the camera as a utilitarian tool

I have been working on a series of different pieces that utilize the camera as strictly a tool to achieve something instead of my norm of using it to capture moments to tell stories, or create nostalgic emotions etc… One of these series are these gradients. Here are a couple more I made recently. 

beach brain • groms for life

As I am chronicling a hand full of local groms over the next summer months, we have also started another site, Beach Brain that I will be posting on as well as some of the groms. I will still be posting on here though.

Mike • Estevan

Ran into my friends and fellow photographers Estevan Oriol and Mike Miller yesterday in Orange County at the Mendes Brothers Art of Jiu Jitsu grand opening. Both really cool guys. click for a couple more

land

Directly off the boat in Indonesia I headed to Bali. Here are some more non-captioned photos. Enjoy. 

OPEN SPACE

This weekend, on January 15th from 8-11, I will have the opening of my first solo photo exhibition at the beautiful Known Gallery on Fairfax in Los Angeles.

I have been working tirelessly on this collection of images and installations, and my friends Brendan Lynch and Sage Vaughn will also be showing work in the Project room. I got a good look at the final prints the other day before they were sent off to the framer and I can’t begin to say how excited I was to see the body of work all together in its final stages. It was a mix of pure joy and excitement as tears almost filled my eyes as we rolled open the images, one by one, my face grinning ear to ear as each passed by. The gallery is beautiful and the installation is going to be amazing. Please come out and hang, have a drink, find me, say hi, and enjoy the night with a bunch of us.

Thanks to EVERYONE for all the support, including everyone who checks this site out. Below are some words describing the motivation for this collection of images.

“The ocean is and always has been the epicenter of my existence on this planet. I am an aquanaut on a thruster in this ever amazing and boundless liquid energy. I have optimized and streamlined my life to ensure maximum time gliding across water. Every choice and relationship, all decisions and waking thoughts (and most dreams) are influenced and infused by the pull of the tides, the whiff of an offshore breeze, and the lucid corduroy lines gracefully stampeding
towards the coast.

I go to the sea to surf, to bond with friends or to be alone, to let out aggression or to find inner peace. The moving ocean is my solid ground. The moment one stands up on a board, propelled by a wave racing across the sea, one is only aware of the present – nothing else. I have never found any other way to achieve that absolutely pure and meditative mindstate.

Open Space is my expression of the state one falls into while floating weightless off shore, looking out to sea, hoping and waiting for the next set. Troubles are isolated far away on the unreality of land, while you are free in the truest reality of water. It is a timeless unspoilable state that cannot be ruined, not even by the angry local that may be slashing your tires and waxing your windows simply because he doesn’t want to share some waves. To a surfer it’s an understandable
act of necessary evil to keep an ungoverned subculture in form, and from it breaking into full bore beachblanket-bingo havoc.

Open Space is a collection of images, collages, and installations that evoke the balance in my life.”
Cheers,Keegan

Click for full invite and Press Release.