Lightly lit light...

I love light in all its iterations. I'll take a dense urban environment in the late afternoon over just about any other scenario. If you keep your eyes open, you can wander into spots that look like they were custom lit for you on a movie set. But in reality, they're just the perfect confluence of reflected and refracted rays.

NYC. April 2009.

Up against a Wall, Street scene...

Recent work on the economy from NYC:

There’s a palpable shift in the mood of the financial districts of New York City. The hotshots of a booming economy are now the pariahs of a recession. Wall Street's mood has plummeted like the price of shares that power the economic engine.

The offices of financial powerhouses crowd together downtown. Their density occludes the sun, which barely touches the ground on the dark streets. Power ties and gelled hair take smoke breaks in the shade of the marble facades, and movement on the floor of the stock exchange slows to a crawl, a far cry from the freneticism of a couple years ago.

Even in Midtown, where late afternoon light hits the avenues, shadows cling heavily to the etched walls of towering skyscrapers, where a nebulous collection of well-dressed men decide the fate of the world’s economy.

"PDN 30 - 2009"...

Photo District News is out with their annual "PDN 30 - New and Emerging Photographers to Watch" -- I made the list! Check it out here...

Monochromatic links...

New and Improved!

Here's a recently edited Black/White portfolio up on my agency's site - Reportage by Getty Images.

Enjoy!

Compositional camouflage...

In the mountains of Rwanda and off the coast of South Africa.

(click the image to see larger)

Lederhosen + ringflash = Oktoberfest...

It's way too early in the year to be thinking about Oktoberfest, but as I was looking back through my 2008 work I found these two gems.

Apparently Klaus doesn't drink responsibly.

Reality abstracted...

I'm a pretty big fan of patterns--- not too concerned about their context...more interested in their mystery.

Leaving Paris...

Terminal 3.

What I would sound like if I were French...

Last night's Paris launch for "Lost in China" went really well-- here's some coverage of the exhibition opening as well as the French trailer for the show. Pete and I have never sounded so urbane...

Bande Demo Lost in China
Uploaded by FoxVoyage

Paris and premieres...

I'm typing from my hotel room in Paris--- it's closing in on 2:30 am. First time I've ever been to France, outside of transits through its airports which don't count. Been a long but great last couple of days. I was up in NYC earlier this week to meet with my agency and update a few portfolio edits, then went to the premiere party for the CNN project I was working on earlier this year (Planet in Peril - Battle Lines) and then flew to Paris overnight, landed, napped, and went to the French launch of our show "Lost in China" for Nat Geo. Now I'm waiting for the network premiere of Planet in Peril (PIP) on the hotel TV which should be on in a few minutes. Check it out if you get the chance-- I imagine it'll be airing fairly frequently over the next couple of weeks. Below I'm attaching some of the images I shot earlier this year that have been used for PIP press...

2nd costumed post in a row...

Thanks mom for digging out the Superman cape you made for me when I was 4 years old so that I could wear it again 26 years later to celebrate turning 30...nice stitch job...you think it'll still fit when I'm 56?

(And Josh, next time, try not to poke yourself in the eye with your iPhone.)


Photo by David S. Holloway/Reportage by Getty Images for Jeff's Birthday Party

Classic National Geographic attire...

Photo by Jason Nicholls/National Geographic Channel International

I love the fact that Nat Geo has used this pic as one of the main images to promote the show...Pete and I decked out in faux punk gear on our way to an underground concert in Beijing...I'm not sure which of our wigs is the more nauseating...but how about them belt buckles?

and if that picture is not punishment enough...

...here's a link to one of the interviews we did while promoting the show last month in Kuala Lumpur, complete with a special shout-out to the government agents who folded our clothes as they booted us out of Gansu province...

Battlefields big and small...

I'm back in DC now-- crashed hard in my own bed last night-- always nice. The thin foam mattress I slept on under mosquito netting in Chad doesn't compare. The nights there were sweat-drenched and buggy. Add in the wacked-out dreams that Malarone (an anti-malarial drug) throws in the mix, and there goes any restful sleep. Every morning I'd wake up in my little bungalow in Zakouma National Park and the floor would look like a civil war battlefield, littered with the bodies of thousands of insects that had somehow creeped their way in during the night. There was no point in trying to step around them in the morning-- just too many. Crunch crunch.

But enough of that. I was covering a story on elephant poaching-- here are a few images...

No more bright lights...

I'm in a hotel room in N’djamena, Chad-- watching a made for TV rip-off of The Karate Kid on a fuzzy screen. "Mr. Miyagi" looks either Indonesian or maybe Filipino in this version--- and the faux "Karate Kid" is a blond-haired dude who just finished up a musical montage by, believe it or not, running down a beach. With characteristically perfect timing, the "Karate Kid's" archrival, as all bad guys do, rolled down the window of his limo in order to watch said "Karate Kid" training on the beach. Hollywood is indeed a thing of beauty. And by the way, the whole thing is dubbed into French. Ouch.

It took me over 27 hours to go from Hong Kong to central Africa. Last week's promo tour for "Somewhere in China" was fantastic, and completely hectic. I flew out of Hong Kong--- known for it's neon, and landed in Chad after dark, a place almost completely devoid of light. Flying in to central Africa was disorienting. None of the recognizable signs of a city-- just faint embers and dying filaments eking out their existence on the black earth below.

The city neon to the city noir.

On the record...

After a 20+ hour transit we just touched down in Manila to do a bit of a PR tour for “Somewhere in China”—the National Geographic Channel travel/adventure series my brother Pete and I are hosting. It’s six one-hour episodes covering China top to bottom and starts airing on NGC this Sunday, October 12 for the next six consecutive weeks.

So the Channel flew us out here to Southeast Asia for a week to run around giving a bunch of interviews and to host some photo workshops. Here’s the schedule in case you can make it to any of the workshops.

MANILA:
Oct. 13 – 1:30 pm
Filipinas Heritage Library (Makati Avenue – Ayala Triangle)

KUALA LUMPUR
Oct. 16 – 7:30pm
Westin Kuala Lumpur

HONG KONG
Oct. 19 – 2 pm and 4 pm
Hong Kong Space Museum

In between the workshops it’s back-to-back TV and print interviews…going to be a busy week.

And after finishing up the second workshop in Hong Kong I fly straight out that night to do more work with CNN in Chad. I would imagine there’s not too much demand for a nonstop Hong Kong – N’Djamena, Chad flight unfortunately…

Stay tuned...

At the end of this week, Pete and I head off to Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Hong Kong for a promo tour for our show "Lost in China" (depending on what part of the world you're in it's also known as "La Otra Cara de China" and "Somewhere in China"). Anyway -- here's a link to some of the promotion the National Geographic Channel office in Australia is doing...

The show starts airing this October in some places, with launches in January and February in other parts of Europe.

Water falls...

The raindrops here are large enough to have their own gravitational pull.

Heaven and Health...

The skies in Mumbai hang heavy like thick curtains. And I've been trying to kick a fever for the last three days.

Muggy Mumbai...

Quiet in India's chaos.

A night's sleep, quantified...

I'm in New Delhi, shooting a commercial for Singapore Airlines and the National Geographic Channel.

Extra! Extra!...

Here's a link to a fantastic must-read article in this month's issue of Digital Photo Pro... (of course I might be slightly biased).

A link for clicking...

Here's a site featuring one of my favorite images from last year...

Terminal 3, Charles De Gaulle Airport...

Must have been the pressurized cabin...

I'm sitting in Air France's business class lounge on the way home from Johannesburg. Plane's boarding a few and I'm about to spend the next 22 hours in transit. I've been flying mostly business class lately, which makes a HUGE difference when you have to walk off the plane and get straight to work. But I noticed a funny thing on my last flight out here to South Africa. There are a lot more bald heads in business class than in economy. It's not hard to figure out why that would be, but I realized last time I was seated directly behind one of those bald heads, it reminded me of the old ice bridge between Siberia and Alaska. Hair on the sides of the head with a bald bridge separating the two, much like the Bering Strait separating Asia and North America. I imagined the man's remaining follicles braving the high winds and exposure of the his dome like ancient Inuits, marching across his scalp in a poorly executed comb over, trying to find a better life in another land.

I have no idea if that makes any sense outside my own head. But it made me laugh.

Just in time for a summer swim...

I finished up shooting Great Whites down in Cape Town last week, now I'm northeast in Soweto. But here are some of the shark photos and a link to a slideshow on CNN's blog...