Personal Projects

Actor Richard Gere is best known for his roles in over 40 films, but few may be aware he is also an avid photographer and collector. Taking pictures on his many trips to India was always more of a personal project, until photography book and exhibition designer Elizabeth Avedon happened to notice a 3-foot stack of beautiful 8x10 photos in his loft. “A lot of these photographs I didn’t show anyone because it was such a private experience for me,” Gere recalls. “I had no interest in sharing them.” Fortunately, Avedon was able to convince him they needed to be seen, and these and other photos have been exhibited around the world and published in his book, Pilgrim.

Two years ago New York photographer Jim Lynch wanted to experiment with a 10-minute time slot on his weekly radio program at WUSB, Stony Brook, New York. He e-mailed David Gray, a California writer, a picture he had made and said, “Have at it—tell a story.” Jim alerted the audience to view the image at his website. David banged out a tale inspired by the image and read it on the air. We’ll let the creators of the project tell it from there.—Editor

He stands in about 3 feet of roiling surf, wetsuit jersey glistening from repeated dunkings. The sky above Oahu’s North Shore is deep blue. Undertow currents grasp his legs—eroding sand beneath his swim fins—as water rushes seaward to build the next huge wave. He holds his bulky waterproof camera housing tightly, faces west toward the setting sun and checks the long tether attached to his wrist. He turns his head to watch the wave rise ever higher—a towering blue-green monster that’s starting to curl, white spume blowing off its top. He braces himself as best he can against the forces raging around him, points the camera toward the golden Hawaiian sunset, and waits as tons of water begins to curl over him, forming a tube. At what he hopes is the right instant, he fires off several shots and prepares to be pounded and rag-dolled by the massive wave.

Twenty-year-old Josh Friedman spends a lot of time underwater “playing” with sharks. It’s his belief that sharks are badly in need of better public relations to improve their image and active advocacy for their conservation.

Gerald Hill has been involved in photography for over 37 years and often explored creative work while employed in the aerospace industry in Wichita, Kansas. In 2003 he began to exhibit in several galleries that sold his landscape images, many shot in western states. Hill recognized that a grounding in art is essential to making effective photographs, and he made time to take classes with artist Charles H. Sanderson, who encouraged him to consider photography as his means of self-expression, and to learn the basics of visualization so he could capture his subjects with greater impact. As Hill went deeper into his studies he saw results: his compositions became both more dynamic and more personal.

Orest Macina says he is “a self-taught photographer interested in painting with light to capture the beauty all around us in vivid colors.” He holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical Computational Chemistry, and has worked in the pharmaceutical field. He first became interested in photography in high school, though his interest lagged through college, graduate school, career, and marriage.