Landscape photographer Tom Reed discusses his influences (Ansel Adams, Edgar Payne, the Hudson River School, and Japanese martial arts/aesthetics) and his books of photography—The Granite Avatars of Patagonia, Moved by a Mountain, and Summers in the Sierras.
Tom Reed delves into the ideas from his TEDx talk “Natural Beauty and Aesthetic Arrest,” describing aesthetic arrest—borrowed via Joseph Campbell from James Joyce—as being stunned by beauty to the point of losing the usual sense of self. He explores why eroded mountains can feel majestic, drawing on physicist Thomas Campbell’s ideas about organization versus entropy and linking organization to love. Reed connects his photography composition to Japanese tea ceremony and ikebana’s dominant/subdominant/subordinate principle, recounts quitting film photography after his camera was crushed, years of intense looking, wide travels (Caribbean, Belize, Alaska, Hawaii, California), near-drowning surfing in Oahu and how he finally returned to photography.
Tom lives in Fort Bragg on the rugged Mendocino Coast of Northern California, travels to wild places and spends five weeks each summer at a cabin he built in Alaska.
00:00 Introduction to Tom Reed, Landscape Photographer
01:53 Aesthetic Arrest
06:11 Inspiration from an Alpine View
08:19 Why Erosion Can Be Majestic
11:00 Japanese Aesthetics: Ikebana and Chabana
12:23 Creating the Composition
13:46 Putting Yourself in the Right Position for the Composition
14:35 Principles of Flower Arranging as Applied to Photography
16:15 The Majesty of What Stands
16:35 What’s Standing Is Still Organized
19:14 On Photography: The Cameras Got Heavy
21:54 In Belize with Birdie
28:24 The Artist’s Impulse
29:36 Near-Death Experience Surfing the North Shore of Oahu
33:23 Raw Beauty That Inspires Awe
35:51 A Masculine Sense of Beauty
37:57 Leaving Hawaii
38:32 A Hobo Life with the Fall Colors in New England
40:44 Building a Cabin in Alaska
42:57 The Japanese Aesthetic
43:38 Aikido and Athletics
45:25 An Aikido Bum for 10 Years
47:01 Learning Tea Ceremony
47:43 Tea Ceremony and the Concept of Wabi-Sabi
49:46 Going to Japan
51:56 How to Contact Tom Reed
Tom’s Books
The Granite Avatars of Patagonia
Moved by a Mountain, Inspiration from an Alpine View in Alaska (also an audiobook, featured in Alaska Magazine and Cirque)
The Other Side, On the Road in South America
Summers in the Sierras (limited edition)
Find these at https://TomReedBooks.com
(not an affiliate link)
Tom’s TEDx Talk
“Natural Beauty and Aesthetic Arrest” (TEDxHomer, 2011)
https://youtu.be/aB8L5a-P6NM?si=3-LmcdGe2EPJScBr
Contact Tom Reed
CREDITS
Host and creator: Christi Cassidy
Contact: christi@movingalongpodcast.com
Artwork by Phyllis Busell
Music by Eve’s Blue.
Post-production help from Auphonic.com.
Show notes written with assistance from Descript and Claude.ai.
LINKS:
More information and to listen to past episodes: https://movingalongpodcast.com
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