Exploration with Culture
Portrait of sculpture artist André Eugène, founder of Atis Rezistans on Grand Rue in downtown Port-au-Prince, Haiti.
All of his skulls in his work are real human skulls. We asked him how he was able to get a hold of them and he said, “Many things are easy to come by in Haiti. All my work is recycled. You ask for a human skull, you can easily get one.”
I love the way people work. Put them in their environment, watch them focus, study, learning and adapting. It’s the human brain and the psychology of man and woman to be determined, to want to understand, to want to help and create. It is self-empowerment and to photograph this from within a person feels like waves crashing on the coastline, a raw energy that has been with us since the beginning. Be sure to visit the updated Lifestyle portfolio at cameronkarsten.com
Last week I was called by Bloomberg and headed to Willapa Bay in southwestern Washington to photograph WSU scientist Kim Patten and the surrounding environment of Bay Center, WA. Waking up at 2:30am on Monday, I spent the morning driving 3hrs to catch a clear sunrise over the waters, which have been the center of Washington’s oyster industry for generations. At over 260 square miles, the bay nearly empties at low tide, creating the second largest estuary on the U.S.’s west coast. But a local shrimp has been disrupting the area’s economy for too long, suffocating oyster beds as the crustacean burrows 1 to 2 feet beneath the surface, turning mudflats into quicksand. The published article is available in the link and the selects from the morning’s shoot are below.
Bloomberg Businessweek: Washington State Turns to Neurotoxins to Save Its Oysters
A pile of discarded oyster shells are left in the sun so organic matter can decompose before being bagged and placed back in the water as a refuge for young oyster seed.
Long-line oyster beds stretch across the tidal flats of Willapa Bay as a front of morning fog recedes westward.
Old oyster shells wrapped in bags ready for delivery outside an oyster nursery
WSU scientist and researcher Kim Patten uses a clam digger to pull out an invasive shrimp from one to two feet beneath the mud.
A male and female shrimp (the female is carrying orange egg sacks)
An oyster shucker in Bay Center, WA
Mexico is a land of southern sun, warm sands, dusty cobbled streets filled with wafting scents of freshly grilled meats, buttery shrimp skewers and braying donkeys laying idle under the shades of ruffled palm fronds. It is a humble mix of ocean beaches to classic hacienda-style farmland below centuries-old ranches to the hurrying belches of city horns and graffitied buses intermixed within a colored historic city center. The people of Mexico know very well how to eat like ruling kings and drink like maddening queens. They choose their ingredients from the busy market stalls where meats and seafoods, produce and local spices and herbs carry lines of shoppers out to the homegrown rows of agave that stretch along arid rolling landscapes into the wild brushes of the traditional vaquero. Their culture very much resembles a barter and trade system of long ago, with real crafts-people, who to this very day continue to subsist on a technique passed down from generations.
There is pride in the people, the ones who truly know how to carve a cow into the choicest of meats, to the repairman that returns the hurricane-battered palapa back into that exotic specimen above brown leathery Texans and Californians. South of the border is where the Americas’ craftsmanship dwells, behind the colonial walls and feathered into the waves left by the dawn-patrolling ponga. What is in Mexico is from Mexico, built by the people.
Country living is dynamic, inside the cabin and out. Things don’t appear the same as if you’re living in an urban environment. Instead of concrete or brick foundations, walls are made of not just wood, but entire logs…big logs. And instead of finding house plants and framed pictures on these wall of beautiful distant locations, you’ll find what was once living in your yard stuffed, anthropomorphized and placed inside. Once again, country living is all about being in harmony, or being one, with nature, and then taking that to a new level.
Sand rats are friendly despite their appearance once giving a human personality
A coyote guarding the door
A black bear and badger go head-to-head for a dead sand rat.
Stepping outside you’ll spot a frozen land awaken as a river passes listlessly through the valley. Hints of pinks and oranges wash away the purples of night while geese begin to ruffle and hawks take flight. Another day in the country.
When there is a river nearby, there must be fish. Always bring your fly rod, seek the thrill and reel in those steelhead. Somewhere up the S. Fork Hoh River on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington State on a Stormr assignment.
Nature is stealth. Walk out into the woods and count the number of wild animals spotted. Many are heard, but few are seen. However there are eyes watching you and scents tracing your every movement. Stalking and hunting a wild animal is one of the most difficult thing to do, especially in the shadows of the Hoh Rainforest, but the rewards are one that will feed your family for months to follow. Practice the art of patience, endurance and awareness while chilled temperatures permeate the saturated environments of the Olympic Peninsula. On the hunt with STORMR foul-weather gear.
It rained and then it poured. With STORMR gear, the woodsmen were kept warm as a low ceiling of clouds passed, and dry as the hiking became arduous with sweat and fatigued. Heavy ferns draped in our path while carpets of green moss stretched before us. Animal trails were easy to find, their beaten paths the only thing breaking the wildness of the Hoh Rainforest. These led us to the wide open swaths of America’s logging industry.
Recently, I ventured into the Hoh Rainforest with STORMR foul-weather gear for a 4-day 3-night adventure. With four woodsmen we explored a sodden mossy wilderness furthest from humanity. These are the western edges of the Olympic Peninsula; a place so remote and ecologically diverse that it could be considered its own evolutionary island.
What we were in search of was the elusive black-tail buck. What we discovered were torrential downpours, rivers full of returning steelhead and King salmon, as well as pockets of clear-cut forests amidst pristine woodlands of idyllic nature where migratory elk bugled near the trails of deer, bear, and cougar scat.
For more visit www.STORMRrusa.com and www.CameronKarsten.com
Oysters are delicious, but they’re also highly important to our marine ecosystem. They’re natural filtration systems, removing toxins and cycling nutrients back into the water that help combat pollution. Oysters within the Puget Sound are also some of the first species to feel the effects of a new threat called Ocean Acidification (OA). As the ocean becomes more acidic due to decreasing pH levels from human industrialization, oyster seed shells begin to dissolve causing holes, disease and early death.
Puget Sound Restoration Fund (PSRF) is helping restore these mollusks by planting native oyster beds throughout Puget Sound. They’re creating a community of oyster harvesters through their CSA program, as well as partnering with research institutes to further study and treat the effects of OA. On an early morning on Bainbridge Island, Washington local volunteers gather to take advantage of the low tide and collect the native oysters.
For more visit the Ocean Acidification Project
Cameron Karsten's Imaginarium 