News — Art that tells stories

During Monterey Car Week, I revisit three fine art photographs of vintage automobiles made in Pebble Beach in 2008 and 2009, when I had the rare opportunity to encounter the cars before the crowds arrived. What began as an encounter with automotive history becomes a meditation on memory, desire, beauty and time. The 1928 Mercedes-Benz S Tourer, 1938 Buick Century Coupe and 1955 Jaguar Roadster become symbolic characters in a story about the way objects survive while the lives surrounding them disappear.

This essay reflects on the invisible thresholds that shape our lives. Inspired by an ethereal image of an egret passing through a dreamlike forest, it explores memory, transformation, and the quiet journeys that occur long before we recognize them. Rather than documenting nature, the photograph becomes a meditation on becoming, inviting viewers to complete the story with their own experiences.

Inspired by a photograph of western snowy plovers on a Pebble Beach shoreline, this essay reflects on the recent conservation milestone that saw the species surpass 3,000 individuals along the Pacific Coast. Blending personal reflection with local conservation efforts on the Monterey Peninsula, the piece explores how art, observation, and quiet acts of stewardship intersect to protect one of California's most vulnerable shorebirds.

The Camera I Carry is my personal reflection on National Camera Day. Moving through my evolution from brushes to film to iPhone, and drawing on a recent wet plate collodion demonstration at the Monterey Museum of Art, I consider what connects Niépce's eight-hour exposure in 1826 to the woman on the pier that morning with her phone raised to the fog. The answer, I suggest, is not technology. It is intention.

On Nature Photography Day, this photograph serves as a reminder that the natural world is not merely observed but experienced, interpreted, and felt. Rendered in my signature cinematic and painterly style, the image transforms a familiar natural setting into a dreamlike meditation on mystery, reflection, and the stories nature leaves unfinished.