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Alex, Seth, and I were on the roof doing a 13-minute time lapse of the insane clouds today. Later, I went to shoot more and I saw this!!!! The contrast was so sharp between the rainbow and the clouds! I have never seen something like this in my life. I have video of it that I will post later along with the time lapse of today’s billowing clouds. Nature rules!
It’s not everyday that your best friend comes to your studio and hands you a signed copy of his first novel with your photo on the cover! Jim was my first mentor, in a way. He would teach a full day then hammer away at his writing for hours on end, constantly working on his craft. This example has stayed with me over the years.
We shot the cover image standing in the Calder fountain, which is located right on the Ben Franklin Parkway. Cars zoom by at 100 miles per hour, the fountain a blur. How many weddings have a I shot there without really noticing the majesty of this sculpture? We shot for three hours, waiting for the light to pop. I wanted to have a slow shutter so the water spewing from the goose’s mouth would rain down and create vertical lines. The slow shutter also warmed the tone of the image. We did very little enhancement to the image, save for splashing the fountain with water to add contrast to the form.
The novel is a gem.
Check out jimzervanos.com to pre-order a copy.
Sitting in my amazing room at the Laurel Inn. The morning light is bouncing off the limestone buildings across the street, pouring soft golden light into my room, filling it with warmth.
Yesterday, after spending the night in this crazy little cabin on the West Shore of Lake Tahoe, I went snow shoeing up Eagle Falls, towards the backcountry of Desolation Wilderness. For the first few hours I was totally alone since I was up early with the sun as I usually am when I am totally immersed in nature. The circadian rhythm of dark and light is what so many in these mad modern times lack so desperately.
In summer, Eagles Falls acts as one of 63 streams that flow into Lake Tahoe. Only one flows out, the Truckee River, its flow moderated by a “levee” on the north shore of the lake in Tahoe City, the place I called home for one year. Eagle Falls is generated by Eagle Lake, which is only a short ½ mile hike into the woods. Beyond, the wild backcountry. If not alone, I would have gone deeper, further from the lake and the rest of humanity. Maybe that’s why I love nature: get me away from the noise and confusion of people, but, somehow, when I am really “out there”, I long to come back to the fold, to be amongst people again, to share my story and images. It’s the “tonic of wilderness” as Thoreau called it. We need open spaces to dream and understand the lessons that the natural world has to show us. The irony is that humanity has so altered the one thing that has given it the chance to live, and, heartbreakingly, through it’s desire for things like gold and riches, oil and coal, destroy it. Without this perfect system, we would never have evolved, never have been able to form into “life”. And now we are trashing it? It just does not make sense. Perhaps one day, the idea of handing a person a plastic bottle of water when they ask for “a drink of water” at your home will be regarded as insanity. “You tell me you are going to use that bottle for 3 minutes then throw it out which will probably take thousands of years to decompose? This is your modern progress?”
OK, enough soap box. I just get frustrated when in such a magnificent place and I think that we could loose it all if we are not careful.
I began to shoe up a steep slope and found that I was not able to go forward. Suddenly I feared that I would slide on the hard snowpack down the mountain towards a rock, a tree, a stump! So, I alertly backed down slowly and re-thought my plan. I would look up the mountain and want to go “there”, that spot way up the hill, so easily seen, but how to get there?
I backtracked and pushed on towards Eagle Lake. The light was striking the southern face of one of the mountains that ring Lake Tahoe. The decomposing granite with all its edges and surfaces, catching and holding the light, the trees silhouetted in the foreground.
I made it to the lake, contemplated crossing it and going further, thought better of it and just chilled in the warm sun. On my way back, I just didn’t feel ready to pack it in, since as soon as I got back to the car I was headed across the state west towards San Fran and the Pacific Ocean. I shoed up a face and found the going good. I could dig my shoes in and not slide. I shoes up 100 yards and this was my view!
Amazing how just a few feet in elevation changes everything. Metaphorical possibility? Change your POV (point of view) and suddenly you “see the light”, can see more than you thought possible. I use this idea in my shooting and in my personal life. “Did I consider a different angle here? Did I exhaust all possibilities when shooting this scene?” Photography makes me present like no other activity I know.
Here is a shot of my first push up into the mountainside. It was as steep as it looks!
I went further and came to a plateau that gave me a chance to rest and to photograph this magnificent tree.
After a three-hour drive I made to San Francisco. I looked out my window to this. I felt like I was home…
The night came on and I was surprised there was no fog. Bodes well for a warm day to follow.
My days here in San Fran were spent walking around, meeting people, drinking coffee or wine, writing and relaxing. What better city in the world to do this when the weather is perfect?
My last day I went over the Golden Gate to Sausalito. Again, the allure of the place! How could anything but the hippie generation come from such a beautiful place?
This “neighborhood” was totally made of houseboats like this one!
Since the sun sets quickly behind the furthest western edge of the Coastal Range, I decided to go to the oceanside of the Marin Headleads to watch the sun set. I watched the fog roll in, taking a photo every minute to create a cool time lapse shot since I had no video camera. Again, the line between photo and video is blurry.
I took these final shots as close to the bridge as you can get. I marveled at the architecture of the bridge, it’s simplicity, its design. I love how the edges of the bridge are layered, which creates shadow and thus depth and dimension. Yes, it is cliché, but how can one get sick of seeing this bridge in this light, the fog horns blasting every few minutes, all of us standing here in the freezing wind, bearing witness to the majesty of both man and nature?
After what arguably has been the most successful sales period of my entire career (the past three weeks I have booked weddings in Baltimore, Washington D.C., Aruba, Grand Cayman Island, Cape Cod, and in Philly), I am finally able to take some much needed time to rest, play, and get back to nature. The full-page ad with Grace Ormonde Wedding Style has been so overwhelming! I’ve known all along that what we are doing is special, unlike what any other studio is doing nationwide. The ad, the new website trailer, the new editing breakthroughs, the new album styles we are now offering, the video iPod touch and the super coolness of giving our clients top-rate photo + video on this amazingly elegant device, all point to a studio on the rise and on the move. It’s been five years since I began Studio Nine and I am so proud of what we have accomplished.
I love to wrap my life work together before a big trip (or any real or preconceived organic break in my life’s schedule), tying all the little loose ends so that when I return home, I am that much further along the path. It’s like I create somewhat arbitrary deadlines for myself to hit. I may decide to have a gallery show two months from today, knowing full well that two months is barely enough time to get all what I want to accomplish done. With all that time, I will end up finishing the last touches moments before guests arrive, the paint still wet, the images just delivered by trinity or Truman with only moments to spare. Maybe this is what I need to do being that I am self-employed and self-motivated. I have no boss but my own expectations of where I think I should be personally, professionally, as the leader of Studio Nine.
So here I sit, on my bed with the window that faces west towards Kirkwood and the rest of the Sierra Nevada, with the gradual descent to the great valley of central California and further still over the coastal range leading to San Francisco and the bay, where I will end my trip with a few days in the city I love so much.
I lived in Lake Tahoe for a year back in 1994, my first year out of college. I skied, read, worked at a taco stand at 7,000 feet, and later as a trail guide / naturalist for Squaw Valley Academy’s elderhostel program. This is where I ‘worked” since half the time I had my nose in Thoreau’s Walden!
A shot of the apartment where I lived, elevation 6800 feet. I would sit on the deck and watch the sun set behind the legendary KT-22 of Squaw Valley…
I took “mature students” on hikes around the Tahoe Basin, with some of my students pushing 80 years old. This was my first teaching experience. I remember awaiting my turn to give my lecture about the golden bear of California – the grizzly – how it was eradicated by Kit Carson and others who were rewarded for the destruction of a once proud and fierce lord over this land…I knew then that teaching would remain a part of my life forever.
I went to Tahoe with Christopher, my best bud who just turned 40. Christopher and I both used to live in Tahoe at the same time, but we never knew each other; this is our homecoming.
We skied today and the conditions were magnificent. Over 380 inches of snow has fallen here this year and everything is filled in.
Giant rocks and pine trees silently sit beneath the snowpack. The day began cloudy but the sun burst through now and then to light up the valley and the mountain.
I would stop and struggle to free my camera. Nothing is easy. Making the images requires more weight, hassle, and worry, but it is now second nature to me. I make images. I have this blog to transmit my words to the world. So cool!!
We found great groomed trails…is there anything more haunting than seeing a snowcat in the night grooming trails high up a blackened mountain face? I can see them now as I type, packing the snow to keep it fresh and free of ice sheets since the warm days and cold nights can make for icy conditions.
We found a gulley that we skied down twice. The snow was deep, helping to arrest the gravity we released by turning from one ski to the next, momentarily releasing our contact with the mountain. At times, the trail was only 10 feet wide, surrounded by rock on either side. I felt total control: jump, turn, drive the downhill ski into the snow. Repeat…
We left Kirkwood and headed for Lake Tahoe itself. We both were transfixed by the sheer amount of snow. The roads cut through the 10 feet of packed snow (imagine 30 feet of snow that has settled over time and has made a giant ice cream sandwich layer over the entire valley) that must be cut by giant snowblowers that shoot the snow away from the road into the woods.
We drove up the west shore of Lake Tahoe, stopping for breakfast and my obligatory stop at Alpenglow, my favorite mountain store, named after the phenomenon that occurs when early morning or late afternoon sunlight strikes the mountain face and reflects the light up into the atmosphere. There is no more magical light than this, especially when there is so much snow reflecting so much clear and pure light. I awoke with my shades drawn each morning, watching the light increase so slowly yet so quickly. Suddenly the highest peak would burst into pink and yellow. The god of day has arisen and I have been gifted with another day. Today, I watched a planet rise over Kirkwood’s western ridge as the sun rose as well.
I rented snowshoes since I wanted to not deal with downhill skiing’s ever intense fight with gravity. I wanted to be free of machines and people and the din of ski edges grinding the hard-packed snow. I was ill-prepared for a long jaunt into the woods so I shoed into Grandlibakken Road. The sun was setting over the western hill, the 4 o’clock hour the time when ski lifts close and the day wanes quickly. A few pines were dead with lime- green lichen sprouting opportunistically. I thought of my friend Asya, and how this would make a nice gift to her. The lichen cleans and filters the mountain air, feeding off the dead and dying trees to fill the air with rich and clean oxygen. I looked around for the right branch covered with the right amount of “lucky lichen” (as Chris Charnitski, my biologist best friend once called it). I found one then another, this one being the best. I have two such pieces already in my home: one hangs horizontally over the studio office door; the other, above my dresser on the third floor. I like to think these pieces of Tahoe filter and protect my sacred spaces.
Photography is my life. I cannot separate my life from my art. I don’t “go to work” then come home and begin my “life”. I am always presented with images, whether in my mind’s eye or in reality.
Photography and media are in my blood: my grandfather filmed his honeymoon with my grandmother in 1933. My Uncle Rich worked as a newscaster for Channel 2 in Buffalo for 30 years. My cousin Julie and her husband are producers for MTV in Los Angeles. My other cousin works for the AP in Washington, D.C. And, of course, my mom, a wonderful “amateur” photographer, whose images grace the walls of our family home in Media, PA. One of my fondest memories is when we were in West Virginia on a family trip. The sun was setting, fast, and we raced to the car to get the instamatic camera, with it’s tiny viewfinder and hand winder… I took the shot just as the sun dipped below the horizon. I find it fascinating the human desire to record. The images made by this camera were grainy and small with a limited shelf-life, but the magic of being able hold reality and reproduce it is so cool! (Funny how many critics believed photography would replace art altogether when the camera was invented.) I think of people today with their cell phones, as they stand in front of something wonderful, and they go “ooooh” when they see the image rendered onto a tiny screen with poor resolution! It’s as if the thing itself is nothing until we capture it.
Today, I think of my worldwide travels to find the best light, the magic hour when the sun’s rays glance off the Earth’s atmosphere, the reflective glow providing the most ethereal light of the day for mere seconds, and I thank my mom (and dad) for taking me and my brother across the American countryside, instilling within me the love for nature and the desire to preserve it.
Studio Nine — the gallery, the studio, the community of associates and employees I have brought together, my wonderful clients that have supported the studio and made what it is today — all fill me with intense pride and joy. I have shot over 200 events, shot a music video for MTV, photographed Prince Charles, have had images published in books and magazines, photographed numerous sunrises and sunsets in exotic places like Greece, New Mexico, and Cabo San Lucas…all these things I’ve experienced care bound by the same idea: me, with camera, observing this thing called reality, looking for the right angles, the right point of view, the right film, the right camera setting, to bring the image back to YOU, to move you to feel wonder or pity or anger or bliss. Joseph Campbell talks of the “hero’s journey”, of the “leaving, fulfillment, and return” of the artist to society with a gift to help others to see the truth and beauty and heartbreak of life. There can be no greater challenge or mission in my life, for there is no end to human joy and suffering I want to document and share.
Whether it be a wedding, or a mother who has lost a child to violence, or a sunset in the redwoods, I attempt to recreate reality for you, bringing my images to life as best I can, so you can share the experience with me. When I am alone in the woods, shivering in the dark waiting for the sun to rise, I am not truly alone since you are there with me.
The studio’s mission statement:
The pursuit of creating the perfect image is what drives us. We never fail to recognize that the images we are capturing are indeed singular events in the history of the world, full of subtle details and powerful peak moments. Our job is to record and document, not overproduce or intrude. We respect this notion wholeheartedly, which translates into our philosophy of photography: treat each moment as sacred, even those moments when camera is not in hand; capture on grain or pixel what is already there and waiting; do not intrude or try to overly-dictate the moment; be there when the moment does happen. And be ready. As Pablo Picasso said: “An artist is not one who always looks for something, but one who finds something wherever he looks”.
Thank you for reading this!
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