When I consider making a new portrait, my thoughts usually begin with the environment the subject is within. When the environment has fundamental historical significance, the experience becomes really special… and when it is part of the ancient network of ancestral Pueblo peoples [Anasazi] who incorporated carved dwellings in volcanic cliffs as part of their…
As some of you may have surmised, watery environments are some of my favorite “land”scapes. And part of my endeavor as a photographer is probing the definition of landscape and the nature of place as an ongoing foundation of my work. It’s what most good photographers like doing: recasting the character of places with a…
![Assignment: Asbury Park, NJ [updated]](https://blog.michaelmatsil.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/LS072511_0780.jpg)
A visit last year to the famed Asbury Park, NJ… the “jewel” of the Jersey Shore… Updates to an earlier post. An honest expose of what I saw and who I met….
This is the third installment on this blog of what is in danger of becoming a series, or dare I say a “project”. Living in proximity to awesome amounts of nature can do that to you. Parts 1 & 2 examined scale and spatial sensation. In part 3, I explore density in terms of the patterns,…
There are many places in this world that claim the title of “big sky country”, but to me the biggest of the big skies is out on the open sea. This is where we can observe the ever changing atmosphere with no visual interruption and no filters. And to boot, it neatly meets the ocean…
One of the joys of living in my new home in Santa Fe, NM is being able to walk out of my house and walk right into the Santa Fe National Forest and the Sangre de Cristo mountains. I grew up hiking and climbing in the furry forests of the Adirondack Mountains in upstate New…
Much of my history as a landscape photographer has been about the landscape and its relationship with some physical evidence of human activity and settlement. All in the pursuit of ‘defining’ the idea of landscape in a specific time and point of view. Recently, on a trip to northern California, I found myself taking a…
Who am I? A good question to ask yourself every now and again, and especially germane at the beginning of a new year and the launching of a new blog that I’m really excited about. This will be an opportunity for me to share new work, beginnings, interesting visual discoveries, thoughts, words, travels and anything…