Categories
Germany Photography street photography

Discovering the streets of Duesseldorf ~

They say nothing improves without practice… those 10,000 hours.

I have started organizing this meetup group over 15 years ago in shanghai and for the last 5 years here in duesseldorf. We walk the streets almost once a week with cameras, photographing, exchanging tips and experiencing the life of the street.

I love walking alone to do my photography but the group events are just as valuable. Seeing how the same scene can be translated so differently for each photographer reasserts for me the uniqueness of each human and the magic of diversity.

Our next event will be in the streets of Paris! Stay tuned.

You can see more about my meetup group here!

Categories
Photography street photography

SOLO~ The Art of Being Alone

week 2 of presale for the book has started!
Book Cover

Hi everyone,

I have been gone from here a while and daily blog project paused because of many changes happening all at once in my world as they often do in people’s worlds. As I am mostly a very private person, I will remain vague about these upheavals.

At the start of this month, a magical project turned up when I was approached by a book publisher here in Duesseldorf with the option of creating my first photography book based on the recent work I have been sharing. Naturally I was thrilled as I do love photography books and I was not sure where to start with producing mine.

To keep a long story inside a single paragraph: I met the team, they are amazing, the title appeared, I received a huge amount of support from my friends, family, fellow artist and fans, and here we are in week 2 of the pre-sale of the book, which is already a go!

The pre-sale copies will be signed and will include a small surprise with them as thanks to those amazing people who are allowing the book to exist. It will be a 168 page hard cover book printed on beautiful quality paper and containing 160 images from this theme.

Thank you Snap Collective Publishing for this adventure and thank you all for supporting my work.

Copies can be ordered Here!

Categories
Fine art inspiration new zealand Photography Travel

Morning Coffee Talk~ 46/365

Lea in a bubble in New Zealand~

Good Morning,

I have learned throughout my life to create bubbles to exist in when needed. These bubbles are unseen but they are as real as anything else that you may conceive as tangible.

In your bubble you can permit only thoughts that want to have, feelings that you consider suitable at that moment and frequencies that are enhancing to your process. The bubble is not automatically generated but takes years of work and determination. It also acts as a shield that keeps unwanted intrusions into your internal process, and when this works, it’s phenomenal.

Today is one of those days that I need my bubble, so I will be busily generating it.

I wish you all a peaceful weekend, full of color, beauty, health and tons and inspiration. I have been at my animation classes since 4:30 am and learning has never felt better.

Categories
Photography

Being Alone Together- 03

It’s a new world, where up is down and down is a downer.

Categories
LEBANON Photography street

Being Alone Together~ 2

The Future is not written till we write it~ Byblos, Lebanon

This image illustrates to me the basic reality that we find ourselves living in: that life is a journey and our tomorrows are dependent on every action we take and every step we make. To author one’s destiny is a huge responsibility that most of us abdicate from. ‘Choice’ remains our greatest gift whether we see it or not.

Categories
art Photography

Being Alone Together~

The Future Here Now ~ created in photoshop, illustrator and shot with Canon 5D, mark 4

It has been almost one year since we found ourselves globally in a new reality that no one could imagine. We are all affected by the pandemic, the change, the lockdowns, and the varying levels of isolation.

We are all dealing with it in our own unique way and change is happening at a very core level from the child to the elderly and from the introvert to the extrovert.

Since this all began onsetting, I have found myself needing to take pauses to meet the new me as I evolve, and that is mirrored in my explorations into art, photography and more recently Motion Graphics.

This series is ‘Being Alone Together’ explores how the isolation is causing a deeper connection to other humans, to myself, to the planet, to the universe and to human purpose and my part in it.

Categories
Germany Photography

Moon over Quarantine~

Great weather has been our blessing here in the North-Western part of Germany since the lockdown over Covid19 began a few weeks ago. Mild weather, Spring bursting with color, birds chirping loudly and clear skies that go on for miles. That all somehow seems to soften the blow of the sad news of death and illness coming from all parts of our beautiful globe.

Last night was the second night of the super pink moon and I mustered the stamina to get out to the fields at moonrise to catch a glimpse, feel and an image of this beautiful phenomenon. I waited in the deserted dark field outside of our neighborhood for over two hours waiting and wondering if the moon has forsaken us. It was a clear sky shimmering with stars, but no moon to be seen. I called my friend Donna in New York to make sure she really saw it last night and that was a special moment connecting across the globe and chatting about our spinning sphere and the other spheres around it.

To make a long story concise, there was one single cloud and the moon was playing hide and seek behind it giggling and keeping me in quarantine in the dark field. I did some fun light painting as I waited and then chased the moon for a glorious half-hour as it emerged mimicking an orange sun. What a great reminder of how small we are and how beautiful our world is and how much there is still to explore.

Here are some images, some of just the moon in its showing off phase, and others are fun manipulations that I was tempted to create.

Wishing you all health and well being…

Categories
Fine art Photography

A Historic Future Unfolds

The age of social distancing
You are never alone
Bridge of hope
Stairway to heaven
And there it was

As 2020 unfolds, it leaves us all stunned as we try to grasp the magnitude of what really is at play in these changing times. Clearly things have no chance of remaining the same in a new intensifying state of affairs that forces even the most arrogant of us humans to stop, reassess and reconsider their role in the fate of humanity on earth. It is later than we think…

Stay safe my friends as we calmly and hopefully with grace and strength we weather the storms of tomorrow.

Above photos are recent compositions inspired by the current times.

Categories
contemplations Fine art Germany inspiration Photography

Embracing the future~

Who can be sure that the future is a continuation of and a consequence of the now? Could it be that the future is arriving independently of all what has been and that is?

Isn’t every dawn a new fresh beginning and a new permission for a brand new future?

Do we decide our future or is it predestined?

Is the answer hidden in the future and any answer that we arrive at today is already condemned to be in the past?

And what about light? What lives in the ever changing light?

Today I took this iphone photo of a tree outside my parents in law’s home where we are gathered for Christmas and I showed it to my sister in law. The light had a haunting quality in that moment that made me stand still in utter awe.

She ran out to the window and said to me “you must have magicked your image, it does not look like that!”

The truth is it did look like that and so much more but light doesn’t wait. It moves and evolves and radiates differently with every passing moment. Light is alive that way.

Musing last from an enchanted Christmas Day in the German countryside.

Merry Christmas my friends

Categories
contemplations Photography

The future is calling~

Never before have I felt so unsure about what the future holds as I do today. Every morning, a new story in the news stranger than the next, wold leadership try to force the strangest and lowest of standards as the new norm and the first signs of tremors as the future threatens to eradicate the past. Anyone not feeling this must be sleep walking through life and bouncing from distraction to escape. How did we get here and what will our children’s world look like?