On the Job: A Painter

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Tim Porter

Greg Martin, Marin County painter and Marin Magazine cover contest winner

I had the opportunity this year to again photograph the winner of Marin Magazine’s annual cover contest. The winner, chosen from among more than 400 entries, was painter Greg Martin.

I photographed Greg in his studio, a basement space in his San Anselmo home. The studio is small, not more than than 10 x 20, and Greg is a big guy, what some would call a strapping lad. I squeezed a small strobe and umbrella against one wall, and let the light ricochet around the studio’s white walls and ceiling, producing a nice, soft look.

Greg’s artwork, which walks the line between whimsical and ethereal — a fun place to be — provided the backdrop. Later, I noticed he wore the same deep red Pelton’s Triumph T-shirt that he has in his bio photo for his website.

Greg was the main attraction at the magazine’s Open Studios’ party celebrating the finalists for the cover. Here are some snapshots of him and some of the others. He has a show up at Gallery Bergelli in Larkspur (the opening is tonight.)

I enjoy photographing artists, especially painters because their studios and their painting supplies fascinate me (although Greg’s was a bit too clean for my taste). Here’s my post from a year ago about photographing the 2011 cover contest winner and a collection of other artist portraits.

Visit your local Marin artist this weekend (May 12-13) during Marin Open Studios. I’m showing my newest work at The Image Flow, 401 Miller Ave., in Mill Valley, from 11-6.

Periodismo Peligroso

Posted on May 4, 2012 by Tim Porter

Part of protest in Mexico City against the killing of three photojournalists.

Mexico is becoming an increasingly dangerous place to be a journalist. Three photojournalists were found dead and dismembered Tuesday in the Gulf state of Veracruz, bringing to 44 the number of journalists killed in Mexico in the last six years, according to Article 19, a press freedom group.

While that number pales next to the more than 50,000 Mexicans killed in the same period during the government’s war against the narco cartels (and cross-cartel fighting), it elevates Mexico to No. 8 on the Committee to Protect Journalists’ 2012 Impunity Index, “which spotlights countries where journalists are slain and their killers go free.” Sadly, the year is still young.

Here’s what CPJ says about Veracruz:

… a battleground for the Zetas and Sinaloa cartels, is one of Mexico’s most dangerous states for the press, according to CPJ research. Four journalists were murdered there in 2011, and on Saturday, the body of journalist Regina Martínez Pérez was found strangled in her home in Xalapa.”

I have a long history with Mexico, including being the owner of a house I built there, but with many Mexicans clamoring for an end to the violence, the repressive PRI party on the verge of regaining the control of the presidency that it held for more than 70 years; the cartels becoming increasingly entrenched in local and national politics, and a the country’s always ethically tenuous journalistic institutions fighting — quite literally — for their lives, I fear the worst for the country in the near term.

You think I’m being overly dramatic? Read this story about the threats against Jorge Medellín, a reporter for the national newspaper Milenio. An excerpt:

Mexican journalists take the smallest hint of a threat seriously because they know that killing a reporter is so easy to get away with. The word for this is impunity–killing with no consequences. None for the killer, at least. But the consequences for the Mexican people are that journalists are afraid to report the news.

Learn more: New York Times story on the latest killings; Committee to Protect Journalists ; Article 19 ; Coverage in El Universal, a centrist paper from Mexico City

On the Job: Copita Margarita

Posted on May 1, 2012 by Tim Porter

Two of the things I love to photograph are people (of course) and food. Occasionally, I get the chance to do both at once.

That happened recently when Marin Magazine asked me to photograph restaurateur Larry Mindel and former Chez Panisse cook and and writer Joanne Weir, who have teamed up as owners of the new Sausalito Mexican restaurant, Copita.

The idea for Copita, which bills itself as a tequileria, came out of Weir’s book, Tequila: A Guide to Types, Flights, Cocktails, and Bites, so I also wanted a picture of what Weir calls her “perfect” margarita.

I photographed Mindel, Weir and the “perfect” margarita on a weekday afternoon at Poggio, Mindel’s Italian restaurant on Bridgeway in Sausalito. For the picture of them, I used a quiet back corner of the restaurant, a big front window for light and and the helping hands of a publicist to hold a reflector. For the margarita photograph, I used a small Nikon Speedlight and left plenty of space for the art director to lay in some type. The lime wedge was Weir’s idea and it made the shot.

(For more of my food and restaurant photography, go here. And, don’t forget to buy my book: Organic Marin: Recipes from land to table.)

Opening Night for Open Studios

Posted on April 29, 2012 by Tim Porter

Marin Open Studios kicked off its season last night with a packed party in the Town Center in Corte Madera. Painting, photography and sculpture from more than 200 artists — and, of course, plenty of wine, food and dessert — drew several hundred folks to the event on a warm, perfect Marin evening.

The exhibition and party was put together by a group of local artists — co-led by ICB Building painter Kay Carlson (above) — who came together after a brouhaha involving Open Studios’ longtime sponsor, the Marin Arts Council, threatened to cause cancellation of the 19-year-old event. (Here’s the background story.)

The exhibition will be up through May 13. Go visit.

I’m showing photographs at Open Studios this year for the first time, with much thanks to Kay, who encouraged me to participate. Come see my new work May 12-13 (11-6) at The Image Flow in Mill Valley.

Open Studios

Posted on April 27, 2012 by Tim Porter

I’m participating in Marin Open Studios this year, and thanks to the good folks at The Image Flow in Mill Valley (401 Miller Ave.) I’ll be hanging out in its gallery space the weekend of May 12-13 from 11-6 showing new work, talking photography and having a good time.

Come by.

What you’ll see are a series of new images. For a preview, here they are on my portfolio, under the Mas Que Uno section.

Find the event on Facebook here.

And, don’t miss Open Studios opening night gala at the Town Center in Corte Madera, this Saturday (4/28), 5-8 p.m. — wine, food and all the art your eyes can feast on.

Wet (at last)

Posted on March 25, 2012 by Tim Porter

Marin Cascade on Dawn Falls Trail

Winter didn’t come to Marin until Spring had already arrived. Barely a week into the new season, the rain is playing catchup, greening the pastures of the west county, soaking the marshland along the Bay, and dowsing the slopes of Mt. Tam with more than enough fresh water to fill the gullies with gushing streams, babbling brooks and carousing cascades of white water.

it’s good weather for a walk, a good time to carry a tripod into the hills, and just the right moment to straddle a stream — carefully now — and point that big, black camera down at the froth below.

This little rivulet is one of hundreds available for instant view right now on Mt. Tam. You can find this one, if you choose, on the Dawn Falls Trail above Ross. Enjoy.

On the Job: Marin’s Tweeps

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Tim Porter

Put 10 or 12 people in a dark coffee shop, add in a freelance writer, a magazine editor, a roomful of customers and a couple of homeless people in the back, and you’ve got a scene.

I show up with a big light, a step ladder and a lot of attitude, hoping I can herd all these cats in front of the camera long enough to make something to illustrate a story about Marin’s twitterati. Yep, this is a tweet-up and these are the tweeps of Marin.

I’d rather photograph 10 kids than 10 adults. The kids will pay attention to me, out of fear or curiosity or the simple habit of listening to adults, but the grown-ups won’t stay focused for more than 10 seconds at time. They chit-chat, they get bored, they fuss. And when you throw in the cell-phone-in-your-hand factor, they check email, texts and tweets.

That all means that this kind of shot is lot of fun. As I shot away using almost ridiculous exposures — 1 or 2 seconds to burn in the ambient light while hitting them with the strobe — there was lots of joking, which I pretended wasn’t directed at me. Hey, they were laughing with me, right?

The group shot was done in five minutes, but the editor also wanted some casual, non-posed shots, so I gathered several of the tweeps together in a “non-pose,” moved the light in above them, put the 17mm on the camera and encouraged them to act it up as I shot. They did. And I did. The result is the vertical shot you see here, which ran full page in Marin Magazine as a section opener.

Thanks to Mimi Towle (@mimitowle) for organizing it and the tweeps: Sally Kuhlman (@Sally_K), Sarah Houghton (@TheLib), Suzanna Stinnett (@Brainmaker), Maria Benet (@Alembic), Toni Carreiro (@toniCarr) and Marilyn LoRusso (@fun_master).

And I’m @timporterphoto.

On the Job: The Threat of Rising Seas

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Tim Porter

High tide already floods the bike path through Bothin Marsh in Mill Valley.

I wrote and photographed a piece for the current issue of Marin Magazine about the projected effects of climate change, most specifically sea-level rise, on Marin County.

Marin, like much of the San Francisco Bay Area and other parts of California, faces a wetter future. If current temperature and sea level trends continue through the century, routine tides could be as much as 55 inches higher than they are today and even higher during storm surges.

Imagine the affect of four-and-a-half feet more water on coastal communities such as Mill Valley, where today’s highest tides already flood city streets, marshes and recreation areas. The bike rider above is crossing Bothin Marsh between Mill Valley and Sausalito, which is already inundated several times a month by winter tides.

If what scientists predict comes to pass — and some form of it will despite all of today’s “green” mitigation efforts — rising seas are going to change the way we live and extract severe financial and social costs.

Here is the opening section. The rest is below the jump (or here online).

Rising Seas: Marin prepares for a wetter, warmer future

On the winter days when the monthly tides are highest, you can stand on the narrow, asphalt ribbon of the bike path that traverses Bothin Marsh in Mill Valley and watch the water of Richardson Bay climb over the man-made banks and rise slowly, inexorably, until its cold wetness reaches your shins. You are no longer on dry land. You are in the middle of the bay.

Flash forward to the year 2100. The earth has had 88 more years to warm up, and the seas have been rising a little more every year. Your grandkids stand in that same place on the marsh and wait for high tide. When it comes, the water flows over their heads.

That’s climate change. That’s the threat Marin County faces — higher seas, bigger tides and stronger waves that could drown the marshlands of Mill Valley and Novato, flood neighborhoods built on reclaimed land in Tam Valley, Santa Venetia and Hamilton, and erode the coastal bluffs of Bolinas.

The mess that rising seas could make of Marin is but a small part of the larger challenge climate change presents to the planet. But this story is not about the global effort to regulate carbon emissions, not about the national yammering of politicians, preachers and scientific professionals about why the earth is warming (is it man, is it nature, is it a vengeful God delivering payback for our profligate ways?), and not about whether the earth is in fact getting warmer. The mercury is rising and the oceans along with it.

This story is about Marin County and how a lot of people here are trying to make sure that come the day when the waters of San Francisco Bay — which have already risen 8 inches in the last century — are lapping at the doorsteps of homes and businesses now hundreds of feet from shore, that the inhabitants of that warmer, wetter future do not ask of our generation: Why didn’t they do something?

Continue reading →

On the Job: College Catalog Cover

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Tim Porter

Lenore Alford for the College of Marin

Even after putting 30 years in at the media factory, I still like getting the cover. It must be an ego thing, because it certainly isn’t the money.

This is Lenore Alford, an organist, conductor and generally all-around smart woman. I photographed her for the College of Marin, where is she teaching a class on Nadia Boulanger and the American School of musical composition in Paris — heady stuff, indeed. The college needed a a tall vertical for its community education catalog cover and Alford was the perfect subject.

The picture was made in the Mill Valley living room of one of Alford’s friends. The piano, a baby grand, was crammed into the corner and up against a set of large, bright windows that flooded the room with morning sunlight.

I didn’t want to shoot into the windows, fearing the backlight, so at first I tried shooting away from them and toward the wall behind the piano, lighting Alford with a ProFoto D4 head into a small box. The background, though was too messy to put type into and I couldn’t blur it because I couldn’t get her far enough away from the wall.

So, I embraced the windows, deciding to blow them out and use their avalanche of light for the background. I changed Alford’s position, took down the ProFoto, and set up a Nikon SB800 on a boom, attached a small softbox, turned the power way down (about 1/16th) and inched the light to within two feet of her head. The sunlight provided fill and tossed in some rim light as a bonus.

There is nothing technically complicated about this picture or, dare I say, artistically unique, but it is something that’s part of my daily life in my third or fourth or fight career (who’s counting, anyhow?) and might be interesting to those of you who wonder what photographers who aren’t Annie Leibowitz or Chase Jarvis do all day.

The hardest part of the shot was deciding on the lighting, not once but twice, and making those changes while Alford, the art director and the homeowners looked on — and making everyone feel not only like I knew what I was doing but that were being included in something fun.

The whole thing, from walking in the door with the gear to schlepping it back down the drive to my car took less than an hour, a normal shoot here in the shallow end of the photography pool.

Steve Jobs: In His Own Words

Posted on March 4, 2012 by Tim Porter

Cover of Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs I just finished Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs and would recommend it to anyone who uses an Apple product or who is interested in creativity, intuitive thinking or, as Isaacson put it, the “intersection 0f artistry and science.”

The last couple of pages of the book Isaacson devotes to a verbatim reflection from Jobs on what he hopes his legacy might be. Here are a few selections from that extended quote. Maybe there will spur you to read the whole book.

* On market research: “Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, “A faster horse.”‘” People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.

* On art and science: “Edwin Land of Polaroid talked about the intersection of the humanities and science. I like that intersection. There’s something magical about that place.”

* On startups: “I hate it when people call themselves ‘entrepreneurs’ when what they’re really trying to do is launch a startup and then sell or go public, so they can cash in and move on. They’re unwilling to do the work it takes to build a real company.”

* On honesty: “I don’t think I run roughshod over people, but if something sucks, I will tell people to their face. It’s my job to be honest. … Maybe there’s a better way, a gentlemen’s club where we all wear ties and speak in this Brahmin language and velvet code-words, but I don’t know that way, because I am middle class from California.

* On personal growth: “You always have to keep pushing to innovate. Dylan could have sung protest songs forever and probably made a lot of money, but he didn’t. … The Beatles were the same way: They kept evolving, moving, refining their art. That’s what I’ve always tried to do — keep moving. Otherwise, as Dylan says, if you’re not busy being born, you’re busy dying.”

Casualties of War (coverage)

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Tim Porter

Marie Colvin, Remi Ochlik (credits: Sunday Times; Julien De Rosa)

The deaths t oday in the Syrian city of Homs of reporter Marie Colvin, an American working for the The Sunday Times of London, and freelance French photographer, Rémi Ochlik, remind us — yet once again — that a free press in the face of tyranny often carries a terrible human price.

The Committee to Project Journalists tallied 476 journalists killed worldwide in 2011, half of whom were murdered in places like Mexico, where carrying a notebook or a camera is among the country’s most perilous professions, and the other half were killed on assignment in a place where bullets and bombs are part of daily life, perhaps caught in a crossfire, as Colvin and Ochlik were when Syrian forces shelled the city.

Let’s honor their work by sharing it, experiencing its emotion and committing ourselves, in whatever small way we can (here’s one way) to the enhancement and protection of a free press and the people who practice it.

Here is Colvin’s last video report and transcript for CNN, a moving story about the death of child from Syrian bombs. Note the passion, anger and frustration in her voice.

Here is Rémi Ochlik’s site. Above is the splash page of his portfolio. Note the dangerous geography he has been working in.

Deborah

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Tim Porter

Deborah Rabin, my mother-in-law and a great friend, died a couple of weeks ago from cancer.

I made this picture of her in July 2006 in my living room in Mill Valley. I had just bought some new strobes — my first “big” ones — and she came over with an armful of hats to help me test them.

I knew next to nothing about lighting, so I pointed a softbox at her face and shot away. Her extraordinary beauty did the rest. I love the shape of her face and the directness of her look in this shot. Pure Deborah.

Today, I would change the lighting — and certainly the crop — but nothing about her. Deborah lived life with unrelenting, and enviable, self-fulfillment and expected all of us who knew her to do no less.

I miss her.

There’s a full obituary of Deborah here, at deborahrabin.wordpress.com.

On the Job: David Harris, Honestly

Posted on December 23, 2011 by Tim Porter

I made this photo of David Harris, the writer, onetime anti-war activist and ex-husband of singer Joan Baez, a couple of years ago, but it never saw the light of day. I was on assignment for Marin Magazine, which used a different frame (see the story and photo here.)

I came across this shot again while compressing the archives (a weekly task) and it made me think of meeting Harris. He was an iconic and heroic figure in my youth — a former Stanford student body president who made a stand against the Vietnam War by refusing the draft and doing prison time for it, and the guy who married the most luscious chanteuse of the day in an era when politically-minded folk singers were considered hot.

David Harrs outside of his Mill Valley home Four decades later when I met Harris in his Mill Valley home I was a bit intimidated and hoped I could make a picture worthy of my opinion of him, which when I left 45 minutes later I wasn’t sure I had (but I was even more self-critical in those days than I am now — something those who know me well might find hard to believe).

A couple of months later, the magazine chose one image and I worked up another (the one at left) for my book. I filed away the rest.

As I culled the shoot further today for archiving, I began to really like this frame. Harris seems patient, aware of my presence, but also awaiting my departure. It’s a moment in between. There’s no subterfuge, no pretense of me not being there. It seems to be an honest photo and, increasingly, that’s all I want to make.

***

Here’s Harris in his own words about what happened to him in the 1960s:

“If you were a young man in the United States in 1966, you had the option of being John Wayne in “The Sands of Iwo Jima” or John Wayne in “The Sands of Iwo Jima” or John Wayne in “The Sands of Iwo Jima.”

Read more if Harris’ recollection here or read a People magazine profile of him about his post-Baez marriage to late New York Times reporter Lacey Fosburgh.

Erika, the Red

Posted on November 16, 2011 by Tim Porter

Erika The Red

Sometimes I get so busy trying to make a living — which generally means satisfying ~~demanding control freaks~~ clients — that I forget to do things for myself.

I am not complaining. I have, by any standard, a wonderful life, with, as David Bryne reminds me, a beautiful house and a beautiful wife.

But — and there’s always one of those, right? — if I’m not doing enough of my own work then I might as well return to the 9-t0-5 (or, as was the case in my old world of newspapers, the 7-to-7).

In that spirit, here’s a recent image that has no commercial value, no intended purpose and no reason to exist beyond my lifelong effort to answer Byrne’s questions:

You may ask youself

What is that beautiful house?

You may ask yourself

Where does that highway go?

You may ask yourself

Am I right? … Am I wrong?

And you may say to yourself

My God … what have I done?

Want to see more redheads? Look here.

On the Job: Rock ‘n’ Shoot

Posted on November 8, 2011 by Tim Porter

Krickie
Go ahead, pay me to spend my time in bars photographing musicians. Go ahead, turn up the music, open up the tap, fill up the dance floor — and cut me a check. Go ahead, just send me to heaven.

For me, there’s nothing better than being in front a band, camera in hand and lost in the experience of the moment, while trying to also capture it frame by frame.

Maybe it takes me back to my wasted youth in rock ‘n’ roll palaces, cowboy saloons and down-another-flight clubs. Maybe it reminds me that being adult doesn’t have to mean being safe. Maybe we all just need to be overwhelmed by the moment more. Whatever it is, I love it — so go ahead and pay me.

These images accompanied a story in Marin Magazine by writer Dan Jewett — no slouch of a musician himself (become a Hollyhocks fan!) — about open mike nights here in Marin.

The gallery below is from 19 Broadway in Fairfax, taken at show put together by keyboardist Jonathan Korty, and from Finnegan’s in Novato, where K.C. Turner sponsors a weekly open mike. The photos show, in order of appearance, are: Brandon Zahursky, dance floor at 19 Broadway, Danny Uzi, the bathroom at 19 Broadway, Derek Hoki, and 19 Broadway. Above, is Krickie, who organize’s open mikes at Peri’s, also in Fairfax.

On the Job: Canceled

Posted on November 5, 2011 by Tim Porter

Golden Gate Sunset, from Belvedere

Nice view, huh? Would you pay more than $40 million for it?

This is sunset just the other night from the terrace of an unfinished 15,000-square-foot home in Belvedere — with “unfinished” being the key term here.

I was there to capture the view — which extends from Mt. Tam to the Bay Bridge and encompasses what you see here, the Golden Gate, the Marin Headlands and Sausalito — from this house for a magazine story about a fundraising event that was going to be held there in a couple of weeks.

Unfortunately, the house won’t be ready in time, the event was postponed and you’re now reading the only page that will probably ever contain this picture. (Come back, though. I got so many good ones that night that there will be more to come.)

By the way, this property — at 425 Belvedere Ave. — has a disputed past and is one of two gargantuan home projects that, until recently, had sat partially finished for two decades. Here’s the story.

When this house is complete, the reported asking price will be $45 million.

(This picture could hang on your wall. Buy it here.)

On the Job: Cancer

Posted on October 27, 2011 by Tim Porter

CT scan at Marin Cancer Institute

You’ve got cancer. You’ve got several bags of toxic chemicals connected to your body, hoping the chemo kills the tumors. Or, you’re lying beneath a huge X-ray machine, whose beams are burning the cancer out of you. In the middle of this a photographer approaches and asks if he can take your picture.

Why not? you think, so you say yes. He does, and a few weeks later there you are in a local magazine illustrating a story about the hospital where you’re being treated.

This is much of what I do — enter other people’s lives just long enough to tell a story (or, more accurately, a small moment of a story). I’m always surprised and forever in debt to those who grant me entrance, even when their lives might not be going particularly well in one way or another.

The inside-out view of CT scan machine above and the strip of photos below were part of a story in Marin Magazine about the Marin Cancer Institute and its director, Dr. Francine Halberg, who is shown below talking with colleagues.

On the Job: The Faces of Giving

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Tim Porter

Tina and Bill Noble

One of the things I miss about journalism is the serendipity of encountering people who, through their strength of character in the face of adversity, remind me of my own good fortune. It’s called perspective, and you can never have too much of it.

For the current issue of Marin Magazine I had the opportunity to photograph a number of people — and write about a couple of them — who have benefited from the kindness of others in their journeys to overcome life’s adversities.

Tika Hick and Indie

The most moving of these moments occurred when I met the people you see here — Tina and Bill Noble, above, and Tina Hick and her son, Indie, left. All of them are dealing with loss, one in a very intimate way and the other in tragically public manner.

Tina Noble is only 60 and in the latter stages of Alzheimer’s, which she was diagnosed with five years ago. Bill, her husband of nearly four decades, cares for her in their San Anselmo home. Hers is a life of diminishing capacity; his is one of increasing devotion. It is a poignant equation. After I photographed them on their living room couch, I sat in my car and cried. How many of us are capable of the unqualified love Bill demonstrates daily toward Tina? Am I? Are you?

Tika Hick’s story is more public. A virulent cancer had attacked her. In July, a week before she was to undergo a double mastectomy, she traveled to Maui with her partner, David Potts, and their infant son, Indigo. In a horrific accident, Potts was sucked into a blowhole, dragged out to sea and never seen again. Now, Hick’s life is one of tenuous recovery, one so emotionally fragile that even the presence of a photographer in her small garden can fuel the sadness and bring more tears.

Sad stories, indeed, but also hopeful ones because within them are other stories of kindness, of organizations like Senior Access that benefit couples like the Nobles and of personal giving that supports someone like Tika Hick.

In addition to the Nobles and Hick I photographed four other people. You can see their photos below. Here are summaries of their stories and the organizations that helped them:

* Stephen Levine, who turned to Hospice by The Bay in Marin County when his wife of 24 years, Pam, was dying.

* Mayra Moncado, who learned from the Women’s Initiative how to make her Fairfax salon business a success.

* Pashia Lord, a Marin City mom who found a positive direction through the Performing Stars of Marin arts group.

* Sheldon Playdle, a San Luis Obispo college student (and possible future bio-tech executive) whose path to higher education was paved in part by 10,000 Degrees.

Here’s the full package in Marin Magazine. My test on Tina and Bill Noble follows:

“Why did I get Alzheimer’s? Why me? And how did I get it? I’m so young—just fifty-five.”

Tina Noble wrote those words five years ago, just after being diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Today, the former college professor with a Ph.D. in anthropology lives under the 24-hour care of her husband of nearly 40 years, Bill, a retired naturalist.

When Tina does leave the couple’s San Anselmo home, it’s usually to spend the day at The Club, a Senior Access program for people with memory impairment.

“It’s a beautiful place way up on top of the hills in Terra Linda. Sunny. Open,” says Bill. “There is a school next door so there’s the wonderful chatter of young kids all the time. There are lots of interns and aides and resource people. They do everything from elder yoga to having performers of various kinds come in. It’s delightful.”

More than 5 million Americans have Alzheimer’s and nearly 15 million others perform roles like Bill Noble’s, caring for family or friends. Senior Access recently opened another day care center in Belvedere to meet the rising demand in Marin.

Bill and Tina’s daughter, Wren, a graduate student in photography, has been documenting her mother’s illness. You can see her pictures here.

Stewart Brand: Still Hungry, Still Foolish.

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Tim Porter

Stewart Brand at the Bioneers conference, 2007

“Stay hungry. Stay foolish.”

That farewell maxim from the final issue of the Whole Earth Catalog encapsulated the message Steve Jobs delivered in his now famous 2005 Stanford University commencement address. With Jobs’ death, the words have gone viral.

The sudden resonance of that 40-year-old quote lies in part to its momentary revival of social awareness in Boomers who have slipped into the mental dormancy of their seventh decade. More than that, though, it was welcomed into the hearts of an iGeneration who has come of age in an hour when the promise of a bright digital future is obscured by the persistent fog of a dismal global economy, a stagnant and hostile political state, and a well-founded anxiety that their time is passing before they ever had the opportunity to take advantage of it.

They voted for Barack Obama because he offered hope and change. They eulogize Steve Jobs because he gave it to them.

The intellect behind the Whole Earth Catalog belongs to its co-founder and editor, Stewart Brand. After Jobs died, I Googled my way through Brand’s life and rediscovered a man whose impact on the ideas and sensibilities shaped — and continue to shape — a broad swath of the world we live in. His footprints are embedded on constructs as diverse as electronic social communities (The Well) to strategic corporate thinking (Global Business Network) and the current debate about the use of nuclear power as a long-term energy solution (here’s the book).

Given all that, Brand had a bit more to say than “stay hungry, stay foolish.” Here, then, are some other quotes from Brand. Maybe they’ll compel you to learn more about him (or to reacquaint you with what has slipped out of memory).

* “Information wants to be free.” Often cited by those who believe ownership of digital content is universal, it was part of larger statement in which Brand also said, ” … information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable.” Here’s the whole story.

* “You own your own words, unless they contain information. In which case they belong to no one.” The sign-on message of The Well.

* “A library doesn’t need windows. A library is a window.”

* “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

* “Civilization’s shortening attention span is mismatched with the pace of environmental problems.”

And, perhaps my favorite:

* “Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.”

On the Job: Johnny Heineken

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Tim Porter

Having the name Johnny Heineken is cool enough, but add in good looks, golden locks, an engineering degree and a world championship in kitesurfing then you’ve got more cool going for you than most 23-year-olds might deserve. Luckily, Johnny Heineken is as laid back as he looks and fun to photograph.

Here he is in the studio in San Rafael during a shoot for Marin Magazine. I’m sharing this wider shot so you can get see how much of what my wife Johnny Heineken sometimes calls “photo crap” — i.e., gear — is involved in making what becomes a simple white background image when printed. Here there are five lights, three of which you can see and two others behind the black foam boards pointed at the background.

I adjusted the lights several times during this shoot depending on where Johnny held his kitesurfing board (made by Mikes Lab in El Sobrante) in order to keep shadows off his face.

As I messed with technical stuff, Johnny chatted with writer Mimi Towle, who, among other things, learned three key facts about Heineken:

1. Johnny’s favorite drink is a Lagunitas at the Silver Peso in Larkspur. “I can skate there and walk home.”

2. His favorite pizza? Stefano’s chicken pesto.

3. And, yes, his last name is connected to that Dutch beer company.

Here’s the whole interview. And on the left is how the final shot appeared in the October issue of the magazine.

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