BIO

BORN AND RAISED IN MANHATTAN'S EAST VILLAGE NEIGHBORHOOD, I FIRST RAISED A CAMERA TO MY EYE WHEN I WAS IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOL AND PRETTY MUCH HAVE HAD EITHER A STILL OR MOTION PICTURE CAMERA PART OF MY DAILY LIFE EVER SINCE.

I FIRST USED MY FATHER'S TWIN LENS ROLLIEFLEX (YES, AN ORIGINAL), AND SOON MOVED UP TO A NIKOMAT THAT MY UNCLE BROUGHT BACK FROM A BUSINESS TRIP TO JAPAN.

I SHOOT DIGITAL THESE DAYS, MOSTLY FOR EASE OF MAKING IMAGES AND THE POST-PRODUCTION PROCESS.

I LOVED THE MAGIC OF SEEING a photograph EMERGE IN DEKTOL, BUT I DISLIKED CHEMICAL TOXICITY AND THE LABORIOUS PROCESS OF PRINTING. DIGITAL POST PRODUCTION GIVES ME MORE CONTROL AND INFINITELY MORE FLEXIBILITY, HENCE A MUCH more compelling creative OUTCOME IN BOTH STILL AND MOTION PICTURES.

I FELL IN LOVE WITH LEICA WHEN I WAS 14 YEARS OLD TAKING A PHOTO CLASS WITH A PROTEGE OF PAUL CAPONIGRO WHEN WE COMPARED A M3 WITH the PHOTOJOURNALIST STANDARD NIKON F. DARE I SAY THAT THE IMAGES FROM THE ESTEEMED NIKKOR 50/1.2 LOOKED LIKE A BROWNIE CAMERA SOFTNESS COMPARED TO THE M3 WITH A 35MM SUMMILUX.

IN BETWEEN I'VE SHOT FILM AND DIGITAL ON BLACKMAGIC, BRONICA, CANON, CONTAX, LEICA, MAMIYA, NIKON, HASSELBLAD, red, SONY, AND IF i GO WAY BACK, A 4X5 SPEED GRAPHIC, 8X10 VIEW, AND MY BELOVED LEICA IIIG.

self portrait, BADRINATH, HIMALAYAS, INDIA, 12,500', canon 5d mii

MY STYLE

I'M A CITY KID. I GREW UP LEARNING HOW TO SEE ON THE STREET. AT A CERTAIN LEVEL YOU HAVE TO BE OPPORTUNISTIC—AND TO UNABASHEDLY STEAL FROM BRESSON, CAPTURE "THE DECISIVE MOMENT".

THE STREET FORCES YOU TO PAY ATTENTION TO THE MOMENT AND EVERYTHING IN IT. I LEARNED EARLY THAT WHAT I FRAMED OUT WAS AS IMPORTANT AS WHAT I FRAMED IN. PRESENCE IS EVERYTHING.

BE DISTRACTED FOR EVEN A MOMENT, GET LOST IN YOUR THOUGHTS OR LET YOUR MIND INTERPRET WHAT YOU SEE, AND YOU'VE LOST MOMENTUM.

EQUALLY, THERE IS VISUAL STORYTELLING ACUITY THAT DEVELOPS WITH EXPERIENCE AND TRAINING. THIS IS THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN TAKING A PHOTOGRAPH AND MAKING A PHOTOGRAPH—YOU SET UP THE SCENE IN YOUR MIND IN THE SPLIT SECOND BETWEEN your intital SEEING, COMPOSING, AND CLICKING THE SHUTTER.

THE SUBJECT:OBJECT RELATIONSHIP DROPS AWAY AND YOU SIMPLY MOVE INTO AN EXPERIENCE OF ONENESS WITH THE PERSON, PLACE, OR THING—NO SEPARATION.

GEAR IS INCIDENTAL. i USE WHAT IS AVAILABLE, WHETHER ITS my SMARTPHONE OR MIRRORLESS, DEDICATED STILL, MOTION, OR HYBRID.

CAPTURING OR CREATING THE EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCE IS THE ONLY THING THAT IS IMPORANT FOR ME.

CHEFCHOUEN, MOROCCO, sony dsc rx100

MY FOCUS

no pun intended, but what really gets my creative juice flowing is the possibility of experiencing what you see every day in a totally new way.

perception is reality. change youR mode of seeing and you have a diferent experience of life in and around you.

the question is, do you see differently from outiside yourself, or is it an inside job?

I've found that the more i explore my own interior pscyho-biological landscape, the more i bring to my storytelling.

I work PRINCIPALLY with natural light, both indoors and out. Much easier now using digital cameras with wideR ISO range, greater DYNAMIC RANGE, IBIS, and fast lenses.

I'M DRAWN TO PROJECTS THAT MOVE THE NEEDLE FORWARD TELLING HUMAN STORIES THAT SHOWCASE THE universality OF WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN.

AS IN NATURE, THERE IS UNITY IN DIVERSITY—WHOLENESS, NOT SEPARATION.

I LOVE DOING ADVOCACY WORK FOR THOSE WHO HAVE A limited VOICE, INCLUDING, ABORIGINAL PEOPLES, WILD PLACES, AND SENTIENT LIFE.

ASRAM, HIMALAYAN FOOTHILLS, INDIA, canon 5d mii

WORDS

IT IS SAID THAT A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS —NOW WITH THE PROLIFERATION OF DIGITAL IMAGERY, A VIDEO IS WORTH A MILLION.

YET, SOMETIMES, THE SINGULARITY OF A STILL IMAGE IS ALL THAT IS NEEDED TO TELL THE STORY.

THE POINGNANCY OF A SIMPLE SINGLE FRAME CAN SAY MORE IN THAT SPLIT SECOND THEN ALL THE WORDS GENERATED BY CHAT GPT AND OFFER MORE VISUAL IMPACT AND RESPONSE THAN NANO BANANA WITH ITS INFINITE MYRIAD POSSIBILITIES.

SOMETIMES ITS THE LACK OF WORDS THAT GIVE THE visual story MORE IMPACT.

SOMETIMES ITS THE SILENCE BETWEEN THE WORDS, THE GAP, THAT MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE.

OTHER TIMES THE STILL OR MOTION PICTURE SUPPORTS THE WORDS IN TELLING THE STORY.

THOUGH I STARTED MY VISUAL JOURNEY EARLY, I AM also A WRITER BY TRADE. I'VE WRITEN COPY FOR ALL MEDIA, ANALOG AND DIGITAL, INCLUDING MARCOM, CORPORATE, ADVERTSING, BROADCAST COMMERCIALS, BRAND, DIRECT RESPONSE, EMAIL, SOCIAL MEDIA, WEBSITES, WHITE PAPERS, PROMO SCRIPTS, CASE STUDIES, BUSINESS AND GTM PLANS, SHORT AND LONG FORM.

MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NYC, iphone 6

CREATIVE PRODUCING

never before has it been easier to develop imaging skills and get our creative works out to the world.

Digital production tools and distribution channels have democratized media and given all of us Warhol's proverbial 15 minutes of fame.

yet, more than ever, competency of craft is vital. And, sometimes, being a one-person show, as robust as it is, one lacks the acuity that comes with specialization or more experience.

Creative producing is where one has the artistic or directorial vision yet lacks sufficient technical digital skills to execute at the required level of artistic expression.

Creative producing is akin to directing, but involves more organizational and business capacity, aligning with client communication objectives, ensuring that appropriate emotional response is elicited.

HAVANA, CUBA, nikomat, 50/1.4

stills

Before motor drives on film cameras and 20 fps as digital stills, photographers practiced intuition balanced with patience to capture that singular split second of infinity needed to tell a story.

now, many photographers brought up on the speed of digital are using film cameras as tools to discover patience and experience the discipline of timing.

whether a creative artist uses analog or digital tools, the simple fact remains that the artist controls their toolset, not the other way around.

the discpline of learning how to see borne from patience and a settled mind, prevails in both analog and digital tools.

true seeing is done from your heart.

barcelona, spain, canon 5d mii

MOTION

time and space are funny things.

sometimes we have no sensation of time moving. someTimes it goes by in a flash. other times, it drags on and on with slow caustic drudgery.

we live in a dynamic world, so sometimes we need to capture that movement to enable the viewer to experience it as a mirror of their own life, more true, more real.

i discovered my love of moving pictures when i realized that sometimes my visual storytelling required more than a single frame.

sometimes, my story required movement through time and space.

sometimes it required the verbal expression of SPOKEN VOICE AND sound to further the story and its emotional TONE AND cadence.

sometimes the story required the camera to move with the people and the people with the sounds, the music, the speech.

sometimes it was the language of sound that created a richer context that furthered the emotional tone more than the visual alone.

sometimes it is the silence between the spoken words or the crashing waves or ambulance sirens breaking through the night's silent darkness that is amplified by visuals alone.

Chelsea, nyc, nikon d1

animation and motion graphics

sometimes the reality of life needs a charicature to tell the story from a different angle, an obtuse human perspective.

sometimes we need to make up characters to exaggerate the human condition to express a different emotional tonal range or behavior.

animated characters, whether as hand-drawn cells ala original disney or digitally encoded frames ala pixar, tell the story differently than a human actor—still, voice and sound is usually required to fill out the storyline.

motion graphics frame a story differently. as a title, it sets stages, queues up the audience and preps us. Our brains interpret words or graphics differently than the images we are familiar with from daily life.

the flatiron building, manhattan, nikon d1

voice, sound, music

the belching putt putt of the jitney, the wind blowing through my hair, the stuttering forward motion moving through traffic, the driver, muttering when a cow crosses the jitney's path, all of life's richness filling the frame, expanding the story, giving the viewer a deeper, more real, maybe even surreal, experience.

without sound, seeing only the blur of the people you imagine speeding through traffic.

without spoken word, you see the intense look of the driver's eyes in his left mirror.

without the jitney'screahing sound, you see tightness in the driver's shoulders.

add in bollywood music, a cow mooing, a pedestrian yelling, engine sputtering, or the driver muttering and you gain richness, depth, experiencing being in the scene not simply an observer, but embedded.

haridwar, india, canon 5d miii

still - fashion

working with a professional model who knows the cadence of a photo shoot and can summon a range of emotion to sell a product or service is a great asset to any photographer.

Helen, Los Angeles, Leica SL

STILL - FOOD

capturing the living essence of food can invoke a psycho-biological response that salivates the palette, inspires the mind and raises the heartbeat.

natural lighting, no setup aside from its insitu display, and context of place always challenges our ability to tell a story in a single frame that engages the viewer to want more.

BARCELONA, SPAIN, CANON 5D MIII

STILL - PORTRAITS

one moment, one frame, might be all you have.

miss the moment and you lose capturing the quintessential uniqueness of the person.

fortunately, the light was perfect, the subject was primed and knew how to strike a pose that epitomized his personal style, and i was ready.

The Mayor, RISHIKESH, INDIA, CANON 5D MIII

STILL - street

you never know when a good photo opportunity presents itself.

sometimes a photograph just comes to you, stepping right into your frame, in this case eating a late afternoon lunch on a hot summer day when i should have been taking a siesta.

a half-eaten sandwich, some olves, an empty glass of beer, all out of focus, amplify the one-pointed internal dynamism of this street musician.

a little high dynamic range exaggerates the color just enough to heighten your experience but not enough to think its not real.

malaga, SPAIN, CANON 5D MII

STILL - place

making a photograph is distinctly different than taking a photograph.

a sacred river, an ancient ritual, well-practiced hand-eye-body synched coordination from multiple people, and modern lighting to amplify the action, so many possibilities, but only one perfect image.

i moved around the stage at will. Side, back, front, close-up, wide—what produces the most compelling image, the one that captures the emotional intensity and history of modern times?

scouting helps, it always does. But in the end, you have to act from intuition and practice, pre-visualzing what you want and clicking the shutter, not twice, three, or four times, but once.

it's done, never to be replicated like this again.

ganga river, rishikesh, INDIA, CANON 5D MIII

STILL - nature

sometimes seeing what is right in front of you is the most difficult part of being a photographer.

we get used to seeing the same thing out of habit and don't realize that we are not seeing anymore, we are remembering.

not truly seeing or being present or being in the moment, but recollecting imagery from stored fragmented images stored in memory.

oh yes, we are present enough to see a little bit, and then our memory fills in the parts of what we thought we see, but really don't see because we are not sufficiently present, so we formulate an image of what we think we see—only its the past and we think its the present.

with this kelp, i boosted the color to make it look hyper-realistic; this way, i'll remember. :-)

oregon coast, iPhone 7, color graded on phone

STILL - landscape

how do you scope down the vast beauty of the northern arizona desert so that you retain its scale, majesty, and grandeur yet also feel intimate?

and, what to do with the contrast of color, earth, sky, rock, wildflowers, sagebrush and shadow?

You look for form. You compose in geometry. You see symmetry and asymmetry. You discern the play of light and shadow. You go for purity of elements. simplicity that belies complexity.

monument valley, arizona, iphone x, graded on phone

MOTION - NARRATIVE SHORT

navaswan is a short film completed for my MA in narrative filmmaking.

navaswan was awarded Best Short Film at the Rishikesh International Film Festival 2017.

I wrote, directed, edited, and produced. Kinga Kulsca color graded and did special efx.

filmmaking is a team sport. Always choose talent over friendship. work together often enough and you gain both, as well as creative partnership.

location shoot, iowa, usa. Camera: orignal red one

MOTION - animation

hand drawn cell animation; 8-10 fps.

you try to do this with real people live action, but you wouldn't get the humor or exaggeration.

account exec and producer for animation company.

Client: Y&R San francisco for Levis 501 jeans.

MOTION graphics

how do you tell a story about a full-stack marketing agency in 15 seconds?

you sure as heck don't do it with people.

you do it with words, graphics, and movement set to a music beat to engage the viewer emotionally so that they read the words and get it mentally.

writer, director, producer

client: digital marketing agency, //00:15 promo. adobe photoshop, adobe premiere.

MOTION - case study

business value focused customer evidence of enterprise software.

showcases real people using a real product with real reaults from 3 different points of view.

writer, director, producer

Client: microsoft. Location: Paris, france. Camera: Panasonic Varicam

MOTION - dance

one of 6 modern dance pieces performed for winter solstice celebration in small town armory.

capture the essence of the choreography, the talent of the dance troupe, the story through expressive movement, during a one-time only live performance, all from a single position with locked-down camera.

writer, director, editor, producer

client: modern dance company. Camera: Sony Z1U

MOTION - music video

one-time live performance of rock-n-roll kirtan performer, dona delory.

showcases real people using a real product with real reaults from 3 different points of view.

camera, director, editor, producer

Client: shakti fest. Location: joshua tree, CA. Camera: Canon 5d Mii