A Photographer’s Race to Scoop Mount St. Helens — In the spring of 1980, scientists at the United States Geological Survey began to voice their concerns publicly about a long dormant volcano northeast of Portland and southeast of Seattle called Mount St. Helens. Considered a gem in the Cascade Range, a glacier-crowned peak rising majestically from the Gifford Pinchot…

An Autobiographical Account Leading Up to My First Published Pictures — I never wanted to be a photographer. Photography had no hold on my imagination, and, given my dedication to a career in music, it didn’t start to shape my life until after I dropped out of college. Or maybe photography was the reason why I did. That was 1972. I…

Portrait of a Violin Virtuoso — I have a dear old friend, an impresario by vocation, who calls at the last minute to say he’s off to the opera… the ballet… the symphony: Do I want to go? I do! And I am charmed by this man who knows so much about music, yet irredeemably pronounces…

An Artist’s Statement —

My Portrait of Steve Jobs — As a photojournalist, I had a nose for news. I had a nose for portraits, too, which led to some remarkable photographs. After I nailed the shot I came for, usually on behalf of a publishing client, I exploited the time-honored demand imposed by all photographers on their subjects: Just…

The Louche Life — Sightings of Tom Waits were a talking point, a curiously shared experience amongst friends when I lived in LA. Anyone might catch him shuffling through West Hollywood, just east of Beverly Hills and south of the Sunset Strip; a drive-by glimpse in the obscurity of pre-dawn light, looking like some…

Ocean Beach, San Francisco — The liminal interface of seawater, sand, and sky produces an artificial construct of consciousness, the light by which we see, that beckons my camera. Throughout a long career in photography I focused on portraiture: still lifes of people. That, in a nutshell, is what I define portraits to be. Although…

A Reluctant Orchestra — Henry Mancini composed his famous melodies decades ago. They still lurk in the American mind like cultural DNA, often sounding familiar even to younger ears, as déjà vu as a jingle: the loopy perambulation of flutes in “Baby Elephant Walk,” the pile-driving tuba in “The Theme from Peter Gunn,” a…

Jim Marshall — It wasn’t the first time a brash photographer clashed with security at a rock concert, stopped from going backstage without a pass. Jim Marshall, a fierce competitor who would elbow you out of his way to make a picture, was lashing out with his equally sharp and ill-tempered tongue at…