Painting is like music, which takes a certain amount of talent and lots of practice. It takes time to find the instrument that is just right for you, the one you really are in tune with, the instrument that helps you give your best. Painting too requires time and practice. It usually takes time and many trials and errors to find out which medium is the right medium for you or which combination of media allows you to soar like an eagle and expand your artistic vision.

For two decades I have photographed simple yet elegant details that provide uniqueness to Spanish colonial and adobe structures in the American Southwest and Latin America. My style has evolved into a “distilling process” that pulls the essence of the subject from what is in plain view. In developing this process, I have been influenced by artists of the 20th century. Differing planes of analytical cubism come to mind when viewing some of the photographs. Others are reminiscent of the bold and powerful paintings of abstract expressionists in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Composition, color, texture, depth, and detail all illuminate the subject, remove distractions, and invite contemplation.

I recently began to use this process to photograph cargo freighters in the Los Angeles Harbor. The worn hulls of ships at dock seem as great whales with battle scars that record their life-long struggle to survive. Although the ships can be seen every day, their visual secrets are generally not known because of the distance to the observer. I eliminate this distance to reveal their beauty. Brightly painted hulls exhibit interesting patterns and textures that are reflected in the water. The hulls may appear delicate, tenuous, even transparent. However, the scrapes, gouges, rubber marks and rusting wounds, sometimes from the ships' own anchors, sometimes from the ubiquitous tires found on the sides of docks and tugboats, belie this frailty. At times a series of numbers or cryptic diagrams may appear on the massive hulls. These messages communicate only to those who assist in ferrying the ships in and out of the world's ports.

For the last 12 years I have spent at least two or three weeks each summer traveling in the Southern Sierra. Taking photos as I travel, I move through the mountains rather slowly, spending several days in one place, trying to gain a sense of its moods, its weight and the changing light. Time is needed for observation here, for the sense of time is what is significant and it is the subject to be recorded. It is my nature to want to put these observations in some form or other. I hope these images convey some sense of what I found in these mountains.

Vaibhav Tripathi was born in Kanpur, India with family roots from the Himalayas. He obtained an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2009 and is currently pursuing a PhD in Electrical Engineering also at Stanford. Vaibhav has always enjoyed spending time in nature which as a child came in form of almost yearly trips to Himalayan foothills in India. It was during one of these visits he first operated a 35mm point and shoot Kodak camera documenting what he thought looked beautiful. As he grew up, the love for Nature and Wilderness increased and so did the urge to find something more meaningful in the plethora of natural beauty.