I am stuck. The mud is up to my knees and I am wading through the muck to get to back to my office in order to write a blog post. As I pour the murky, muddy, mess out of my Wellies, I am pondering, preparing, and postulating a post for tomorrow. Cheers!

Some years ago as I was dancing merrily along photographing figures in a landscape (gardens in particular) I was asked if I would like to try my hand at photographing a car. This seemed to raise the bar so high for me. The idea of jumping over it was almost impossible. I was only hoping that I could limbo my way under it without anyone noticing. It's not that the car bothered me (it seemed like a giant still life) it was whether photographically I could make this huge mechanical object appear as if it belonged in the picture. Could I make a picture that would please me, and also parenthetically sell the car. The only direction I received was that the agency and the client (BMW) wanted to play with perspective. They wanted this mammoth seven series machine to feel approachable and full of warmth and whimsy. Well forget about approachable, I was still back at the starting gate with no idea what to do, and equally important for me, questioning whether this was something I wanted to do, and whether I could even do it. But like all good capitalists, I needed to pay my mortgage, so I quickly said yes before I could convince myself to say no. I began the search for where I wanted to shoot this extravaganza. Luckily for me, the agency had informed me that they wanted to shoot one of the three ads in a garden. After some scouting, I knew the one place that had the scale, correct proportion and permission that I needed to drive a car across the lawn. It was at an estate on Long Island where I had shot once before. I have since used this location on one or two other occasions. I think at this point, it is important to regurgitate some things I have mentioned before. This picture was created before the digital revolution, but even if asked today I would approach this picture the same way I did then. What you see is what you get, everything is done in camera. I do not like to retouch (except for small blemishes). There is no compositing of different pictures, expressions, skies, etc. This picture then and today would be approached the same way and shot on film. I like (as mentioned before) to be in the picture; part of the experience. It must feel real as if it were all possible. The idea of having pictures retouched or composited, means to me that the photographer has changed his career and become an illustrator. I am not ready, nor would I suspect I ever will be ready to relinquish myself to that role. You can believe in me, and you can believe in what you see. It was all there when the picture was being shot. Firstly, the producer and I met at the location and discussed my idea for the picture. It was going to be a balancing act between the car and the…

What could be better than being asked to make a picture about one of my favorite subjects, sleep? By now I must be an expert in the art of napping, and it's long lost first cousin the art of a restful nights sleep. So without much thought required I immediately thought of Carol Burnett in "Once Upon A Mattress," a Broadway show I saw with my mother at age twelve. I can still remember seeing Carol Burnett sitting on a tall pile of mattresses and laughing out loud. It all felt so funny and good. As this picture had to be done almost immediately, I had no time to scout for a location. I simply decided to shoot the picture on my own property. I try to keep my life fairly private, but on occasion I will open my house and grounds for a good cause. So reluctantly, I agreed to shoot the picture here. I think it's very important at this time to take a small break and give you a glimpse behind the scenes. I have always (at least for the last 15 or so years) worked with the same team of people. I am not one to embrace change, unless it is radically called for or I feel it is an improvement. My stylist Renate is a German wunderkind of the highest quality. She should receive a Legion of Honor award for staying with me for these fifteen years. She always is a large contributor to the pictures. She is always full of enthusiasm, and is ready to jump into any situation, sometimes backwards, but at least has always been willing to tread where even angels have feared to go. I don't know where she was able to round up ten mattresses on a day’s notice, but the miracle of 29th street did. The evening before the morning of the shoot, Renate arrived with trucks of mattresses, sheets, props, etc., to begin the long setup of the mattresses for the next mornings shoot. Like almost everything we do, it all looks so....simple. But believe me, it's not. Everything is a team effort. Everyone is working very hard toward the final few minutes of an unrestrained burst of energy, where the final result is exposed. It's all the prep work that lies behind the scenes (the hair and the makeup selections, the wardrobe, the props, the location, the body language, etc.) that lead down this circuitous path twisting and turning, getting closer and closer, to the moment where I can fall in love and kiss Zoe sitting on her mattress. So for three to four hours the evening before the shoot, Renate and her team of worker bees steamed and pressed all the sheets, and carefully with a German watchmakers precision, stacked the mattresses gently in place, until we had a perfect arrangement of stripes, colors, and height. Everything took hours, but finally we were all ready for the big event first thing the next morning. At six…

In the fall if 1962, in the first day of boarding school, I learned some lessons well. A woman teacher walked into the room, and immediately all the boys rose from their chairs as a sign of respect. Of course I had been told this by my mother, that one should stand when a woman enters the room, but to see this in action by twenty boys in unison was quite striking. It felt so right. A lady had entered and the men (boys at the time) were willing to show their umbrage. The balance was correct. Men and Women curtsied to each other with respect. For years I have been asked to discuss the use of the hat. Is it some surrealistic element, used like Magritte? Is it a fashion statement, or what is its purpose? I can't say to any of this I really know, but I will try to help explain my love of the hat. Since my photographic beginnings, I have always photographed people with hats, Welsh farmers with their tweed caps, French farmers with their berets, Americans with their fedoras and out West with their cowboy hats, etc. It was always a small gesture to distinguish one region from another. As time went on and my subjects became different I never abandoned the love of the hat. It is not that I grew up with people wearing them. My adolescence was during the Kennedy years when the hat was being discarded for youthful vigor, and a display of as much hair as possible. The Beatles seemed to begin the end of the hat. But without realizing it, that seminal moment in boarding school, many years earlier, began to work its way into my psyche. You see every time I started to take a picture, I always felt something was missing. It was incomplete. The period at the end of the sentence was omitted, and had to be inserted to complete the thought. I would stand aside the subject, and look at the figure with and without a hat and almost always the story ends with a hat being included. There were many disagreements with Art Directors about whether the hat was appropriate given the fashion restraints of the moment, but rarely was there an argument as to whether the hat made the man look better, taller, finished, refined, elegant and oddly something else. It was always simply finding the right hat for the man. So for years I have played with hats, and it is no wonder that people have compared my use of them to Magritte or for other surrealistic purposes, and quite honestly this may be correct. But there is something else, more ambiguous, more subtle that lies on top of a mans head. You can see it in ancient Civil War pictures, when Lincoln's funereal train rumbled through small American towns, meandering it's way to Illinois. You can still see it in the military, or in the films of the 1940's and…

Mostly American cities are very difficult for me to shoot in. They lack the history, the patina of age, and generally fail in their orientation to the sun and their lack of use of natural light. New York, for example (my home town) loves to keep the light out. It tints its windows in order to control the atmosphere of what lies within, to avoid the entrance of too much light. Too much sunshine would definitely provide too much sun dreaming of what lies outside. The buildings want to avoid bringing the outside in. No opening doors or windows, no clear glass windows. Let's seal it all up. Cook 'em and fry 'em until they are uniformly toasted, heated and cooked and cooled collectively with no loss of workflow. No nodding off for naps and dreams. This for me is a fundamental problem. It is why I love England, France and much of Northern Europe. What the buildings are lacking in energy efficiency, they far make up for in scale, ambiance and beauty, and clean windows, scrubbed almost daily keep them sparkling. What America lacks in their mostly uninteresting cities, it more than makes up for in it great outdoors, it's endless plains, it’s vast fields of wheat, its oceans, it's hills, etc., provide a magical and majestic landscape. For years one place I have been especially attracted to, is the low country of South Carolina; that 200-mile extension of connecting islands that form the low country from Charleston to Savannah and slightly beyond. I had been returning there for years. It is very old primordial, with endless horizons of marsh, and the verdant smell of low tides and rich productive soil. The endless flow and rhythm of tides, the spared Colonial architecture and the rich patois of African, Creole and southern gentility mix into a truly fine breed of Americanism. Some years ago, I was in Beaufort, South Carolina, as small coastal town between Charleston and Savannah, famous now mostly for it's films, The Big Chill, The Prince of Tides, The Great Santini, and Forest Gump. For me the attraction of the low country is also the weather. The winters are generally mild. As I was scouting some days before the crew arrived,  (in my usual fashion) in the 30-mile perimeter of town, we happened to pass this grove of Cyprus trees. Immediately it seemed so foreign and exotic, I knew I could make a picture here. The location scout told us we were now on land owned by the lumber company, and he would find out if he could get permission to shoot on the property. A bigger concern was the snakes (water moccasins) and alligators that inhabited the low lying groves, filled with about 3 to 4 feet of water, just enough to hide an aggressive gator or an annoyed snake. Now I love shooting pictures, but I do not relish being consumed, bitted or discharged by anything, and especially things so ugly. As it turned out…

I have gone spelunking deep below New York City searching for what to write about this week. I have yet to find it, but when I do I will be sure to let you know. Until then, please wait with anticipation and delight. I will be with you again soon. Rodney

I started to write about life in the past and I realized that life in the present has more that needs to be said. I am revisiting my recent visit to England and I will post tomorrow.

Blue is my favorite color. It's not that I don't love other colors, the lush greens of a vital earth or a deep Chanel red lipstick I put on almost every female model (not because I am against change, it is just to me the sensuous luscious red of a women's lips lights my fire.) I also love a deep, deep rich black or the calm of a gray. But there is something about blue, the endless serene delicacy of blue. It is not any blue; it has to be just the right blue, a delicate and primordial shade of robins egg blue. I guess I am not alone with this fixation on blue. Mystical African, Southern, and Arab cultures as well as others, line their porticos with this powerful blue to fight off the evil eye and surround themselves with safety. It is a testament to the power of blue. Upon graduation from college, my young new wife and I decided to see America. We acquired a VW camper with a pop-up top and off we went for eight weeks to see what lies between. Even then this child of privilege had no love of the great frontier. Daniel Boone was for books, mountains were best viewed in post cards, and mosquitoes were to be avoided at all costs. So this little camper had a comfortable bed, kitchen, and two good door locks, but most of all it had a generous father who would send us to a hotel every few weeks to take a shower when needed. I suggest if you have to camp you do it no farther than a day’s trip to the nearest Four Seasons. Anyway, after four weeks we reached Los Angeles at the home of my wife's aunt, who lived on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. As soon as she came out to welcome us to her home, even before the words of welcome or hello could be uttered, she took one look at the camper parked in front of her home, and with her high pitched patrician voice, informed us of the urgency to get "that thing" behind the house to the service road. No one in Beverly Hills should be forced to gaze out their window and see anything but money. Nothing so plebeian should ever block their view. I couldn't figure out if this was an L.A. version of the high life, low life, or some life in between. While in L.A. we did make a trip that helped cement my life and career as a photographer. One afternoon, we went to visit a childhood friend of my wife's (Topo Swope) at her parent's home (John Swope and Dorothy McGuire.) We drove off Sunset Boulevard down this long driveway to a courtyard and there right in front of me in all its glory stood their front door, their entryway. It was painted the exact shade of blue I loved and I knew immediately that what lay within had to be…

In the spring of 1964 on a day just like today in New York, our family chauffer picked me up at boarding school in Connecticut and took me immediately to the airport to fly to Hawaii. It was spring break, and I had been anxiously awaiting this day since the morning I had returned back to school from Christmas break. This had become the family routine for a few years. No matter where my parent’s were over spring break, they would fly me out to meet them. This year Hawaii, next year sailing a private yacht in the Caribbean. Oh the hardships I had to endure. Leaving freezing New England for some warm, luxurious, sunny place. Interestingly enough, I even had a great deal of fun. So with a runway that must have been too short, or a plane that was too large, I landed in Honolulu and the plane immediately overran the runway. I should have known then that something was out of order. Luckily no one was hurt and I was greeted by my parent’s with a lei they put around my neck. I think they were actually pleased to see me. Off we went to the beautiful, pink, Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu for two weeks of sun and fun. The first thing my father did for his rather pathetic son was to arrange private surfing lessons. In Switzerland it was private skiing lessons, in the Caribbean it was private swimming lessons at home it was private golf and tennis lessons. It was as if he was trying to teach me the game of life. No matter how much I tried or how often I surfed, I never really got the hang of it. It was O.K. but it was not for me. Just sitting out in the water waiting for the right wave seemed so beside the point, when as I searched the beach horizon from afar, there seemed to be so many girls of my age on vacation, lounging, talking, and looking quite cute and available. Enough with the athletics, and lets get down to the basics of a boy looking for a cute girl. So I quickly abandoned my surfboard and took up beach combing. One afternoon by some miracle, I found myself next to the most beautiful creature on the beach, Ricky Randall. How’s that I still remember her name after all these years? We started talking and I remember going back to the place on the beach where her family was sunbathing. You see sunbathing in the 60’s had gone way past an activity and had become an art. People would discuss at length how best to get tan. What was the best lotion? Everyone wanted to look bronzed and beautiful. To Hell with the 19th Century, where women would hide their faces with umbrellas from the sun, where pale, delicate skin was a sign of refinement. In the 60’s youth and handsomeness were all tied into the suntan. My father’s favorite…

My father despite his enormous wealth, extravagance and generosity to his only son, always wanted me to be aware of the value of money. It was always about money, how much or how little, what it bought, what you needed, but perhaps most importantly, it’s value. I do not mean to disparage him for this in any way, for to this day; I feel he taught me how to handle money, success, and even failure. These are the lessons he taught me well. He was always joking about money, and like some deep invisible pocket, always had great sums of cash on his person, neatly clasped by a silver money clip. I can remember the sound of crisp bills he’d pull out of the clip to pay for this and that. These were the days before the much heralded use of credit cards and debt, and my father loved to pay for everything in cash. He loved to stay current and wads of cash were extracted to pay painters, carpenters, deliverymen, etc. There was always the smell of money, wafting around the house, and I must admit it smelled really good. As in most stories, there is more than meets the eye, and on another day I will recount where the endless supply of cash materialized from, but that is another story, not the one I wish to tell today. Even as very young boy, he was always spending money, yet, watching very closely the accounts of his family. I can remember once going to our neighborhood general store and charging to my father’s account some small item that I had not asked permission to have. I was sure I could slip this insignificant charge by him, but at months end he called me to the library and severely reprimanded me for charging anything without his permission. Nothing slipped by his moneyed eye. I have never forgotten that day; his voice is still with me, which is why many years later to my surprise, in my senior year at boarding school, I received a curt short letter from my father’s attorney with a key to a safe deposit box. This letter simply said that my father wanted me to have this, and provided me with the name and address of the bank and the number of the safe deposit box. It seems quite funny today that I never mentioned this to my father, for the six years he was alive after I received this letter. I am not sure why, but as might be expected, my communication skills with him were not the best. I was always looking for a way in or out, but never seemed to have the time to linger in any comfortable place with him. Oh, there were many times we were alone together on walks, in the garden, on the golf course, etc., but I never could get past being beside him. I was never, never simply with him. Anyway, years went by and on…