Your Moment of Visual Zen

2020 has been a crazy year, full of uncertainty and chaos.  We’ve all found moments where we can.  I’ve relied on photography and travel to calm my senses.  Both were difficult during the lockdown, but even during those moments I shot and traveled. Of course the travel was limited to about a couple square miles around my house and studio in San Diego.  So when I was able to travel more broadly we hit the road to one of our favorite spots, the Northern California coast.  It’s become our new go to spot. A once a year trek to continue our exploration.  This year we hit the Lost Coast Trail up around Shelter Cove.  It’s pretty remote, but accessible by car.  

Photographically I wasn’t feeling the landscape photography I usually shoot on these road trips.  Exploring the beaches I was seeing things smaller and more intimate - more abstract and symbolic.  I was intrigued by the water, the shapes, the erosion and textures, and the plants and creatures seemingly living everywhere.  There was beauty and tranquility everywhere I looked.  

Given what we’ve gone through in 2020 and what surely will be a chaotic several weeks, if not months, I present to you several moments of visual zen.  I hope they bring you the joy and peace I felt while discovering and creating them.  

Introducing FRP Stock

A curated collection of photographs from my archive is now available to search and browse on it’s own site. Photos are available for immediate download and licensing.

The FRP Stock photography collection contains images from my vast library of photographs. Images are available for commercial and editorial usage, including advertising. Highlights from the collection include biotech and healthcare, agriculture and farming, energy, both alternative green sustainable and traditional, industrial photography, both aviation and maritime, youth culture and sports, and corporate culture and portraits.

Back To The Streets - the California Lockdown

Quarantine is tough. I’m not writing anything the world doesn’t already know. Parents with school age children are saints. Work from home is difficult, at best. Isolation and anxiety are rampant. The streets here in San Diego have often resembled a dystopian movie set. Empty and trafficless. But the lockdown created a unique rhythm to life. A quiet, peaceful cadence also developed on the streets.

As tough as it’s been, there have even been a few bright spots. Some things are even better.

The air got cleaner, crisper: Automobile traffic is a fraction of its normal volume. Within a matter of days air quality improved. You could smell, even taste, the difference.

It’s eerily quiet. Cities are noisy; really, really noisy. With bars, clubs, and restaurants all closed it’s been noticeably muted. In our neighborhood, Friday and Saturday, usually a cacophony of sounds, are exceptionally serene.  

Running down the middle of the street: that feeling of going for a run and the streets are your personal track.

Family time: fractioned tribes have migrated back to the roost. Families are taking advantage of forced togetherness. Quality family time is abundant. Nobody is rushing from here to there and back again. The pace has slowed to a crawl. Life is slower, more peaceful.

Quarantine has not been easy, but there have been a few silver linings along the way.

Stay Safe out there. It’s far from over.