I am a geologist so you might say I think about Eternity for a living.

I have a somewhat rakish spirit but a quiet manner.

I have a skeptical mind. My nature inclines towards optimism.

I'm a young soul from an ancient time, and am much more a citizen of Athens than Jersusalem.

I seek and rejoice in beauty. I embrace the bittersweet succulence of life.

My heart has broad portals and everyone I have ever loved I still love.

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NO AI IN MY WORK.

IF I HAVE RECENTLY ADDED YOU AS A FRIEND IT IS BECAUSE I HAVE FAVED ONE OR MORE OF YOUR IMAGES, RESPECT YOURT WORK, AND WANT YOU TO HAVE ACCESS TO MY IMAGES IN THE FUTURE SHOULD I CHANGE PERMISSIONS FOR THEM.

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I’ve lugged a camera around since my teen years, influenced by my father, a talented and passionate amateur photographer with a home darkroom. So after a 33-year career as an international geologist and years of living abroad and wide travels, it seemed natural that I use photography as my chosen medium in seeking creative outlets when I retired back to the San Francisco Bay area in late 2013.

I’ve long been in thrall to the beautiful in all its forms. Thus as a photographer during my working years I had pursued many different subjects from wildlife to landscapes to architecture to abstract. It’s curious that in much of my photography I long sought to avoid people in the picture. Yet I always loved the female form – who doesn’t!—and over the years I also had a growing love of dance, undoubtedly related to that fact. It was only as I approached retirement and had the financial means to work with professional models and mentors that I could explore these subjects as I had long aspired to and take my photography to a higher level.

Dance and art nude are currently my two primary areas of photographic interest. One challenge I find particularly compelling is trying to capture the fleeting aspect of beauty. These fugitive moments can be in the millisecond moment of a dancer, an emotion passing across the face, or the life force of animate nature. be it animal, plant, the patience of a heron, the predatory gaze of a cat or owl, the flower of womanhood, the ineffable beauty of some unconscious movement in the interplay of light and form.

The fleeting moment can also entail changing light in a landscape, or as in long exposure photography, it can approach from the other side to express persistence in time, the energy flux of passing clouds, the flow of a stream, the endless churn of the oceans, the star tracks of the heavens… and yet it is still a moment in deep time, nothing is eternal…

Publications:

On the Light Fantastic Toe, published by Snap Collective, is a book of the best of my decade of work with dancers, including many professional dancers with Bay Area dance companies (San Francisco Ballet, Smuin Ballet, Diablo Ballet, Ballet22__) and elsewhere. It is available here:

[shop.snap-collective.com/en-us/products/on-the-light-fant...]

I am a proud member of Model Society [modelsociety.com/Photographer/randall-hobbet]) where I have been featured in magazine issues and most recently honored with the cover photo for their forthcoming Best of Model Society publication

I also have two self-published fine art books which you can find here (with digital preview):

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Flickr’s gallery feature is one that I think has great potential for interesting thematic collections and thoughtful commentary. These are some of the galleries I’ve spent time on assembling:

My most visited gallery:

There's a story here

Three galleries on dance, a particular interest of mine:

Song of the Body

Dance is a poem...

Dance: Body and Soul

Portrait galleries:

Breathtaking

lovable faces

High Beams

Lovers

Excellence in animal...

A BIT MORE ABOUT ME...

Interests: Beauty, Ballet, Art, Photography, Cinema, Travel, Birding, Reading, Nature, Museums, Jazz, History

Favorite Books & Authors: Anastasia Hobbet (Small Kingdoms, Pleasure of Believing), William Shakespeare, Jane Austen (Emma, Pride & Prejudice, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park), Camille Paglia (Sexual Personae), George Eliot (Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda), John Milton (L'Allegro, Il Penseroso, Paradise Lost), The Decameron (Boccaccio), Steven Pinker (The Blank Slate), Daniel Dennett (Darwin's Dangerous Idea), The Swerve (by Stephen Greenblatt), Christopher Hitchens, Victor Davis Hanson, Nabokov (Lolita), Will Durant, Rebecca West, E.M. Forrester (Passage to India, Howard's End), T.E. Lawrence (Seven Pillars of Wisdom), Mark Helprin (Winter's Tale, Soldier of the Great War), Frederick Turner (The Culture of Hope: A New Birth of the Classical Spirit), Kenneth Clark (The Nude), Willa Cather (My Antonia, O Pioneers!), Patrick O'Brian (Aubrey/Maturin Series)

Favorite Movies, Stars & Directors: Roman Holiday, North By Nortwest, Casablanca, The Red Shoes, most any Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie, Gene Kelly, American in Paris, Pride & Prejudice, Wives & Daughters, Manhattan, Rear Window, Philadelphia Story, Passage to India, Lawrence of Arabia, Gerard Depardieu's "Cyrano de Begerac," Brannagh's "Henry V" and "Hamlet,", Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth Paltrow's Emma, Frances O'Connor's Mansfield Park, Strictly Ballroom, Fanny & Alexander, Red, Happy-Go-Lucky, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Julie & Julia, Bright Star, Lord of the Rings (of course)

Favorite Music & Artists: Any Handel Oratorio, Bach, Vivaldi, Rameau, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Penguin Cafe, Zoē Keating, Bill Evans, Billie Holliday, Diane Krall, Count Basie, Ahn Trio, Caetano Veloso, Artie Shaw, Lester Young, Peggy Lee, Anita O'Day, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Stravinsky, Willie "The Lion" Smith, Leo Kottke, Souad Massi, Melissa Etheridge, Madonna's "Ray of Light," Kate Bush, Paul Simon, Enrique Granados, Stan Getz, Enya, Doc Watson, Ella Fitzgerald, Led Zepplin, Oscar Peterson, Modern Jazz Quartet, Dave Brubeck, Dakota Dave Hull, Benny Goodman, Ceasaria Evora, Phillip Glass, Ludovico Einaudi