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This project was born in a moment none of us saw coming. In 2020, the world went still. Borders closed, plans vanished, and the rhythm of daily life dissolved into uncertainty. Like so many others, I felt suspended. The work halted. The ideas evaporated. Even my camera—normally an extension of my body—sat untouched, collecting dust and silence. For a time, it felt as if photography itself had stopped breathing. Eventually, out of boredom, and a a desperate need to leave the house, I started walking a local beach every evening. Out of habit, or maybe hope, my camera came with me. A few sunset photographs later I wondered what it would be like to just photograph one beach for an extended period of time. A single beach. A single camera. The same lens. 100 yards of sand and surf would come to define COVID for me. As my nightly routine developed I began to notice tiny details. After nearly 40 years of making photographs I was finally beginning to really see I fell in love with the way the light and tide made the same rocks look different every night. The way beach rocks became tiny mountains … reminiscent of the Kaste mountains in southern China. And how sea grasses became cloud forests. As covid ended my photographic journey restarted I began to see patterns everywhere … like when the hills of California’s Sierra Nevada become impressionist paintings in the fall. This talk is about my journey into seeing deeply. My search to find the magnificent in the every day. It turns out I wasn’t the first to take this journey. Georgia O’Keeffe once said something I think about often A flower is relatively small. Everyone has many associations with a flower—the idea of flowers. . . . Still—in a way—nobody sees a flower—really—it is so small—we haven’t time— and to see takes time, like to have a friend takes time. . . . So I said to myself—I’ll paint what I see—what the flower is to me but I’ll paint it big and they will be surprised into taking time to look at it—I will make even busy New Yorkers take time to see what I see of flowers. So let’s start with a flower … Up close the veins and colors of a simple Hibiscus flower transform … … and echo the throne of a Giant Pacific Octopus deep in the wild waters of British Columbia. It turns out these echoes are not rare The iconic shape of half dome … Reemerges in a two inch slice of crazy lace agate Viewed under a microscope caffeine that daily necessity of the modern world … Takes the form of a Zebra’s forehead And the patterned coat of a giraffe … … takes the form of the harsh cracked mud of a dry riverbed … … which in turn traces the ancient lines of Utah Septarian rock. Formed deep in the earth billions of years ago. My journey became about scale and pattern. My life a global treasure hunt. My photographic tools grew to include helicopters … … microscopes, … and technical dive gear This quest for patterns took me to the top and bottom of our planet and I came face to face with the reality of our warming climate As the surface ice melts on this Antarctic iceberg it reveals ancient ice. The deep blue is caused by centuries of weight pressing all of the air out. Deep in a cave inside a glacier in the high arctic glacierI found a sculpture moulded by melting water. Both of these images contrast the tragedy of climate change with the profound beauty of the thing being destroyed. I choose to see natures art as it’s willingness to fight on. Screaming that even in the face of destruction nature’s beauty remains. The water that carved beauty inside an arctic glacier continues its artistic journey by sustaining life in the north Atlantic ocean. Every teaspoon of sea water contains thousands of diatoms single celled organisms with glass skeletons that look like jewels under a microscope. That same water is responsible for beauty all over the world. The microorganisms that live in the alkaline Lake Magadi in southern Kenya change colors during the day based on water temperature, wind, and evaporation. From red … to green … to yellow … to blue When volcanos erupt the exposed minerals mix with water to power nature’s grand paintbrush. Crafting frozen ice caves carved from ash laden ice …. … and dragons carved in multi colored sand. Long after the volcanos cool, their imprint remains on mountain sides … … and in gentle brush strokes of mineral deposits. I hope that by now your view of our planet is starting to shift. That you can stop for a moment and wonder … … at how the spiral of an 400 million year old ammonite fossil is so perfect … … that it is still used by sea snails today At how ice blocks in a remote ice cave dazzle like jewels in the last light of the day, even if noone is there to watch And how the northern lights dance and complement an ice halo formed around the moon in the arctic circle. Even the animal world is not immune from wonder … … the effortless grace of an 800 pound stellar’s sea lion as it glides past my camera … dolphins swimming in a perfect formation that is both efficient and beautiful The design of a humpback whale’s mouth that holds 5000 gallons of water … … and the show stopping beauty of a pair of crowned cranes. Now … let me take you somewhere truly special. A place so special that I can never visit it again. Welcome to the entrance of an ice cave. Sadly the melting glacial wall now recedes at 50 meters a year reducing the caves to nothingness As much as I want to, I can never visit this cave again. As you follow the tunnels of the ice cave you find hidden rivers, the master ice carvers of nature … … capable of carving otherworldly chandeliers … … or freezing so quickly that they trap air bubbles in the floor … … until finally stopping in a frozen waterfall As the sun starts to set the walls on the ice cave become translucent and glow And now for something totally different, this isn’t an ice cave at all. It’s the inside of a small slice of agate. There’s a whole universe of patterns hiding in and around rocks. Like the Hoodoos of the American west. Carved by nature and surrounded by the majesty of stars. Stars which also create a sparkling ceiling in a slot canyon … … the same slot canyons that glow with the fire of the sun’s mid morning rays Shaped by wind the great dunes of sand are shaped to knife edges … … and change form as the light shifts … … until eventually they glow in the final rays of light reflected off the earth’s atmosphere That same last sun lights a tunnel on a California beach for only a few weeks a year … … at the same time as the monarch butterflies arrive after their thousand mile migration … which passes over eroded cliffs that look like buddhist temples … … and the famed colors and shapes of Weston beach As we end our time together, I’d like you to place yourself in the Eastern Sierra Nevada. The air is cold and sharp with altitude. Above you, the Milky Way stretches across the night sky, a river of light traveling to us from 25,000 lightyears away. Let yourself feel that sense of awe—the kind only nature can summon. The more we allow wonder in, the less selffocused we become. And the more we understand that we belong to the world around us, not apart from it. Wonder may just be the tonic our lives—and our planet—need. And the beauty is wonder is always within reach. Just stop. Breathe. Look up. Look around. And remember how extraordinary this Earth truly is.