ashley hall general manager of runway playa vista ca

#Ashley hall general manager of runway playa vista ca series#

This summer she plans to decamp to Mexico to join an agroforestry team aimed at rescuing an ancient crop-growing system developed by the Maya. And he’s always got trash bags and plastic gloves in his car, ready to clean up the beach a bit after a photo session. When he’s not capturing waves or sea creatures with his camera, Baran volunteers with Channel Islands Marine & Wildlife Institute (CIMWI), helping rescue and rehabilitate seals back into the wild.

#Ashley hall general manager of runway playa vista ca series#

“It really meant something to him,” Baran recalls, adding that “getting a really good photograph that people want to buy is rewarding, because everyone has a camera now on their phone and everyone can take photos.” Baran’s wave series is available only on his website ( ) for the moment, but his paintings and wildlife photographs can be obtained through galleries in Carmel, Santa Cruz, Palm Springs, and Hawaii. Recently a man who had proposed to his wife on Butterfly Beach years earlier was thrilled to acquire a wave photograph Baran shot there. “I was out in the water every day, morning and night.” Santa Barbara waves are his specialty, and collectors connect strongly to images of specific locations. Eventually Baran embraced art full-time and began exhibiting his work in New York, Europe, and Asia.īaran’s wave series is fairly recent, a natural extension of his ocean wildlife photography. She just traced it and recreated it, framed it, and then painted the wall.” But his artistic career did not emerge until he attended graduate school at Cornell University to study landscape architecture encouraged by a professor, he started making abstract paintings based on aerial views of landscapes. “There were crayons and pens, and I drew a dinosaur on the wall one time, and she didn't even get mad at me. Growing up in Santa Cruz, his mother, a graphic designer, “fostered art with us constantly,” he says. With the tube like a telescope offering a glimpse of the shore, this is an intimate view only a surfer could ever hope to see in real life.Īn artist for nearly two decades, Baran exhibited his creative inclinations at an early age. It makes me so happy.’” But heartfelt reactions to his pieces are not surprising, given Baran’s talent for capturing a wave at the moment it crests. “I get messages from people who don’t even buy my work saying, ‘Thank you for posting these photos. Human beings have a strong emotional connection with the ocean, a fact that Santa Barbara–based artist John Baran is reminded of daily via his social media feed, where he posts photographs of ocean waves. Written by Lorie Dewhirst Porter | Photographs by John Baran