Summer cabin

Accommodations from one of my recent photo shoots. Everybody has a different definition of rustic. For some it means only a one star Michelin rating with the opportunity to see trees and the occasional wild animal in between spa treatments. But personally, I really like these funky old cabins from the early 20th century. You did come up here to be outdoors didn't you?

George Foster Peabody Award

I just returned from a 24-day Grand Canyon River river trip and learned that a project I contributed to--an NBC News cross-platform journalism project on poverty in America--just received the George Foster Peabody Award. Here is a link to my portion of the "In Plain Sight" Project : 
http://www.nbcnews.com/feature/in-plain-sight/drug-payday-loan-users-hooked-quick-cash-cycle-v18088751

There's never enough space for all the photos, but here is one portrait of Ray Chaney from that assignment that I wish had run.

Taking Turns at Pilots Peak

Silver Linings

Portrait of a Great Man

     I first photographed Cecil Andrus when he was governor for his third and fourth terms. He had already served two terms as governor, rising to power on a campaign of saving Idaho's White Cloud  Mountains from a massive open pit molybdenum mine. He had then gone on to serve as Secretary of the Interior in the Carter administration, overseeing the Alaska Lands Act and helping to protect more wilderness and wildlife refuges than anyone since.

    I remember thinking then that Idaho would be a very different place when he was out of office. And sure enough the ensuing years have brought increasingly strange and strident voices controlling public discourse and policy in my home state.

     The fact that a conservation-minded Democrat could be a popular four-time governor of one of the most conservative Republican states in the country spoke to his rare gifts and abilities. I most recently photographed the Governor for the Pew Charitable Trusts for its campaign in support of national monument protection for those same White Cloud Mountains that helped bring him to prominence.  We first talked about elk hunting -- he had taken a massive bull last year on the east side of the White Clouds. Then after I scouted and selected the location for his portrait, he helped carry my bag of light stands. Not many of my subjects have ever done that -- least of all octogenarians with a resume like his.  But in a way that small act spoke volumes about why he has become one of the great men of our times.

North Idaho

Most springs I don't go seeking rain, but this year is different, with so little precipitation in southern Idaho that much of the desert is already looking August brown. So I went north to the Lochsa River country, then up to Lake Coeur D'Alene. Green is good. Here are some still images I made in between shooting time lapse and video.

City of Rocks Workshop

It's a common adage that in the process of teaching, the teacher learns as much as his or her students. Having just finished a photography workshop at City of Rocks National Reserve and Castle Rocks State Park I'd have to agree. First you have to articulate what it is you know or think you know.  Instead of just doing photography there's a deconstruction of  what that "doing photography" is all about exactly.  And then you have to communicate that information in a way that makes sense and is, hopefully, somewhat entertaining. Thanks to the workshop students for being part of my education and to parks superintendent Wallace Keck, a fine photographer in his own right, for putting it all together.

That icon of photography, Ansel Adams, came up in discussions about purity in photography and Photoshop manipulation. As someone who started photography learning Adam's Zone System, which involves compressing or expanding the tonal range of an image, I understand that Adam's created  his images as opposed to just recording what was there. And we do so today, often using Photoshop, although rarely as artistically as Mr. Adams.

I decided to work a few images up as B&Ws in a tip of the hat to Ansel, a teacher for us all.

Craters of the Moon

Craters of the Moon National Monument was one of the first places I visited when I moved to Idaho more than three decades ago, and it's a place to which I often return. A landscape of lava flows and craters, limber pine and rabbit brush, its mood changes dramatically with the weather. Yesterday morning we awoke to golden light streaming across the lava, backed by darkening clouds which turned to swift-moving snow squalls.

The Outdoor Studio Office

Compost Compositions

For years I've walked to the back of our yard to dump compost into the bins we've built next to our garden, often admiring the compositions created by the garden and table scraps. So in the fall I began periodically photographing them, chronicling the changing of the seasons as reflected by the waste we produce. I'm continuing to shoot these compost compositions, but here is a sampling so far:

The autumn color is stunning this year in Idaho, and after two-plus months of looking at the landscape through a shroud of forest fire smoke, it is especially welcome. These are from a recent shoot in the Sun Valley area.

Weiser Fiddle Festival

The Weiser Fiddle Festival officially begins the third week of June, but for a lot of musicians the festivities begin a week earlier in an adjacent plot of dry, scrubby land known as Stickerville. It is here where musicians return each year to set up camp beneath the thorny black locust trees and play music until the wee hours of the morning. By the time the official festival reaches its peak, Stickerville is largely empty, and will remain so until next year.

Muzzie Braun, Where Music Lives

For the past 36 years Muzzie Braun has lived along Slate Creek in the White Cloud Mountains of central  Idaho, where  wolves, mountain lions and bears outnumber people by a wide margin. Despite – or perhaps because of – its extreme isolation,  Braun has created a  musical life that extends far beyond his mountain home. He tried his hand at Nashville, but says, “either I didn’t get them or they didn’t get me.” But his father was a musician, “so I knew it could be done.” In the 70s and 80s he performed with his brothers Gary and Billy as the Braun Brothers. He created  a band with his four sons, Muzzie and the Boys, which played  on the Late Show with Johnny Carson and Jay Leno.  And he has recorded a dozen albums. Muzzie organizes and plays the annual Braun Brothers Reunion, a 3-day music festival in Challis, Idaho, which headlines national recording artists, including Reckless Kelly, fronted by two of his sons. “We were lucky enough to find a special place where we could raise our family, I could write my music and conduct business from the comfort of our home.”

More images from the series "Where Music Lives" can be viewed at my website under Projects.

Jaguar and Turtle Tracks -- It's a Jungle Out There

Along the northern Caribbean coast of Costa Rica rare and critically endangered leatherback turtles are coming ashore at night to lay their eggs in the sand. Jaguars patrol the beaches hunting them, able to flip the 350 pound turtles on their side and then rip them apart with their claws. We came across these hours-hold turtle and jaguar tracks early in the morning. The jaguar was late too -- the turtle had gone back to sea.

Boulder Mountain Tour

Elite men race through Prairie Creek 20  minutes into the 32-kilometer Boulder Mountain Tour race, Saturday, Feb. 5.

Snow!

Welcome back winter.

Waiting for 'da snow

Never has a snowstorm been so anxiously awaited as this week in Boise, with Bogus Basin Ski Resort still barren and closed in mid-January, the worst snowpack in its 69-year history.  Up in Sun Valley they've been skiing since Thanksgiving, making snow on Baldy and maintaining what they do have quite well on the nordic trails north of town. We skied the 32-kilometer Boulder Mountain Tour trail Saturday and returned the next day to ski around Galena Lodge. Hey!--are those storm clouds on the horizon?

League of Extraordinary GentleWomen (& Men)

Each year the Jones clan, of which I am a member by virtue of my sweetie being the eldest of 5 Jones sisters, gathers for a post-Christmas Christmas, usually in the Ozarks of central Missouri. They are individually remarkable people -- Paul the Methodist theologian turned Trappist monk and prolific author; the twins Suzanne and Elise, both environmental leaders  and now becoming political leaders in addition; Wendy, a bilingual educator who emerged from recent cancer treatment with a sense of equanimity and gratitude for life; Amy, a gifted calligrapher and artist who also has a pretty sharp left brain too; and of course Katherine, a photojournalist, columnist and printmaker. Then there's the nephews and significant others, like Karl the rocket scientist. A pretty diverse lot, but what they share in common is a focus on living intentionally, something that is reinforced at these annual gatherings through family rituals and ceremonies. This group portrait was made at the end of the last gathering.

Mink Stole Trout

While scouting a location on the Boise River last week a mink swam by with a freshly caught trout in its mouth. I think he was using an elk-hair caddis.