letters from athens / crete / evvia

I have many places on my long list to visit and eat and drink (noodles in southeast Asia, ham in Spain, Australia, more Argentina, Chile, Africa, anywhere and anything to eat in Mexico, Saag Paneer in India, Turkey, more Malbec in Argentina, Alaska, sushi in Japan, Peking duck in China, camp food in the Westy all over the US making stops at funny diners and useless tourist destinations) and I couldn't think of anything in Greece that would suck me in. Then comes my assignment to Crete and Evvia, and all of a sudden I taste the ocean in everything I eat. And eat. And eat. And the food doesn't stop coming until you really say 'I honestly can't fit another thing in my stomach'. It's good, healthy food, full of fish and greens. Heart disease is virtually unheard of over there, yet smoking a pack of cigarettes a day seems like the norm. Give up your lungs, but you have a healthy heart full of vitamins and omega-3.
Crete is one of those places where I would throw the map out the window. Where are we going? Who cares! Look at those sheep with giant bells, and the pine trees, and narrow alleyways, and abandoned structures, and that guy with a speedo, black socks, loafers, and a cigarette dangling! He looks like a sexy Henry Kissinger.

the art of appearance

This is an article written a few years ago about a fascinating experiment with world renowned classical violinist Joshua Bell. Joshua began playing "Chaconne" from Johann Sebastian Bach's Partita No. 2 in D Minor on a cold January morning in a Washington DC subway during rush hour. Bell called this piece "not just one of the greatest pieces of music ever written, but one of the greatest achievements of any man in history. It's a spiritually powerful piece, emotionally powerful, structurally perfect.”

The result was this: in the three-quarters of an hour that Joshua Bell played, seven people stopped what they were doing to hang around and take in the performance, at least for a minute. Twenty-seven gave money, most of them on the run, for a total of $32 and change. That leaves the 1,070 people who hurried by, oblivious, many only three feet away, few even turning to look. This was all videotaped by a hidden camera.

He played this intricate piece on a violin worth 3.5 million dollars. Two days before this subway performance, Joshua sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

Here is another example from Mark Leithauser, a senior curator at the National Gallery, overseeing the framing of great works of art worth millions. He thinks he has an idea of what happened with Joshua in the subway station that morning:
"Let's say I took one of our more abstract masterpieces, say an Ellsworth Kelly, and removed it from its frame, marched it down the 52 steps that people walk up to get to the National Gallery, past the giant columns, and brought it into a restaurant. It's a $5 million painting. And it's one of those restaurants where there are pieces of original art for sale, by some industrious kids from the Corcoran School, and I hang that Kelly on the wall with a price tag of $150. No one is going to notice it. An art curator might look up and say: 'Hey, that looks a little like an Ellsworth Kelly. Please pass the salt.'"

Basically, his point is that we shouldn't be too ready to label the folks in the subway station as uncultured idiots. Context DOES matter.
“Kant said the same thing. He took beauty seriously: In his Critique of Aesthetic Judgment, Kant argued that one's ability to appreciate beauty is related to one's ability to make moral judgments. But there was a caveat. Paul Guyer of the University of Pennsylvania, one of America's most prominent Kantian scholars, says the 18th-century German philosopher felt that to properly appreciate beauty, the viewing conditions must be optimal.”

In relation to this experiment, there is a quote from Seth Godin’s book ‘All Marketers Are Liars Tell Stories. His quote cuts to the point:
“Many things that are true are true because you believe them. …”We believe what we want to believe, and once we believe something, it becomes a self-fulfulling truth.”

I bring this up because this business is LOADED with perception, and it shouldn’t be taken for granted. There are experiments done where in that it is proven a person makes a conscious or unconscious decision about us in the first 3-5 seconds of meeting. One perfect example: if a client walks in my studio and sees, say, huge lights, a big camera, a slew of assistants, and lots of buzzing about, they will think to themselves what amazing images they will get before I even click the camera. Regardless of how much equipment is set up, I will still use mostly or all natural light, minimal equipment, etc. and stick to my successful ways of shooting that I’ve always done. I won’t, however, deny the convincing power of one’s location and equipment and how that can completely change an idea about what you’re presenting or what you’re about to present.

You can read the full article about Joshua Bell here.

You can see the time lapse youtube video here. It's so gorgeous; it'll give you chills.

some time away from phone and email can look like this

big sur extravaganza

It's finally here: the big sur books are out! #1, which was actually released in June, is the ‘Big Sur Bakery Cookbook’, and #2, which is coming out in a few weeks, is ‘My Nepenthe’. Both with completely different stories, both about a mile away from each other on the ocean side of highway one, 26 miles south of Carmel. One of my favorite things to do is drive south with Tim, comfortable without talking, music playing, my bare feet on the dashboard, looking at the water. Then we go on a big, sweaty hike and end up drinking a big, cold beer / eating a basket of fries on the deck of Nepenthe. When the sun goes down, I look at the water again and I try to imagine what it would be like to be all by myself, in the dark, in the middle of the ocean. Totally terrifying or totally liberating, nothing in between.

Letters from Argentina, round two

It's winter here in Argentina, yet a nice 75+ degrees every day. I packed the wrong clothes and I'm sweating all the time. Things are much more relaxed this time around, and I can actually experience what I'm shooting, cherishing that extra half hour of sleep every night. Here's my 8 steps of success:

1 - Don't think about it, just shoot.
2 - Loosen up.
3 - Drink Malbec.
4 - Life is too short, eat the chocolate and shut up.
5 - Life is too short, eat the blood sausage and like it.
6 - You're your own best friend and treat your body like it's the best thing that's ever happened to you.
7 - Sleep.
8 - Repeat.