The year started, and almost ended, with big waves at Point Lobos on the Central California coast just below Ansel Adam’s home, the first place I visited in North America when I stayed with Ansel in 1977. Andrea Johnson captured me in action.
It’s turning out to be a year of living dangerously. The Middle East was the next destination, specifically Israel and Jordan and it was a far more benign experience than the media would have us believe. Apart from the continual maneuvers of fighter jets over the Negev it was difficult to imagine that both Syria and Iran were an easy rocket launch away. Jerusalem will always be one of my favorite cities to photograph. I last visited the city in 1996 for the book Jerusalem, In the Shadow of Heaven celebrating 3,000 years of history. I was using film back then but the latest generation of digital cameras open up a whole new world of possibilites and old Jerusalem has a lot of very dark but very photogenic corners.
February in Jordan can be very cold and combined with a rare rainfall, Petra was wonderfully devoid of tourists.
March was equally cold but this time it was expected. The Bugaboos in British Columbia provide some of the best powder skiing in the world and Canadian Mountain Holidays pioneered heli-skiing at their Bugaboo Lodge remotely situated in the heart of the Purcell range. I was here with my old friend Fred Noble, a world class skier who was diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s Disease last year and although he has lost the use of his legs it hasn’t stopped him hitting the slopes in a specially modifed sit ski. I was here with Andrea Johnson to shoot a documentary on his amazing inspirational story.
