I just finished reading *The Entrepreneurial State* by Mariana Mazzucato, one of the most innovative economists working today. In this book, she examines the often-overlooked role governments have played in driving many of the technological breakthroughs we now take for granted. We frequently hear the argument—especially from free-market fanatics—that government is the problem, not the…
Prolific science fiction novelist Kim Stanley Robinson opens his new Science Fiction novel The ministry for the Future in a small town in Uttar Pradesh in India with a vivid description of a deadly heatwave that kills twenty million people. One of the few survivors of the catastrophic event is Frank, a young American working…
Want to know who we are, how we came about, and how did we build this human civilization the way we did? Then look no further than this immensely readable book. Seventy thousand years of the history of Homo Sapiens condensed into four hundred pages of incredible lucid writing. One hundred thousand years ago there…
Note: This article of mine was published on the Luminous Landscape photography website in May 2015. Introduction I am a San Francisco Bay Area-based fine art landscape photographer. I have been photographing landscapes for the last twenty years. Since 2009, I have exhibited my fine art photographs in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including the…
We arrived at the house on the Oregon coast on the evening before Thanksgiving. After ten hours of driving we were all tired, looking for a place to rest. We would spend the next four nights at this house. Our group consisted of Pampa, my wife, Riti, my teenage daughter, and our dear friends Joy…
Photographers are a strange lot. They would complain if they detect any deviation from the original subject in the photograph. They criticized Edward Weston for placing a sea shell in one of his famous oceanscape photographs. They did not count one of the finest photographic legends, Jerry Uelsmann, as a legitimate photographic artist. The reason? Jerry…
“Out of every ten visitors to my gallery, nine claim to be photographers,” commented the owner of a nationally renowned art photography gallery in Carmel Valley. “None of them want to buy a photograph, they all come to see how the photograph was made, so that they can copy the work with their own digital…
When the artists of the Main Gallery decided that our next exhibition would be dedicated to displaying the artists’ old favorite pieces (ones that had not been displayed at the gallery for some time), I was in a dilemma. Which photographs should I choose for the show? Should I choose the more popular photographs…
Why do I photograph? For me the answer to this question evolved over the years. When I first started photography almost twenty years ago, it was simple. At that time, I would travel to all these scenic places and capture the landscapes so that it would look the prettiest. More often than not that would…
Dogwoods in Fog This is my first post on my blog site. I thought I would share with you the story behind one of my most favorite photographs, “Dogwoods in Fog”. It took me three years to take this photograph. In the spring of 2002, I visited Yosemite valley. Dogwoods were in full bloom….