Yesterday, I woke up at 4:45AM at home in Washington, DC and five hours later, my plane landed in Orlando, Florida. After a fun shoot with the manager of a baseball team, I drove around the outskirts of Orlando for the rest of the day feeling the urge to come back with some record of these hours spent untethered, with no obligation other than to be back at the airport that night to fly back home.

I felt out of practice, as so much of my photography now is mission-driven. Sometimes, it's executing the vision of a magazine editor, other times it's trying to get to someplace new with my own work, but regardless of who I'm answering to, there is intent and a strong desire for there to be some product, some end game. Without that personal or professional accountability, I felt adrift, and took photos that didn't seem to mean much of anything, with a lens that rarely succeeds as more than a gimmick.

Landing at Reagan National Airport that night, I gathered my luggage and loaded it into the trunk of a taxi, feeling like my brief trip through a humid, hazy Florida day may have exposed something of my need to have a reason for everything rather than just letting my mind relax and my eyes wander. It's February, but I'm going to count this as my New Year's resolution for 2012.

my Desmond Tutu photo on the cover of his new autobiography

My wonderful agency passed along some photographs from Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday and the release of his autobiography that occurred last week in Capetown, South Africa at a church that was once at the center of resistance against the apartheid government. The publishers chose an image I shot of Tutu a few years ago for the cover.




photos courtesy of PQ Blackwell Publishers

I don't see photo shoots as opportunities as much as they are experiences, brief moments to be lived through and hopefully changed from in some way or another. What I remember about photographing Desmond Tutu at the tail end of a two day conference was that he had a plane to catch and I had to push a little to even have him sit for me. He was in an enormous hurry and stood there with this beatific smile on his face as he yelled at me to finish up and get a move on so he could get to the airport. There wasn't any malice in his voice and he patted me on the back and gave me that same smile as he rushed out of the tiny, makeshift studio I had spent hours crafting. As far as I know, he caught his plane, and I learned that it's always worth that extra, sometimes uncomfortable effort to approach a subject, even if their time is brief.

While it was enormously gratifying to get a copy of his autobiography with one of those photographs selected as the cover image, the more exciting thing was the enormous fresco of Reverend Tutu painted by local artists based on the image, that will hang on the wall in one of his charities in South Africa.

The title of this post is in reference to the video below, which shows Rev. Tutu getting his groove on during his birthday celebration. The video also shows him checking out the painting (apparently he thought the artist didn't paint his nose large enough) and Bono from U2 singing to him.

The Harvard Museum of Natural History is like an Indiana Jones movie set piece. It was built in a time when people went to museums to marvel at the spectacle of nature contained. Separated from visitors by thick panes of glass, there is nothing interactive here. Yet, hundreds of tiny fingerprints on the glass suggest the unconscious urge to connect to these creatures from the noisy groups of schoolchildren who visit each day.

With my portrait shoot for Discover Magazine complete and my flight home still a couple of hours away, I set about to bring back some photographic souvenirs from this brief trip north. It was a nice surprise when I get the magazine in the mail and saw that they ran a few of these as well.

Andrew Knoll for Discover Magazine

Photo shoots have different rhythms and flow and part of my job is sizing people up and trying to get a read on them pretty quickly. In Washington, where shoots with politicians can last less than five minutes, sometimes establishing rapport and getting familiar with the subject isn't possible and I've come around on embracing the tension that hangs over these briefest of jobs. These portraits speak to the distance and the lack of connection and sometimes that feels as telling to me as the images made after long conversations and buy-in from the subject.


Post Chef Robert Weland

I knew Robert Weland, the chef at Poste in Washington, DC was an avid gardener but I wasn't aware of the extent of his commitment until I arrived at the restaurant and saw dozens of fruit trees, raised beds and herb gardens extending throughout the terrace outside the restaurant. Weland was eager to talk about his growing plans for the year and we commiserated about what the hot weather was doing to our tomatoes, and which herb/fruit combinations worked best for desserts.

I had brought along a bag of organic vegetables that he gamely posed with and I left with some great recipes (beet greens - roast, sealed in foil w/ olive oil/salt/pepper) and photographs of a passionate chef and gardener.

Just got my copy of the Communication Arts Photography Annual. So much good work in there, and a nice feeling all around to be included.