We had a wonderful summer! We went swimming and relaxed in Cape May, the Berkshire Mountains and also spent a week in Ocean City, NJ. Below is my favorite personal photo of the summer 2009. It was on September 2nd, 2009, in Cape May that will be measured as a monumental day in our family history. On that day, my daughter fell in love with the ocean! She has been visiting the beach since she was 5 months old when she took her first ocean swim in the Bahamas. But on Sept. 2nd, 7 years after that first swim, everything came together for her on appreciating the magnitude and beauty of the ocean!
Personal Note: When I attempt to envision “God” I see the ocean.
The above photo (and the underwater photos below) were taken with a $300. amateur digital camera. Interesting mages are about the photographers vision, not necessarily the equipment. In other words, you don’t need expensive, complicated equipment to take great photos!
Love that necklace!
You can see the water on the camera lens.
Playing in a lake in Great Barrington, Massachusettes.
Above is my attempt at underwater photography, which is really quite difficult. My best friend from college at The Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale, is the renowned underwater photographer Todd Essick. We each interned at The Miami Herald and graduated with the “Best Photography Portfolio” of our classes. Todd combined his love of underwater wildlife photography and nude women and is now famous for it! See the cover of his first book here. Some people are talented and some people are lucky, Todd is both! He just finished shooting the German version of America’s Next Top Model with Heidi Klum and I had to listen to every single last detail. Here is one of Todd Essick’s awesome nature images , and he personally dragged me to the see it on display, as big as a billboard at The Smithsonian in DC. I edited a wedding in the car on the way! Todd recently moved his home base from Miami to Kuala Lumpur , and we are hoping to visit him there in 2010. Malaysian food is my favorite, and there is only one real Malaysian restaurant in Philly! I’m hungry…Kuala Lumpur, here we come!
In the morning, while working on my laptop, I enjoyed coffee on the 4th floor deck of our beachfront hotel room in Cape May.
Below are photos shot circa 1990 in Ocean City for a Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine photo essay on the “wanna be” young boys learning to surf. Pulitzer Prize winning photojournalist Tom Gralish was my photo editor on this project and coaxed me along the entire summer. Tom was always willing to share his creative vision, helping me become a better photojournalist. Thanks, Tom! The best part of this essay was I got the Inquirer to foot the bill for several overnight trips down the shore! Thanks again, Tom! The below photos are also published in the book, Four Seasons at The Shore ,a coffee table book collection of photography that every NJ beach house must have! These images were shot on slide film, (sorry for the cyan cast) as The Inquirer newspaper was still publishing only black and white. The Inquirer’s Sunday Magazine would publish this 6 page color essay.
Above is my favorite photo of the enitre photo essay and it was printed as a two page spread in the Philadelphia Inquirer Sunday Magazine. Tom Gralish also did the graphic design of the essay.
