Back in January when I went to the Big Island of Hawaii, I got up super early one morning while I was staying in Kona, and drove for around 2.5 hours to catch the sunrise at Punalu’u Beach, on the island’s southern shore. It’s one of Hawaii’s natural black sand beaches, created by the lava that flows into the Pacific Ocean and basalt which washes back up on the shores.

As the light of day broke across the eastern horizon, some wonderful shadows were cast across the beach from the sand. Grouped together in little mounds, some beautiful little shadows from the sand took me back to a morning out in the Palouse region of Washington state. I found a collection of rocks that reminded me of some of those bigger hills, and I wanted to focus this image on that idea. I love that such a small part of this beach can take me to a landscape so vast and how both scenes invoke such a similar feeling for me.

I spent last weekend travelling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. It was my first visit to the state (and the city) since moving to the USA. On Saturday, I spent the day wandering around the city of Minneapolis. Like Seattle, there are a few fun pockets of the city that show a great deal of character. Also, there are so. many. lakes.

In the middle of the city, the skyline is cut by the steeple of the first Basilica established in the USA. I had no idea when I walked inside how magnificent the main hall of this building would be. I remember walking down the middle of the hall, looking up in awe at the size, detail, and beauty of this sacred place. It was spellbinding to stand inside this building.

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Around on the ocean-facing side of Puʻuhonua o Hōnaunau, otherwise known as the Place of Refuge, there’s quite a large outcropping. You can walk out along it, almost into the ocean if you wanted to. Formed by solidified lava rock, it’s mostly a very uneven surface, that undulates as you walk across it. This kind of terrain is very susceptible to tide pool formation as the water levels from the ocean rises and falls over the course of the day.

The tide pools made for some great reflections in the water as the sun set for the day. It also made for the possibility of getting to see some marine life. Usually you think things like urchins, starfish, and maybe little schools of fish… I would never have thought of getting to see a sea turtle hanging out in one of them.

I spent a week on the big island of Hawaii back in January to escape the winter of Seattle in favour of warmer weather. It was a wonderful week of photographing, relaxing, and hanging out with turtles.

Imagine Dragons – the concert photography that almost never happened. I was literally walking out the door after resigning myself to not being able to shoot through a sold out crowd thick as a pack of sardines. Security had blocked off the photo pit, despite me having media access to photograph the bands. Requests and talking to security meant nothing. Showing them printed out emails from band management saying I’d have photo pit access meant nothing. The pit, for all intensive purposes, was vacant, closed, and may has well not have existed on this particular night.

I tried to weave my way through the crowd. It wasn’t happening. I was getting pushed and shoved and hated for trying to get to the front of a crowd that had been waiting all night. After about 30 minutes of looking for any possible angle that I could shoot from, I resigned myself to the fact that I just wasn’t getting any images tonight and that the people who hooked me up for a media pass were going to be disappointed.

As I was literally walking out the door, one of the security guards I was talking to about pit access stopped me. “Hey, did you hear? They just opened the pit”, he said. My eyes lit up and I legged it back inside. Apparently no one else knew, and the pit was all mine. Not for long as all the other pissed of photogs saw me and began to make their way in too, but for the time I had there, Imagine Dragons were playing a show… just for me. It was energetic, upbeat, amazing, adrenaline-pumping, and show-stopping.

If you ever have a chance to see these guys live, definitely definitely go.

Music and Photography

Since I attended a workshop in Port Townsend last year, I’ve been looking for my voice in my photography. The how I say what I say component of my photography. After a lot of conversation and a lot of thinking on the matter, I realised that there is a deep connection to music in my art. Be it a source of inspiration or a live show, that connection has grown a lot since I started shooting live shows. With concert photography for me, it’s so much more than photographing a band rocking out on stage. It’s capturing a fellow artist, mid-performance, and their voice communicating what they want to say through music. Until recently, I’d always mentally separated other artistic mediums – dance, sculpture, painting, photography, music, etc – they were all different. Then I realised that I as an artist, like them, am also looking for the best way to use my voice to share a perspective, a story, or a message. The fact that they were singing and playing instruments was just the same as me manipulating light on my subject – it’s all how we choose to use our voice, and it’s persistent throughout these different artistic mediums. All these genres of art have always been so different to me. How could dancing and photography by the same artist share a common construction? I know now, that it’s because of voice. And its yours, no matter what the medium.

I’ve been given a couple of chances to speak about music and photography for me recently. Once, in an email to attend that same Port Townsend weekend this year, and another in a podcast on concert photography. I’ve been giving it a lot of thought since then and I really wanted to talk more about it and share it here on my blog.

It’s a beautiful thing when a song makes you want to cheer, smile, or cry. It’s a piece of art that’s evoking a feeling. I want that with my work in photography – I want to make art that really makes people feel. I’ve been photographing live music a lot in the last 12 months. Of all genres. Punk rock in Seattle. Pop music in Portland. Jazz music in New Orleans. In part because I love it and in part searching for this connection to music, both in aid of finding my voice. The photos that stand out to me are those split-second moments where you can feel the music. Where you can feel what the musicians are saying from just looking at the image. And most importantly, where my voice conveys how music makes me feel. No words, no sound. Just a photo and my way to share how I feel about their music.

Recently in Austin, TX there’s been a festival on called South by Southwest. It’s a massive event in the music industry, one I’d desperately love to photograph one day. Dave Grohl, a musician in the truest sense of the word, gave the opening keynote speech (the video is at the bottom of this post). It’s about 50 minutes long, but when I watched it felt like 10 or 15. Grohl was talking about his experiences directly as a musician, speaking to musicians, but so much of what he says carries over into making impactful art and discovering just what the hell you want to do with your work. There were a couple of sections of his keynote that really stood out to me, and I’ll paste them here because I really want to share them… I’m quoting him, so excuse the profanity. Or, enjoy it

It was a riff. I gave it all up for a fucken riff. Interestingly enough though, that song is all instrumental, there’s no vocals. It’s guitar, drums, keyboards, percussion, each getting a solo in the song. No vocals. But what I heard in all of those solos were voices. The voices of each musician – their personalities, their technique, their feel, the sound of people playing music with other people. It made me want to play music with other people too.

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Never one for taking lessons or direction, I was left to my own devices and devoted every waking hour to playing music. It became my religion. Their record store my church, the rock stars my saints, and their songs my hymns. Springfield VA wasn’t necessarily known for breeding rock stars – a career in music never really seemed possible to me it just seemed too good to be true. Surely the faces on my KISS posters weren’t getting paid to do this. But that never mattered to me because I had finally found my voice. And that was all I needed to survive from now on. I liked my new voice because no matter how bad it sounded, it was mine. There was nobody there to tell me what was right or what was wrong, so there was no right or wrong.

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We practiced in a barn. Every day. It was all that we had. There was no sun. There was no moon. There was just . . . the barn. And those songs. Kurt had, without a doubt, found his voice. Every practice would begin with an improvisational, free-form jam, which kind of served as an exercise in dynamic and musical collaboration / communication. We were speaking to each other without words. Verbal communication was never really Nirvana’s forte, so we spoke to each other with our instruments. But, I like to think that what the world heard in Nirvana’s music was the sound of three human beings, three distinct personalities, their inconsistencies and their imperfections proudly on display for everyone to hear. Three people that had been left to their own devices their entire lives to find their voices. It was honest. It was pure. And It was real. Up until that point, no one had ever told me how to play, or what to play. And now, no one would ever again.

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There is no right or wrong. There is only, your voice. Your voice screaming through an old Neve 8028 recording console, your voice singing from a laptop, your voice echoing from a street corner, a cello, a turntable, a guitar, serrato, a studer, It doesn’t matter. What matters most is that it’s your voice. Cherish it. Respect it. Nurture it. Challenge it. Stretch it and scream until it’s fucking gone. Because every human being is blessed with at least that, and who knows how long it will last…

It’s there, if you want it. Now, more than ever, independence as a musician has been blessed by the advance of technology, making it easier for any inspired young musician to start their own band, write their own song, record their own record, book their own shows, write and publish their own fanzine (although now I believe you call it a “blog”?) . . . now more than ever, you can do this, it can be all yours. And left to your own devices, you can find your voice.

Recently, I came home with the new Beatles vinyl box set. It’s amazing. It’s the size of a fucking Tumi suitcase, it weighs 50 pounds. As I walked into the house, my daughters Harper who’s three, and Violet who’s six, looked up and gasped, “What is that????” I said, “It’s all of the Beatles’ records!!!” Now, I have already spent hours brainwashing them with Beatles songs . . . they’re cool. But this was vinyl! They had never seen that before. I set up the turntable in their room, opened the box, and started showing them how it’s done. “Ok . . . you take the record out of the sleeve, here are the songs on this side, here are the songs on the other side . . . carefully place it on the turn table . . . gently put the needle down . . . careful!” They were absolutely blown away. I left the room, came back half an hour later, and there they were, dancing to “Get Back,” album covers strewn all over the floor . . . sound familiar? We have all been there.

And, as a proud father, I pray that someday that they are left to their own devices, that they realize that the musician comes first, and that they find their voice, and that they become someone’s Edgar Winter, they become someone’s Beatles, and that they incite a riot, or an emotion, or start a revolution, or save someone’s life.

That they become someone’s hero.

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At the end of each of these sections of this speech I couldn’t decide if I wanted to cry or jump up and cheer. Grohl was talking about exactly how photographing music makes me feel, and therefore how my photos say what they say and why they say what they say. From listening to music and seeing musicians perform their art live, I’m learning a lot about how any artist uses the “tools in their toolbox” to speak their mind. It’s enlightening to see it done in a totally different artistic medium.

My voice is another thing altogether. It’s a flickery apparition in my head and in my camera’s viewfinder, but my voice is there. I don’t always recognise it, and it comes and goes. I’m always looking for my voice when I’m out shooting. Perhaps those times when I don’t hear it are when the scene before me holds no meaning for me. Perhaps I have nothing to say about it. Or, perhaps I’m just subconsciously not listening to my own voice. All three are possible scenarios.

It’s pretty great when a song or even a single lyric serves as inspiration for an image. In a kind of symbiotic creativity, one artist unknowingly fuels the other. Even in such a simple way as to prompt another for an idea – it’s a catalyst for your own thoughts. Often I find that my voice is strongest when it is inspired by music. The fact that this realisation stemmed from actually photographing live music and the artists behind that is just bringing this full circle. I still don’t fully understand what the catalyst for this was and I’m not sure I ever will. Music speaks to me, which means art speaks to me, and that fuels my own creative work, so that I can speak to others.

What I can say unequivocally at this point is that experiencing another artist from a completely unrelated genre discover and garner their own voice has been very enlightening and has had some very large ripple effects into my own art. There are some musicians like Hendrix, Davis, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Dylan, or Butler have such a unique sound. Especially with instrumental songs (or albums in the case of Rodrigo y Gabriela) you can feel the artist’s voice. When you hear their music, you just know it is them. The fact the artist is completely able to identify themselves and say exactly what they want to without words is incredible to me.

Photographs are stories without words. Together they are an encyclopedia of our world, our cultures, and our own unique lives. I want people to see an image and be able to say, “Jacob Lucas made that photograph”, purely from how I created the photograph. This can only happen by truly discovering my voice in my work. My eyes, ears, and mind are fully open.

Watching a sunset unfold before me can be one of the most beautiful things. Such a simple event as a change in colour in the sky and tones in clouds with all the hues of yellow to orange to pink to blue is just sublime. On this particular evening a couple of weeks ago, we experienced a pretty dramatic sunset here in Seattle. They seem to be few and far between out here – to get the right combination of soft clouds with breaks revealing the sky is a challenge. More often than not, it’s all clouded over, all clear. or all cloud at the horizon.

I remember seeing the beginnings of the afternoon cloud taking shape, and deciding to head out to Discovery Park just north of Seattle to photograph a lighthouse against the setting sun. The sun in this image is just dipping below the mountain ranges in the background.

I hope we get to see more visions of summer like this one in the coming months. The warmth of the setting sun on my face, through my lens, and in my mind is just too good!

This was my last image of the night on a fun shoot with Jake Johnson and Rod Hoekstra the other night up at Mukilteo Lighthouse Park, just north of Seattle. As I was walking back to the car to get all packed up and ready to leave for dinner, I noticed this particular bench looking out at the water. Someone had left a bouquet of flowers tucked into of the the railings. It stopped me in my tracks and made me wonder just who they were for, and who left them there.

Very often I see a particular scene in front of me and I’m reminded of song lyrics. Sometimes the scene morphs and becomes a memory from my life. Sometimes the lyrics serve as inspiration for the image. Both of these were the case for this photograph. The lyrics are from a song called “The Sound of White” by Missy Higgins, an Australian singer-songwriter whose music I immensely admire and enjoy.

Like a freeze-dried rose, you will never be, 
What you were, what you were to me in memory. 
But if I listen to the dark, 
You’ll embrace me like a star, 
Envelope me, envelope me
If things get real for me down here, 
Promise to take me to before you went away 
If only for a day. 
If things get real for me down here, 
Promise to take me back to the tune 
We played before you went away. 
And if I listen to, the sound of white, 
Sometimes I hear your smile, and breath your light.

The video clip for the full song is on YouTube in many forms… here’s one of her performing it live on Australian TV.

Ruby Beach is one of those locations on the Olympic Peninsula that I try to visit each time I’m there. It’s so accessible from the highway, and because of tides and swell the landscape on the beach changes quite a bit. The level of water up on the beach remaining in tide pools or small rivers turned into ponds from a retreating shoreline create some pretty wonderful elements to work with in photography.

I made a clear choice not to cross the river at the beach and not explore around a little, in part due to the large quantity of people running around on the other side. So, I stayed and worked with a quieter area of the beach. This enabled me to work some of the river into my image also.

What I really enjoyed about making this photo was the play of the sunlight with the rocks and waves. The bowed reflections of light on the rocks mirror each other a little and to me, adds an interesting subtlety to the final image.

Even though there was a circus of people just to camera right, when I was making this image it felt like it was just me and the sounds of the waves lapping the shore on the beach. I love how photography has this transformative power – I’m completely immersed in my craft when this happens. I may need to spend some more time thinking on this, but I’m very interested to see how much more attuned it makes me when shooting and/or post-processing…

From the northern entrance to Olympic National Park, the road to reach Sol Duc leads right into the heart of the park. After reaching the end of the road at the trailhead, fresh mountain and forest air is awaiting you. Cooler temperatures at an increased elevation make the short hike into the falls quite comfortable.

I feel like the second I stepped onto this trail and lost sight of the trail head I felt right at home. Like I was in the place that I was exactly meant to be. There’s nothing quite like breathing in fresh forest air, catching the scent of the trees and the landscape around you. Up ahead you can hear the sound of water trickling over meandering creeks and crashing waterfalls amongst the silence. As you progress along the trail the peaceful quiet is replaced by an ever-increasing volume of the powerful Sol Duc Falls.

About half way along the trail is a small creek with a bridge that spans it. The creek comes careening across the quiet forest floor, down a small hill to the bridge, underneath and beyond to whatever is off the trail below it. Before crossing, I wandered out into the creek and set up my tripod in the middle of the creek, looking back & following the creek back up the hill around the trees it just passed. The flow of the water was quite gentle, but enough to make venturing out the creek interesting enough.

Being here, amongst the forest and the water, is a memory I’ll never forget.

It’s been a busy week since returning from the peninsula – I’ve only had time to edit one or two photographs from the trip. I knew that one of the first of them would be this one, a blissfully calm sunset over Lake Quinault on the southern edge of the Olympic National Park. The large was sufficiently large enough to span the entire horizon on a wide angle lens, and as soon as the sky turned a wonderful shade of orange I knew I wanted to capture the colour in the reflection of the lake against a silhouetted mountainside.

I framed my shot, and waited for the sun to start to slip behind the mountains. The lake was still, not a breath of wind. You could feel an overwhelming calm from the forest and the lake surround you.

I wouldn’t have had the sunset go any other way.