Monthly Archives: January 2017

Doctor Of Journalism

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“No man is so foolish but he may sometimes give another good counsel, and no man so wise that he may not easily err if he takes no other counsel than his own. He that is taught only by himself has a fool for a master.”

This is a years-old illustration inspired mostly by burning through several of Hunter S. Thompson’s books while licking my wounds after a failed relationship. There’s no obvious correlation between the devastation of lost love and the musings of an eccentric literary figure like Thompson.

Except maybe there is.

Losing somebody important is to feel lost oneself. Individuals like Thompson – with their preternatural ability to connect dots that otherwise seemed completely unrelated – have a unique ability to reveal the chaos beneath the order of things, and simultaneously make sense of the seemingly incomprehensible.

Words written with authority, with a voice that punches through the banal, provide comfort. I think that’s why I’ve always gravitated toward the grandiose, sometimes absurd, and – more often than not – astute observations of the ‘gonzo’ journalist.

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Game of Thrones – Aemon Targaryen

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“What is honor compared to a woman’s love? What is duty against the feel of a newborn son in your arms, or the memory of a brother’s smile? Wind and words. Wind and words. We are only human, and the gods have fashioned us for love. That is our great glory, and our great tragedy.”

It was necessary to make this the next priority in the ‘Portraits of Westeros’ project. Sadly actor Peter Vaughan – who portrayed the noble and wise blind-man Maester Aemon, formerly a Targaryan and now a man of the Night’s Watch – passed away on December 6th, 2016. Vaughan breathed life into this role with generosity and finesse. There was an honesty and a subtlety to his portrayal that is rarely achieved. He was a prolific actor in British television, cinema, and theater. He will surely be missed by those who knew him, and we are certainly saddened to learn that the flame of his talent has been extinguished.

Aemon Targaryen, whose character has quietly disregarded his own surname, is the maester at Castle Black and is an important adviser to the Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch. When Maester Aemon is first introduced, he is elderly and frail, blind, but clearly intuitive, wildly intelligent, and serves under Commander Jeor Mormont.

Aemon is the last known Targaryen in Westeros, the great-uncle of Daenerys Targaryen. Unknown to all of the principle character of ‘Game of Thrones,’ Maester Aemon is also the great-great uncle of Jon Snow, a tremendous irony given Aemon’s affinity to (and advocacy for) Jon Snow’s ascent within the ranks of the Night’s Watch.

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January 03, 2017 – Muddy Stream

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Textures – a long obsession of mine.
Without spending too much time being overwhelmingly boring, I will say that I have spent weeks – probably months – of my life with a macro lens in my hands and earbuds piping music into my brain, photographing cracks in pavement, tree bark, broken patches of clay-rich earth, rusty garbage containers, and just about anything you can find on a rusting old car or in a back alley, in order to expand my collection of texture images.

My library is extensive.

Some of these images are used to add grit and texture to other photographs I’ve taken (as overlays and double exposures). Some of them reveal themselves to be stand-alone pieces. The image above just so happens to be one of those stand alone pieces. While hiking through the rain-drenched red mud of Sedona, Arizona, there was a moment when I realized I had been paying too much attention to the mountains towering over me – that’s what always captures people’s attention – and I needed to take a moment and start looking around.

So I trained my lens on the ground, rather than the high peaks. To the streams and the insects, the animal tracks and the budding cacti, rather than the red rock spires that dominate the landscape. And this is what I got – a portrait of the tiny little stream, the stream that traveled a long distance from a large rock formation, from a mist of rain, to soak into my boots and ensure that my feet would be wet and itchy all day long.

Small price to pay to be reminded how beautiful the world is.

The details, the small little things? They really are beautiful. And they really do matter.

“The past becomes a texture, an ambience to our present.”
~Paul Scott

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January 01, 2017 – New Landscapes

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I started this project last year and I didn’t even make it to the three month mark. Well, we just said goodbye to the year 2016, and I’m going to give this another solid run. One photograph a day – or painting, or drawing, or whatever – for the full 365. I’m beginning this series with a photograph taken with my phone, New Years Day, after waking up hangover-free to a rainy Sedona, Arizona landscape.

It was a good hike, with good, loving company. The best possibly way I think I have ever welcomed the beginning of a new year.

I hope you’ll send me some support and positive thoughts, and I will try my best to keep this project on its feet.
Happy New Year!

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
~Stephen King

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