October 10 – 15: National Geographic Expedition – St. Lucia

The wonderful part of a long career shooting pictures is the relationships. Sharing this story again for awareness on #earthday🌎
 
In 2001 the New York Times Sunday Magazine sent me to an icebound island in the Beaufort Sea, just off the northern most tip of Alaska. I was to spend a few days with a zoologist named George Divoky, who was studying a colony of arctic sea birds called Black Guillemots. In 2001 they were a thriving species, nesting on the island and hatching their eggs. But even back then George picked up on ominous signs of the warming trends in the northern climes.
I spent about a week or so on the island, and George and I became fast friends and are still in touch to this day. I had promised him I’d come back, some time or other. And, assisted by Nikon, I did, some 18 years later, and shot a film called Watching the Earth Melt Away. George had told me that the original site where he stood for the Times Magazine cover shot was now no longer solid ice, but completely underwater and the ice was now 300 miles offshore. Cooper itself had turned from a frozen slip of land surrounded by sea ice into a sandy beachhead.
George is one of the most remarkable people I’ve ever met. He has spent 50 years studying the colony on Cooper, going there for three months, every single year. His notebooks on the birds have effectively become the largest repository of experiential, onsite evidence of global warming on the planet. He’s not in a lab constructing algorithms. He’s out there with the wind, and the birds, and over the last ten years, the polar bears, by himself, documenting relentlessly.
This year is George’s fiftieth year of observation. If there’s a more tenacious individual in the conservation world, I don’t know of them. He has seen the disappearing ice, and watched a colony of beautiful birds dwindle from the hundreds to a few dozen. He is someone to listen to. LINK IN BIO ⬆️ for the film: Watching the Earth Melt Away. #cooperisland #climatechange #globalwarmingawareness ...

Window light arrives in different styles and shapes. Cloudy window light through a sheer wraps your subject in a blanket of soft light. But hard daylight slices and dices, pending the type of window frame or curtains that exist. It’s often fun to just find a piece of light and play with it. The beautiful city of Bucharest is replete with old school mansions, which were wrested from private ownership in the time of Communism, and now lay fallow, waiting for new ownership and renovation. An urban problem, but a dream for photogs, who always love the old, the ornate, the decrepit and the just plain strange. Alina in the shadows, splashing about.

#shadowsonsaturday #saturdaymorning #picoftheday @NikonUSA #NikonAmbassador #NikonPro #NikonZ7 Shot with the Nikkor Z 35 f/1.8 at f/4. ...

A portrait of a lovely subject in a beautiful place! Pretty straight up beauty style of light up front with the added detail of @profoto Pro-11 unit outside in the backyard. Fun to do and the manfrotto light panels up front make for a wonderful, soft and rich quality of lighting for the stunning @lioudmila22 who was a joy to work with. Styling by @samanthabrownstyle and @angelfelix24, production by @northorchard. Location- @thefountaininnridgefield_

#saturdaymorning #picoftheday #portraitphotography @manfrottoimaginemore #NikonAmbassador #NikonPro #NikonZ9  Shot with a Nikkor Z 24-70 f/2.8S léns ...

A pic from long ago. But the principles of light are ageless. Light and shadow! It’s a game all photogs play on a constant basis. The spray or slice of light, natural or created, can turn a white wall into a graphic playground. First thing I always look for on location is where the light might be coming from naturally—windows, doorways, generally. Then, I either play with what exists or I recreate what the sun might do at any point in time. Keep in mind, cloudy overhead light tends to be cool, but hard, low angled light is associated with golden hour, and therefore warm. The light in this pic is in-between, just starting to edge towards the sunset time.

#TakeMeBackTuesday #TransformationTuesday  #TipTuesday #picoftheday #NikonAmbassador #NikonPro ...

The marvelous dancer @leonardobrittom of Ballet Hispanic in NY, leaps under one of the elevated structures in NYC. He is a wonder to work with, as he has an athletic, intuitive ability to create dynamic shapes in the air. This is the type of shot where the light panels devised by Manfrotto really work well. We were able to modify and bring good light to the subject even though we were shooting in the harshest of summer sun conditions. Check out the behind-the-scenes video on the “Manfrotto Lighting Catalog” app. #fridayfeeling #dancephotography #manfrottoimaginemore #nyc

#dance #ballet #ballethispanico #manfrottoimaginemore #leap #urban #picoftheday ...

Here in Romania again, in the amazing city of Bucharest. On my last trip here, shooting a mix of fashion and portraits, I was working in an abandoned factory, and came upon this room, which was as propped as a mad scientist lab as perfectly as any movie set could be. Walked in, changed nothing. Had found a gas mask, which we sanitized and the lovely @anamaria_bucura donned, along with her evening dress. Put up a Manfrotto light panel in the windows and a Profoto B1X on a stand outside. Another Profoto B1X bounced lightly off the ceiling. I was ranting at AnnaMarie, “The government troops are coming! You must finish the formula now!” Hey, when you have a pinball fantasy machine of a brain like mine, you just go with the flow!

#saturdaymorning #romania🇹🇩 #bucharest #nikon #nikonambassador #nikonpro #nikonZ7 ...