As always, it has been very busy around here lately, and I am hoping to release some big news in the coming weeks, but in the meantime I wanted to take a minute to keep folks updated with a few recent tearsheets and stories.

            Last summer I was asked by the wonderful folks at Boys’ Life and Scouting magazines (magazines under the Boy Scouts of America) to shoot a five-day rafting trip on Oregon’s Rogue River as well as a nine-day fishing adventure on the Kobuk River in northern Alaska.  Being a river person and someone with a deep love affair for Alaska, I politely accepted, then hung up the phone and did my own little dance around a coffee shop in Boulder, Colorado where I happened to be parked at the time. 

            The Rogue River was one I had always heard about and had hoped to get on for years.  It is not particularly full of crazy whitewater, but it is one of the most scenic rivers around and I was in desperate need of disconnecting from the world and making life as simple as shooting images and telling the story of a trip.

            From the ridiculous coffee in the morning (yes, one of the participants owns a coffee roasting company) to the great guides handling logistics to the troop itself, it was an amazing trip.

            Soon afterwards I headed on up to Alaska for seven weeks of personal adventures and shooting as well as the next assignment in line, floating the entire length of Kobuk Valley National Park on the Kobuk River with Troop 300 of Wasilla, AK.  Once again, I was exactly in my element, no phone, no computer, camera in hand and nine days away from the world.  It was perfect!

            Both stories ended up being the cover story for each magazine and I couldn’t be more pleased with how they both turned out.  Thanks again to the amazing folks at Boys’ Life and Scouting magazines and everyone on those trips who made them so memorable.

            The next tearsheet is one I am particularly proud of as well.  It is one of my favorite images, shot on my own while on a personally funded photo endeavor to Hawaii, in print as a double page spread in this summer’s Patagonia catalogue. 

It is a true honor to have my work appear in the pages I have drooled over for so many years (both for the photos and the gear, haha!), but this tearsheet is particularly special to me because this was one of the scariest images I have ever taken.  It may look peaceful and tranquil, but I was swimming in a known Tiger Shark area by myself at sunset in deep, black water next to hundred foot cliffs and ten-foot crashing waves to get this image.  There was no way out, my heart was pounding out of my chest and all I could do was shoot through those last moments of sunlight and hope that nothing would make a snack of my bold (dumb might be a better word) move. 

I don’t normally operate this brazenly, but I had been trying to get out with this group during one of their practices the entire time I had been in Hawaii and it finally came down to the last day, literally hours before my flight back to the mainland, when I got the call and folks were heading out.

Again, most people probably wouldn’t go do something like this only a few hours before their flight, but when you have put as much time, effort and money into your own pursuits over the course of many years as I have, you pretty much never say no to a cool shooting opportunity that you created.

Without getting too much further into it, you are beginning to see the variables that shaped my decision to get in the water that evening.

In the end, I am really happy we got the image, I am really happy that Patagonia is using it in their catalogue, but I am most happy about the fact that I got out of the water that night, all limbs attached.

Thanks to the good folks at Patagonia for choosing this image and to the good folks at Kamanu Composites who made this all possible!