• About This website

The above photograph at the top of this page was made in Tuscany April 2008. I was visiting a friend’s vineyard. Carlo is experimenting with the development of his Brunello gapes by playing classical music throughout the the vineyard. I awoke each morning and drifted off to sleep each evening as the strains of Vivaldi or a piano concertos by Chopin wafted through the open window. I’m not one to say if the wine was better for the serenade, but I certainly was. I love Tuscany. I ran the first photo workshops there in early 90s, first with Carlo Roberti, who now runs is own the Tuscan Workshops. I also ran photo workshops in Tuscany with Diana Grandi, who was a partner in this vineyard of Carlo’s.

Journal Writing

My Journal, a pen and a glass of wine . . . . at my favorite restaurant in Provence, France –La Homard, in the village of Fontvieille, just outside the city of Arles.

Craig Stevens and I ran workshops in the village of Fontvieille for 15 summers in the 80s and 90s. I was back after a 15 year absence to attend the 2007 Rencontres de Photographe, the annual photo festival this town has thrown each summer for then past 36 years. The same waiter and his wife were there as before, with the same smile and the same grace in attending to their guests.

This Blog

I have been writing in a journal for more than 25 years. I have a shelf full of over 40 of these 8 x 12-inch, black-bound artists sket

ch books that chronicle my life over the  past quarter-century.  This website is an extension of that process of recording my observations, discoveries and thoughts. Now, I get to include my photographs here as well.  My photography, some of it directed to a purpose, much of it free-wheeling, following my visual curiosity, becomes another form of the ‘journal.’ When I look at what I photographed and how I photographed, I discover a whole other world I experienced  that did not show up in the journal writings. I have been encouraging my students and peers to keep both journals active. For instance. I make a photograph out the window of ever hotel room I stay in, whether the scene is inspiring or not — it’s a record and may bring back a memory that needs revisiting as much as some of what I write.

A morning scene on the streets of New York City - from my New Yorker Hotel room, while attending the 2006 PhotoPlus Trade Show.

This view was from a farmhouse window in Tuscany, 1999. The bells on the sheep in this flock woke be just as the sun rose on my first morning in Tuscany. I was there to launch the first of many workshops we would conduct in this magical landscape over the next six years.

The Website as Journal

I will still write in the journal, for the process of hand-pen-page (a fountain pen, please) is still a magical one for me, it is where the ideas take form. I use this laptop as a tool to craft those initial thoughts into something I can share . . . . for the journals will remain personal, for me only, until I die, and they others can read them. Edward Weston’s Day Books are an excellent example of an Artist’s journal-writing

    I am also using this website as a repository for the essays, magazine articles and class hand-outs I’ve written over the past 30 years-plus. Some of this material is headed for the book I have been promising for 20 years. Now that I have down-sized my life, have a family and turned The Maine Photographic Workshops and Rockport College over to others to run, I hope to have the time to complete this and the three other books I’ve been working on.

Speaking of “hope”  my first real web-journal entry is about hope . . . see my article elsewhere on Hope .

Now, the Lyman family is off on a world wide adventure, living and sailing board their 57 foot Bowman ketch, Searcher. Read about their adventure here. KidsOnBoats.net

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