Never done this before, and probably should have long ago. I had to say a few words about myself: My photos are my daily meditations. I’ve traveled through some of the wackier places on earth and through the feisty terrain of parenthood, and always the camera keeps me calm and aware. Moments. These are my purview. I like to think it’s my place on the ol’ Dharmic wheel to bear witness, to cherish by seeing, and it’s certainly the only way I remember anything. Or maybe I’m just a voyeur. But I like to get involved too, and it’s that giant involvement in my own life that makes plain to me all the beauty that resides in the every day bits. Photography is my gift of proof.  I grew up a child actor, Starsky and Hutch to Remington Steel. In my late teens I left Hollywood to go get a degree in Literature. I came back with a penchant for story telling and an old yen for the film set. I found I could make my daily movies with the still camera. That machine’s led me on some great emotional and terrestrial adventures. At 30 I found my true main line to glory: my wife, our two daughters and our life together. From our marriage on a floating palace in India and on through our world travels – always with our CHICKS in tow – and up to the recent LA Times article on our resuscitation of an old East LA 1/4 acre grande dame we call Sky Farm Red, it’s all been kudos for a decade of vision and sweat equity. Meanwhile I get to photograph Rock Stars and Movie Queens. Mary J Blige, Demi Moore, Keanu Reeves, Puff Daddy, the portfolio is filling out nicely, and it keeps the chickens – 5 of them – in mash.  

Made a new pal today, Maxi. Hair and MakeUP extraordinaire on the Kreesha Turner “Don’t Call Me Baby” shoot today. He let’s you know, he’s loud, voluptuously loud, that you can find his work at “Maxi, Maxi, Maxi dot com. That’s Maxi M-A-X-I three times dot com.” This is his oft repeated shpeel to make you remember Maximaximaxi.com, and it works. But I wondered why he left out that perfect winged or wingless mnemonic device: the ubiquitous monthly pad. Anyway, he came up with the wonderful hat and I quickly took him to the camera.

This is some of the ultimate kudos, to have our hard work and ingenuity, and our fancy CHICKS, given the nod on one of the great stalwart sites that keeps the web human, that exults the regency that resides in the quotidian, that turns back the tide of kitsch by stemming its ranks and and placing small, saintly wonders in the hands of those who need them.

Here’s some fine kudos this week for a man trying to make gutsy pictures and a woman very successfully making gutsy music. Nice to share each other’s coattails.

He’s fitting in quite nicely. Friends to romp with and ample room for rapid-puppy sprints to and fro. We weren’t sure a small dog would fit our farming sheep-dog whirlwind up here, you know never thought we’d have a dog with clothes, but I think we’re smitten from the get go.

It seems so long ago now. Moments before she had marveled at putting her own shoes on, then she marveled at the blue ground beneath her feet. This is how photography serves as my memory, without it every thing’s in danger of being lost. 

Griffith park can burn, the back lot of Universal Studios can burn. All these places make up the background in the tapestry of my youth. They are inviolate there. And so when set upon by disaster, I have full reckoning of their mythic, Phoenix abilities to rebound and become again stage fronts to any play you can mount. 

I like to be thus drunk. In all our breeding we reached concert proportions. I can’t envy Mozart after the things we’ve done.