Weston, etc.
I have attended two workshops at the Weston house: the first, in 2005, was a nude shoot involving four female models and two male models, and the second, in 2006, involved large format photography during which I used an 8x10 camera with Kim Weston at Point Lobos. I grew up in the San Francisco area and in my late teens I visited Carmel once a year with a friend of my family. Back then, I loved going in the various galleries to view oil paintings and photographs. A painting that has been glued to my memory since I saw it in a gallery in Carmel in the 1960s was approximately 4 feet wide and 10 feet tall and contained a shipwreck on a rocky beach in Europe. It was so dazzling with its amazing lighting and composition! During both workshops, I lodged in a motel in downtown Carmel and went out at night to somewhat explore the galleries, but they did not enchant me to the extent they did when I was young. Furthermore, I spent an entire morning in Carmel with my Leica camera, looking for decisive moments on just about every street, and I found nothing of interest to capture. I did, however, discover an outstanding Italian restaurant and I ate there three nights in a row. That reminded me of home, where my mate and I cook recipes from around the world daily and make fresh bread from scratch every four weeks in our new Thermador professional stove whose oven can take four bread pans at once (versus our old, 30+ year-old stove that existed before it which held only two pans). Otherwise, I am in my darkroom developing film and making prints.