the FAVORITEs - 2025
I keep thinking I’m going to quit doing this, afraid that someday I’ll look back and find I haven’t really done much. But some sort of guilt kicks in and deep into the process I realize it’s good to be reminded of where I’ve been and what’s stood out, who and what I’ve been drawn to.
THE DISH - there was a time when your dish was nearly the size of your house. Like having a big Cadillac in the driveway, everyone knew you was somebody. Some still remain as yard art.
TWO ANCHORS AWAY
FREESTYLE MURAL (limited run) - this was painted over in less than a week.
HOUSE AND SNOW - near Locustville, you can almost feel the quiet.
FAMILY PROCESSIONAL TO GRAVESIDE SERVICE - for Furlong Baldwin at Eyre Hall, January 11, 2025
The road through the snow and the woods, near Locustville.
VIEW FROM THE BATHROOM - the shore house
A PRAYER FOR TEA - at daybreak on a side street in Varanasi a handful gather waiting for the first tea of the day and the blessings offered by ritual.
Usha Devi and her daughter. Devi’s sari caught fire while she was cooking. The accident inflicted severe burns across her neck, chest, lower face, and both armpits. She lived in a remote village far from the specialized care needed and too poor to seek help. However she would eventually receive two life-altering surgeries. These helped release painful contractures and restore mobility, along with her dignity.
Dr. Subodh Singh travels by train to see the construction site where a new hospital dedicated to burn victims is being built outside Varanasi, India. He heard about Usha Devi and made arrangements for her care, pro bono.
The bedroom for millions. I have done a lot of work with the homeless in the states, but abandoned children are particularly hard. Hard to envision a path to better. Sleeping on concrete sidewalks, waking up to forage and beg for food. Preyed upon. On my predawn walks around Varanasi I was saddened to think of waiting outcomes. What does it take to overcome growing up on the streets.
A few minutes before we met on the street, she had been sleeping with others, both older and younger, on a concrete pad on the street in Varanasi.
Twelve days after she was married, Pragya Prasun was traveling to Delhi when a former boyfriend - who had wanted to marry her - threw acid on her while she was sleeping. “For 23 years, I was living with an enabled body and then all in a day, everything changed.” Pragya was hospitalized for three and a half months. “During that time I never looked or faced a mirror. When finally I did, I cried for days. Finally my father said to me, ‘You can cry how much you want, but don’t make a habit to cry for the same thing again and again. You need to come out of it. I have raised a brave girl.’ And that is something I wanted to prove to my father and the world.” Today, Pragya is a nationally-recognized advocate for burn victims and her foundation has changed laws to benefit victims and works to erase social stigmas, financial instability and the lack of adequate and accessible medical care. She speaks globally encouraging survivors to never see themselves as victims - and to believe the scars will tell a story of courage.
Photographers know (or we’ve read it somewhere) that If you wander aimlessly enough there will be times when you are gifted for the simple effort of showing up. I do not know this gentleman’s name. His son was in the hospital where I was wandering, just down the hall in one of the wards. I caught him in the stairwell one afternoon, and he smiled at the misplaced stranger. I held out my camera - do you mind? - and he nodded and said something I did not understand. But he stood tall and proud for a photo, and again smiled and bowed clasping his hands together as if praying. Namaste.
Early morning on the Ganges - India is a country of immense beauty. In Hindu belief, the Ganges is the goddess Ganga. She descended from heaven to earth to purify humanity. Because she is divine, her waters are believed to carry spiritual power. The waters are believed to wash away sins and purify the body and soul. The Ganges is not just revered as a river, but as a living soul.
Waving - According to Hindu mythology: The river originally flowed in heaven. King Bhagiratha brought Ganga down to earth to cleanse the souls of his ancestors. Lord Shiva caught her powerful descent in his hair to soften her flow. Thousands bath in the waters of the Ganges at sunrise everyday.
Monkey riding an electrical bomb at the Assi Ghat, Varanasi - I don’t pretend to know much about wiring and electricity but back in the market alleys and streets it looked a little chaotic. Not something I’d want to lounge on.
I don’t know why I like this image but I kept coming back to it, the banks of the Ganges.
Faces are stories - there are lines and textures, the way the eyes deepen and take you in, proud and wondering for a split second what this is all about. Volumes without speaking.
Ditto for Randy - homeless and living in his van around the Virginia Beach oceanfront for the five years I’ve known him. The van - his de facto home - finally gave out and his mom and stepdad gave him a one-way ticket to friend’s place in Colorado. Out of sight and maybe out of mind.
No one has a more expressive face. Randy is a talented painter and muralist. He also knows how to drink, practicing everyday. He’s constantly quitting, with equal parts joy and depression. He’s now living in a motel in Four Corners, Colorado hoping he’ll soon get a bike and place to live.
Dancers waiting - there’s something I love about shooting ballet from the wings. It’s not the story the audience sees, it’s the story of the story, the timing and the waiting and the anticipation in the foreground while the performance - the real show - plays out on the stage beyond. Together a whole different drama.
Emmanuel - there’s something joyous about shooting dancers. They have two vital elements - they wanna be shot and they live to perform - that just means you just have to perform as well. Location, time of day, lucky skies and a light of our own. Point. And shoot.
Renata and I go way back - A dancer and an artist, we’ve shot together dozens of times. And that will likely continue.
Sally Mann once said she didn’t understand why people felt they needed to travel all around the world to take good photographs. So she famously shot her children at home. And less famously, I photographed Renata in the backyard at the shore on a rope swing we fashioned together that same afternoon.
On a grey day at the beach - we almost didn’t go. Certainly not a day for pictures on the beach in Chincoteague - or so I thought - but the grey and soft fogginess rendered everything painterly and all the players seemingly placed perfectly.
A day at the beach - Chincoteague on the Eastern Shore - there’s something about how the water and sand are calling even on a cloudy day.
Queuing up for the scary Halloween parade in Onancock
Maphis Oswald leads the Halloween parade in Onancock
Artist and boat captain David Crane - when he retired from his first love - captaining yachts and sailing - he and wife Cindy bought a piece of land on the Eastern Shore and docked their sailboat. They lived aboard while building their dream house. And a studio for the pottery. Serenity called.
I love these guys - Lynn and Gayle Sands - father and son farmers on the Eastern Shore. I followed them around, a nuisance at times I’m sure, two years back when I was working on a climate change documentary for WHRO. They know all about climate change and rising waters that nip at their fields. I dropped in on them again in November while they were harvesting soy beans. This is the end of the season, when all the hard work with the unpredictable outcomes will rest up for a few months. There are days at the end of a season, when the harvesting is due, that reaping what you’ve sown is its own reward. These shorter days turn beautiful in late fall and the two will wear a certain satisfaction that all is good, along with the realization that there’s no place better than this place. And this life.
Early - there’s something lovely about the way days start. More often quiet and still. At Jockey’s Ridge the light creeps slowly up the dunes and before it’s full there are slivers of color highlighting the barrenness of dunes and skeletal trees. It says we’re new again.
Late - just before the sun sets. Just before I ride back over the Bay Bridge home from the Eastern Shore the elements all get together for a benediction. The sun, the clouds, the waves of water - all singing this last song to send us on our way.
Flashy - More and more the beach cottages of old have given way to mega mansions towering in the dunes. Modern and pristine. But rolling through Nags Head and on down to Hatteras there are still lovely holdovers, and just like the island still hanging on. You can feel the easy. Gracefully aging. And envision what the beach communities were like less hurried. Bike on over to David’s house.
Still Life with shell and rock - After all the people work we do, there something nice about shooting the inanimate. I keep a wardrobe the bedroom on the shore filled with dried flowers, insects, rocks and shells. And when the light is pretty, I quietly play with trying to make some photo.
So much of my life has been absorbed with “taking” photographs, this exercise - more precisely - is about making photographs
I continue to be enamored by the beauty of the simplicity in these objects and the challenge of finding some light and rendering that makes them new.
This is just me and whatever Gods are out there saying what can you do with this light on this day. Is there something there? Which of course is what I’ve asked all along.
LET’S TAKE A MINUTE AND TALK ABOUT AI.
WE SPENT A LITTLE TIME ON IT THIS PAST YEAR.
WE DID ALL THE VISUALS in AI FOR A CD/ALBUM FOR MICHAEL MARQUART’S Season 14
It won’t replace our desire to shoot our own stuff
but it does give us the opportunity to explore imaginative worlds
from the comfort of our Desktop.
Here’s a couple from that project.
The Cover - the narrative album follows a modern “Bonnie and Clyde” couple on the run from the law. After months on the run, they’re eventually they’re captured and jailed.
Inside album image of Michael in support of the Season 14 narrative. Midjourney AI
Redressing Santa - for a Christmas ad for longtime client Beecroft&bull we created (through AI) a fantastical cathedral of men’s clothing with Santa’s traditional outfit tossed over a sofa - all to accompany the line “EVEN SANTA KNOWS YOU CAN’T WEAR RED EVERYDAY.” Midjourney AI
enough of that, the best of the rest real photos
Tuk Tuk driver getting us home from dinner. Varanasi, India. (iPhone)
A young Muslim girl at home - her hands were badly burned in a cooking accident. Several surgeries have healed the contractions and restored all function. (iPhone)
David Crane and wife Cindy take friends out to one of the barrier islands on the Eastern Shore for a little shelling.
Stephen - in his “black sheep of the family” halloween costume. On the dock next door at my neighbors’. The Eastern Shore.
Emeline Rochefeuille - Paris based dancer waiting for her next shot at the end of Magotha Rd on the seaside. Part of Films that Move last August.
Bernie Herman - knew a lot about a lot of things. History, food, outsider art, quilters and how to skin and eel among them. But he knew a lot about figs. His living “fig library” was a grove of dozens of gig trees, many raised from cuttings, nearly all historical in their linage. At his beautiful place near Machipongo, you’d see trees from Hog Island and Monticello, and come August there was always a bountiful showing - ready to be eaten off the branch or preserved in their sweetness. Figs were just one chapter in Bernie’s love of food. His Southern Foodways work and the annual South You Never Ate dinner at Chatham Vineyards are just part of his wonderful legacy. Bernie died this past year - but all his good teachings remain, along with his great love of the shore.
Herbie Williams - 1951-1925. Herbie was a fixture in Ghent. A tireless volunteer and a good soul.