can muster is ‘thank you’.

One of the few and early influences in my photography was studying Ansel Adams work, who routinely revisited locations to capture scenes or at specific times with specific intentions. This translated into my work ethos as well. This means my ‘location list’ doesn’t get smaller over the years because I’m constantly called back to experience them again and again, in different seasons, to discover how they’ve changed and how I’ve changed as well.

This is a great question. The best answer I can give is when someone (the subject) is being wholly authentic, and I (the observer) am being completely present. I find those moments captured in photographs to be the most compelling and translate into timeless portraits that somehow magically captured a soul.

I’ve always approached travel, life, and work projects as 100% preparation and 100% spontaneity. They aren’t in competition with one another, they’re in cooperation - like nature & nurture. Planning and pre-visualization is essential to a neurotic perfectionist like me, but in the moment, I’m often called to throw it all out the window and go with flow. On the edge between the two is where the best art is made.

In landscape & wildlife, it plays a pretty big part because compelling photography has everything to do with light, and light is at the whim of nature. So ‘waiting’ is often the name of the game.

But what this practice of patience has taught me over many years is that underlying ‘waiting’ is the subtle quality of moment-to-moment mindfulness and realizing that what we seek is already there.

Sometimes its simply a matter of setting expectations or desires aside and being present to discover infinite beauty thats unfolding beneath our very own feet, and ‘patience’ was just a game we were playing to make our own misery.

What I photograph and what I don’t photograph has changed dramatically over time. It’s often (if not always) a product of what I’m feeling in the moment. Even then, there are some scenes, settings, and feelings I choose the smell of the air over the click of a shutter.

Just ask yourself how standing on the top of a mountain compares to getting a postcard of the view. Scale matters, but it’s not the only thing that matters.

I will say that I’ve been attracted to creating large, life-sized, immersive photographs that thrust a viewer into the scene to feel its grandeur as ‘life-sized’ as possible. This demands technical mastery that I’ve enjoyed cultivating with a camera, and what separates average photographers from greats.

My first ‘lesson’ in photography was ‘Lighting is Everything’, and to this day my eyes constantly explore the qualities and nature of light, no matter the time or place or if I have a camera in hand. Light is a language and it constantly speaks.

And over the years observing light’s behaviors, laws, & subtleties, great mysteries of nature have unfolded before my eyes.
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And the wisdom of light is always there if you simply open your eyes and pay attention.

Unapologetic authenticity.

I would never be able to measure my own work, especially in terms of something as subjective as ‘success’, but if it must and if it could, I would hope any measure be in the harmony and happiness I was able to share with the world.

Lighting, more than anything. And after reviewing more than 5 million photographs I’m able to absorb much more in a moment than I was capable when I first started.

Just last week I was sitting next to a man laying on his deathbed who proclaimed, ‘If you think you know art, you don’t know shit’.

His wisdom rings true. No place is truly ever the same. Not the subject, and not the observer. The simplest of things is endlessly unfolding just waiting to be discovered.

How delusionally confident I was in my younger years, despite not knowing jack shit, and yet it was somehow was instrumental and acted as a bridge to ‘the beginner’s mind’ which I try and practice every day.

It depends who you ask, and when you ask them. At different stages of my life I would have a different answer. Today, in the season of life my work resides, it’s more about ‘observation’ than anything else.

I think a good photograph invites both.

Lol. The weather. Or my belly.

Master the rules. Break the rules. Transcend the rules.

Too often I see photographers get hung up on technicalities because they‘re comfortable there. But at some point you need to operate from the heart if you want to create compelling work.