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- [00:06]
A
Welcome to the observable unknown, where science meets the unexplained. I'm Dr. Juan Carlos Rey of crowscubboard.com and after two decades of working at the intersection of comparative religious studies, grief counseling, anthropology, quantum mechanics, and consciousness studies, I've discovered that our most profound human experiences often exist in the space between one what we can prove and what we can perceive. In this podcast, we'll explore the measurable.
- [00:34]
B
Influences of immeasurable forces, those hidden factors.
- [00:38]
A
That shape our reality but often escape our traditional scientific frameworks. From the latest research and consciousness studies to the ancient wisdom that's now finding validation in neuroscience and quantum physics, we're here to bridge the gap between academic rigor and spiritual insight. Whether you're a skeptic, a seeker, or simply curious about the deeper mechanics of human experience, you're in the right place. Together, we'll examine the evidence, challenge our assumptions, and explore what happens when we dare to look beyond the obvious. There are artists who photograph the world, and then there are rare souls who seem to listen to it. Pen Densham is the latter. He has lived at the intersection of myth, cinema, and the ineffable since childhood, when, at the age of four, he rode a live alligator for one of his parents 35 millimeter theatrical shorts. It was perhaps the earliest sign that he would spend a lifetime courting the miraculous. Cameras, he says, seemed like magicians instruments, and his entire artistic journey has been shaped by that early enchantment. His filmmaking career spans Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, Mall Flanders, the revival of the Outer Limits, and the Twilight Zone, collaborations with Costner Freeman, Jodie Foster, Ron Howard, and nearly 300 hours of television, all anchored in a deep humanism, a love of mythic structure, and a reverence for the emotional life of images. But today, we turn our attention to the visual world he has cultivated in silence, a body of fine art photography that dissolves the boundaries between the real and the remembered. Work that is neither documentary nor digital sorcery, but entirely in camera, executed with the spontaneity of Pollock and the lyricism of Monet. He calls some of his pieces organic mandalas. They are photographs, yes, but they are also meditations, reflections and portals into the subconscious rhythms of nature. Pen Densham is, in truth, a minister of vision, a man who shows us not what the world looks like, but how it feels. And today, on the observable unknown, we journey with him through intuition, image loss, nature, and the subtle revelations that only an artist of his staggering magnitude can offer. So, without any further ado, let's join the conversation.
- [03:11]
B
It's such a delight to have this opportunity Pen. So sitting with you is remarkable. And I don't mind saying that looking at some of the images you have captured makes one truly feel fortunate to have the faculty of vision. To that end, how did your earliest experiences with cameras shape your visual philosophy?
- [03:32]
C
Well, I grew up with the mother and father were making short films that went into the movie theater. So. And I don't think they could afford babysitters. So when I was three and four they took me with them when they were shooting 35 mil movies and I watched as people would gather around a camera to see what I was doing. And they took me to Water Street Soho with them when they were showing the movies to the people who were buying them at a place called Anglo Amalgamated. And this all seems so magical. So you know, here's this giant screen and there's the. And the empty theater at that point showing my father mother's picture. I wrote an Alligator in one of their movies about people who kept strange pets. And that became the title for my book on screenplay writing which was Riding the Alligator Strategies for a Career in Screenplay Writing and not getting eaten. But the philosophy of wanting to cast spells with a camera was imbued into me at that time. I didn't know how I would do it, I didn't know what I would do but. But the sensory experience, the exaltation of wanting to do magic was there. And I liken a little bit to Fantasia where Mickey Mouse watches the wizard with his wand and then ends up trying to become the wizard by using it. Having all the buckets of water and all the bushes brushes go crazy. I always felt I was Mickey Mouse and not the wizard but constantly searching for some way to express myself. And I knew the cameras and storytelling had to be part of it. And then went on a journey especially when my mother passed away when I was 8 and my life and my sister and brother in law's were turned upside down. My father was not. He turned us over to our grandmother and then married a very difficult woman who had. Was addicted to medical drugs and drank and our lives became hell. And it. And I was. I was living with a camera in my hand as a 12 year old and was being accused of being egotistical and you know, selfish and not what. And it gave me an outsized sense of wanting to protect other people's creativity. And it also made me vulnerable to self doubt and made it even harder in some ways to voice and to discover. But it Then made me, when I did, discover how to express myself, want to share it, to try and help protect others from experiencing the things. And we talk about imposter syndrome, things that can make us held back from finding what the true capabilities we have in us or maybe that come through us. Because certainly as a person who loves evolution as a process in terms of looking at what kind of creatures we are and how we evolved here, I think some things happen because our evolutionists designed our eyes and designed our synesthesias and our sense of aesthetics and know we, we. We're in a constant course to try and discover how to express them through us.
- [06:59]
B
We are. That's fantastic and, and so well packaged. It makes me wonder whether or not you're documenting nature or communing with it. Is this something that you've given a lot of thought to, wanted to become one with the subject of your photographs?
- [07:14]
C
There's a, A desire to create a. An the energy that nature has. You know, we're talking to, dear who you know the other day about trees. And you know, we're. We owe our lives to trees and yet we take them for granted. You know, this is the lungs of the world, and yet we are so surrounded by them that we don't see them anymore. And so if I'm able to create a photograph that creates the vibrance, the atomic, you know, bioluminescence of the creativity of a tree that is, you know, we've discovered the trees teach each other things underneath their, Their ground. We're touching each other's roots and sharing chemicals and, you know, what we don't know is almost as large as what we do know. So if I can take a photograph that vibrates, that makes us look at a tree for the first time in a way that's fresh, I feel like I'm accomplishing something that. And that's that idea again, a casting spell, something magical. If you, if you see a tree and it touches you in a unique, personal way through my photography and reminds you of this extraordinary experience we're living. Familiarity creates banality. We drive home every night. On the way home, we don't see the road anymore because we're driving from a memory. And if I take a photograph of a tree and it's a straightforward tree, it looks like a tree. But if I take a photograph of a tree and move the camera slightly, or if I take a photograph of a tree and light it with sunlight going through the leaves so they look like stained glass, or if I can make your energy create a Personal experience of looking at a tree. Then we see it again for the first time. It's like unwrapping a gift. And the novelty gives us that moment where we can see that we're all. We're all connected to these extraordinary things that we within with no criticism at all. Because I think we're designed again, not. Not to see things we don't need to see. We forget the wonder of it.
- [09:36]
A
You tie this frequently to the concept.
- [09:37]
B
Of evolution, as we've discussed. Do you believe that you are looking at images in a way that presents them through growth, maybe through certain chapters? You've mentioned that. Of course, the familiarity breeds banality, where we're clearly looking at things that we don't care anymore about because of how often we see them. Are you looking at images and expecting them over their life cycle to change, to adjust, to adapt, and that connection is what we should really be finding in the work, or is it something deeper?
- [10:13]
C
Well, I'd hate to say that I'm in some way some expert. I'm. I'm sort of struggling to find the limits to what I'm capable of creating and sharing. So I'm allergic to believing that I'm somehow special because I think that's intimidating to other people. It's like people say, well, you've had an immense career in filmmaking. And I say, yes, but I want to emphasize my failures because, you know, I was taught in an education system that showed everybody creating things like geniuses, and none of us were ever going to live up to it. And, you know, the truth is that those people had as many Pratt Falls and problems and things along the way. So I like to demystify myself and not make myself some kind of expertise. I'm in love with evolution in a sense that there was a book called the Moral Animal which I read by Robert Wright, and he said that human beings are essentially moral because morality is a win, win situation for the tribe, the community to live in so that we can all share things, so that we can raise our young and push our genes into the future. And that gave me great heart. And I'm sure, like a lot of people growing up, I went through immense stresses. I took on many burdens. I started a film company when I was 22. I, you know, it. I've been to places where, you know, the emotions have been drained out of me through stress. And that, that sense that morality was part of life gave me a great sustenance. And that's. When we look at storytelling, we watch Law and Order and the fabric of the human community is torn by somebody that breaks the rules. And the people go to work immediately to try and heal it and to take that person and put them somewhere, either to learn to stop doing it or to take them out of the process. And we look at love stories over and over because the finding the right mate and putting yourself together so that those, those couples can push their genes into the future. Those stories are the other. Like they said, there's only seven major stories. Well, there's only about seven major things that affect us as beings. But also I think the, the stories are healing and they, they were evolved. I think the three act structure is a biological structure. And maybe, maybe it's a mythical spiritual structure because, you know, maybe it goes through the DNA. Maybe the, maybe mythology and spirituality are part of the epigenetics of life, that these things reach back through time because they're actually carrying important survival and spiritual values. So I mean, I love thinking about this stuff. I don't have great authenticity in terms of the facts of it. But working with people like McLuhan, you know, who pointed out, watch, watch an audience watching a movie. And he said, you'll see they're in a trance. And then you ask, why are they in a trance? And you'll see they're moving their mouths with the expressions on the actors faces mimicking them. And then you go, why are they doing that? And the answer is that under the right circumstances, you're in this trance state and you're receiving what the actors are struggling to accomplish in the character's journey. And we're making strategy decisions on our own life journey by recalculating, using our mirror neurons, what those things are and how they will increase our ability to survive and get into the future. We're re strategizing ourselves, watching actors struggle on a screen as we would do in daily life. I was just talking to someone earlier today. What is the news? Well, the news is people putting up other people's problems. And we get to strategize how we might solve them, which is why we're fascinated by the news and without actually having to experience them. So that goal of trying to find a purpose in storytelling for me comes from unconsciously when I'm writing screenplays. I found that I was writing screenplays about characters that have mother issues, not consciously. I wrote Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, which my partner John Watson then helped me finish polishing the script, but it has no mother. And I wrote a script on Mull Flanders, which Robin Wright and Morgan Freeman starred in, and I'm on the set of that movie and my partner John says, how come none of your characters have mothers? And I go bango. Oh my God, I didn't know it. But when I, when I free myself to let the, the stories that need to be told by my soul, and they come through me, they frequently have mother issues in them, but they're always uplifting and have reconciliations at the end. And I think that when you surrender to your instincts, you create a voice. And that's sort of what I'm trying to do with my art, is to surrender to intuition and let, let me discover through, not dogmatically trying to get things right, which is what most photography was taught to me as, but, but to discover what the possibilities are of letting go of the rules and then trying to recognize the qualities of the images that get made that way. And I, I shoot a lot of images that are purely experimental. I, I'll sit beside a, a beach where waves are going sideways and, and I'll sit and just say, what do we want to do here? What, what, what, what is my instinct? And, and they'll be different at different times. And my instinct might be shoot after dusk, because we can do that now with digital cameras. And suddenly I'm shooting on a 400mil lens after dusk, panning with the waves, shooting like a half second exposure. And these become sculptural, wonderful, sinuous things that make the eye dance like visual music. Why or what? I can't tell you that those things feel right. But I know I forced myself to look at every photograph I make because I realized that I don't immediately see the qualities because I'm looking to try and find the familiar. And when I let go of trying to find the familiar, I can read the images for the, the new truth of what is aesthetically pleasant. And, and again, that could just. That our eyes see certain things a certain way and aesthetics are bound by those survival rules. And being able to look for an animal in the jungle or being able to look at a savannah and make sure that we could see predators or things we needed to hunt. But whatever our eyes do with this aesthetic discovery that I'm making, when I'm letting go and not dominating the image, but letting the image talk to me, I find things that are. Blow my mind and I, I'm sorry if I'm, I'm wondering. Talking too much, but.
- [17:36]
B
Not at all. No, please. You've touched on so many fantastic points already.
- [17:41]
A
I, I urge you to go on.
- [17:42]
C
Absolutely I. I, you know, used to photograph nature using my cameras to take slides because I figured slides were this thing where you lock down a single image in a. And could project it from a 35 mil piece of film. And I thought that was teaching me how to see and maintain quality control right at the moment of shooting an image. But what it was also doing was it was creating banality. I was shooting repetitions of the things I was taught to shoot and, you know, trying to get them right, trying to get the balance in the three, you know, making compositions on the thirds and making hyperfocal distances and all this stuff that the technology of photography teaches you. And I gave up and just concentrated on my filmmaking, but watched my daughter make images with my cameras where she hadn't been taught how to make the correct image. And these were these beautiful, poetic, naive photos where the centers of composition were different and the focus points were weird. And they struck me that there was a poetic energy that I wasn't seeing in my work. And so my wife actually bought me a digital camera, the same one I bought my son, because she knew I wouldn't buy him one that wasn't good. And I started to look at photography again and literally waded out into the waves of Hawaii and started taking photos with this little camera that had. The whole back of the camera was a screen. And. And I would wait till the waves came in and went out. So I'm holding the camera high up. And I've always said, never buy a camera you wouldn't climb a tree with because you're not going to get the best shots. And then as the waves went out at sunset, all these curls and shapes and forms and things were going on, and I was shooting inches above the water. And it was mysterious to me why when I looked at these images, they were so pleasing. And that. That started me on this trip of letting go and pushing to discover that I could make images that didn't come from the rule book, but came from intuition of taking images that take a. A long time to expose, or shooting into way overexposed koi on a koi pond with the sunlight bouncing off it and suddenly realizing that these shapes and forms, which you're not supposed to do, you know, you're not supposed to shoot into bright sunlight because it's all going to blare out. Well, yeah, but it looks cool when you do it and you see the fish in the middle of it and just constantly letting go and feeling foolish as I'm letting go.
- [20:41]
B
Why foolish?
- [20:43]
C
Because we unconsciously Inherit the, the, the world that we live in. Rules without even. And they're not, they're not cruel rules, they're just, you know, you, you, Ansel Adams had his own system and if you didn't have the exposures the way he did, you weren't doing right photography. Well, my exposures have got nothing like Ansel Adams exposures. And I, I, as I said, when I watched my, my daughter's photos, my, I thought my stuff was banal. I would take the good, you know, nice scenic looking shot with the mountain on the road. But I'm now making shots that blow my mind and I've never seen anything like them. And I don't want to question it too much. And I don't want to become a merchant to sell my photos. I don't want to become somebody that's trying to push this. I just want to keep exploring because that is joy to me and it's an adventure. And I don't, I don't want to have to like the studio. They have to please whole teams of people. I say working with the studios, like working for the Pentagon, they've all got all these people in all these different positions that all have to have an opinion or want to fight the last war. They don't want to make the next movie, they want to make the last one that made money again because they can't take the blame for that. And I, I'm now so lucky that I don't need to earn an income from my photography so that it can become this experiential journey into myself, into letting go into escaping the boundaries of what I thought was aesthetic and discovering visually things that I never dreamed were accomplishable.
- [22:36]
B
It's so interesting. When you were speaking earlier, I was thinking of Bill Morrison's 2003 film Decasia, because of the distortions, of course, he presents in the film itself. And as you were discussing the ripples in the water, my thought was, is this where you're trying to capture something nuanced, something very subtle, something that's probably going to get missed? Is this your view with your camera lens, with the magician's tools that you're using? Are you trying to capture images that people won't otherwise see or notice, trying to contradict the banality?
- [23:14]
C
Yes, I'm trying, I'm trying to give people a personal opportunity to look at nature through the reflection of themselves, like a roach test, so that they can invest themselves into the imagery and a familiar image will not do that. Something where you disrupt. If I was to photograph you in a portrait and to take many, many shots of you, but move the camera every time. There'll be one or two of those that will be mystical and magical because you'll have like two or three expressions simultaneously. And you give that to somebody that know you and they'll suddenly be transported into you in a way that they've never been before. Because the image is now making them see multiple personalities. Not, not dramatically, but just this, this, this moment of, oh my gosh, look at all those different people in him that I'm familiar with. And I, I was able to tour India a few years back. And I photographed India with that same intent. Moving the camera and, and trying to disrupt my familiarity and to shoot so that India became a series of patterns and colors and shapes and the human density and the life force of the people on the streets and the qualities of that touch my heart when I look at them. Because I found India to be a fascinating, deeply human experience. To see this culture of humans that have got long held beliefs of reincarnation and long held beliefs of the, the beauty of life and, and, and to try and interpret their, their, their experience on their streets and their world. And again, it again without, without having to hit someone else's target. We're just saying. And I'm on this tour with all these other friends of mine and, and I'm shaking my camera all the time and everybody's looking at me like I'm nuts. But I'm. I'm gonna keep doing this because the results are transportive. They, they disrupt our familiarity, but make us see that world in a way that is full of music and color and striation. And you know, it's, it's a, it's a. Maybe it's a poor man's trick, I don't know. But the right combinations, somehow you fall into the image you do.
- [25:45]
B
That's a beautiful way of putting it. I actually am a big fan of Christopher Booker's work. And when you mentioned the seven basic narrative structures earlier, my instinct said that's what Pen's doing. Trying to convert these narrative structures into still images. Am I mistaken in this, or are you really trying to consolidate entire narrative structures and architectures into a single image?
- [26:12]
C
Well, I. Someone said that because I'm a filmmaker, I'm trying to tell stories in, in my frames. And you see, my frames are quite full of information. And I think as a filmmaker, I'm now trying to make my stories in a single frame. And I look at my compositions that occur naturally, which Ones are comfortable. And they usually start like reading a story. They start usually on the upper left hand corner and take you down through the story. And sometimes they bring you around in circles. All about engaging your eye on your imagination and your subconscious imagination. But they, they have a flow to them. And so yes, I think I'm, as a filmmaker trying to tell a film in a single frame.
- [27:02]
A
Are you following any mechanical formula?
- [27:05]
B
Are you trying to obey the Fibonacci sequence when you're putting together a composition?
- [27:08]
C
I don't know if it's actually there because it's recogn when I've taken the image, that could be possible because obviously that might be aesthetically what is drawing me to feel that those images deserve to be balanced in that way. What I do know is that I can tweak a picture for an hour, but I'm tweaking the image, the complete image. I'm very analog. I don't have Photoshop. I wouldn't know how to add an element to a shot if it, if they force me to. I using the tools. I'm using Apple Photos with plugins because it's so simple. It goes back to my film world. And the things like what feel right if it's Fibonacci or if it's some other kind of cosmetic balance are intuitive. And when I'm tweaking, I'm sharpening, I'm taking slight contrast levels, up, up and down. I'm taking suddenly a big jump. I'll. I'll suddenly take the settings from another image. And I'm working with what's called raw, by the way, which is the, the data that the camera recorded, which is very flat and doesn't have full saturation. And normally the camera manufacturer has an algorithm that outputs to what they consider to be the look that they want. Well, I'm the algorithm. And when I'm searching through what is in that photo, suddenly I will feel that I'm closer to it. And it doesn't have any verbal. There's no like gestalt that says this is the right verbal thing. It is a personal completion. And I choke up and I look at a picture. Sometimes I just look and sit back and look in and I'm transfixed by emotions because it feels so special in some way that's not articulable. And then I hope, I hope that other people will feel something akin to that when, when they find themselves, you know, able to experience it. And one of the other joys I have is I blow a lot of these up to 6ft, 8ft. And they transform rooms when you put them on a wall. And if, If I had a goal, it's to make sure that I, that I make images that people won't get tired of that, that, that you could let get up every day and still find an embrace with your eyes and an engagement so that they. They don't get tired and familiar and that you can. You can enjoy them for a long period, a long period of life.
- [29:47]
B
So that they would defy the banality, they would defy familiarity.
- [29:51]
C
Oh, interesting perception. Yes.
- [29:53]
B
Looking new with each take. That's fantastic. Is why you insist on creating all of your images entirely in camera.
- [30:00]
A
But then what does purity of image.
- [30:02]
B
Offer you that, as you said, digital manipulation can't.
- [30:07]
C
That's a great. Honesty, authenticity. If, if I'm. If I'm taking an image and it's. And I've added elements to it, it's the same as if I dyed my hair. I would not be authentic anymore. I wouldn't be me.
- [30:24]
B
Right.
- [30:25]
C
I would be trying to be something I'm not. And there's an interesting experience I had recently. I have a friend of mine who's been helping me copyright my material and sending in so to the copyright office. And I got a note from the copyright office asking me how I'd accomplish my images. And I sent them back my cv. I sent them back notes on how I took the photos and what my goals were with it. And I got another note back from the copyright office saying, would, would I mind if they asked me a few questions, more questions about my wonderful images? And I'm going, holy crow, this is a civil servant. And I'm. And, and they, they specified three different photos that they last asked me about. And I sent them a note back again saying, well, first of all, I'll happily send you the roars. And so you can see they came from actual camera photos. Secondly, I would be so sad if people thought I'd used artificial intelligence to create my images, because the pride of ownership is gone. The sense that I'd actually accomplish something is taken away. If it was artificial intelligence creating these images. And you know, I felt that I could, I could be brutally honest with these people. And I sent them a description of how I made every image and how I tweaked it and never heard back from them. So they obviously accepted that I'm not some robot.
- [31:59]
B
No, there's no way you could possibly be a robot making these images. Tell me how you use a camera as a paintbrush. Please.
- [32:07]
C
As a paintbrush, the first. The first part of that was defining what I was doing with the camera. And. And, you know, these. These rules about holding a camera still. You know, this was such a rule when I was learning photography and, you know, get it still. And you're shooting a shot. You're not. You're not. You're taking a picture, not making a picture. And what. What I've been trying to do is to change all the time my approach, to try and discover new ways of getting to this aesthetic place where the images are different from what you expected, that they're diffracted from the familiar, and any method is appropriate. But trying to think in terms of a lens as a brush and nature as my palette, therefore, it helped me, because now I'm looking at. Any way I sample nature and put it together is like putting together the colors and the forms and the shapes to tell a visual, artistic story, which is. Could be like an abstract piece of art, or it could be like a Monet, or it could be like a Van Gogh. Not that my stuff. I'm saying I'm Van Gogh. Although if no one buys my stuff, I cut my hair off. Maybe I'll get close, but the. The beauty of those people and the. And the, you know, money. I'm humbled by money. I'm humbled by Turner. They paint this. I. I click an image and maybe move the camera. I use long exposures, or I shoot into sunlight. That's wacky. Or. But, you know, when you see Turner seascapes, they're humbling to what I'm doing. They're mystical and full of observations and insights about light and movement. And Monet, you know, is this. This gorgeous personal joy at the way that the. The pastiches of his. Of his brush cause you to. To feel engaged. And I. I would love it if I can get my work to even get a quarter of that quality and experience.
- [34:21]
B
I think you're letting your imposter syndrome show because some of your works, I think, hold more than just a candle to the works of the Dutch masters, at the very least.
- [34:30]
C
Okay, thank you. Absolutely.
- [34:32]
B
When I heard you mentioning the handling of the camera in India, shaking it, my thought was that's very much the sensation, the physical sensation. There's a very visceral experience coming as a Westerner to an Eastern country, especially to India in particular, where you feel more energized than I think you could from anything else. Well, interface shock is such a unique experience, intellectually and psychologically. It does leave you feeling vibrating. And so I think the, the shaking of the camera really did get to that point in your wavelife. And koi images specifically, what gesture or movement functions as the stroke if we're treating the camera as a brush?
- [35:16]
C
Well, it's not one rule. I mean, sometimes very early on I had a premonition that, and I'm talking when I was working with film, I wanted to photograph my koi pond and let the fish move in a long term exposure. And I did several experimental photos that way. And the fish moving because the camera is moving, but they became colored blurs and, and, and those were early experiments to see what would happen. So there isn't one way of doing it. Sometimes move the camera with a fish that's moving and you get a, a different experience because the fish is the center, but everything else is blurred sometimes by moving the camera and it, or, or zooming the camera so that the, the, the, the world around the fish is changing color and shapes and the fish is being stretched and, and, and it becomes an abstract set of colors. But there's still a sinuous, natural, organic beauty to it. I don't want to give away my secrets, but koi are living poems. They, they're, they're these colored creatures that can last for 60. And in some cases there's Koi lasting for 200 years. And what, what I will. And I, and I, in my own koi pond, which, which I had, I would cast my koi, literally buy koi that had certain colorations and certain scale types that, that were beautiful in certain long blossomy fins. And I called them my characters and photograph them in as many different ways as I could imagine to see what I would discover about how they, how they, they came out on the, on the images. And one of the, the things I found is koi will cluster around food. And so if you drop food on the water and if you drop big pellets of food, they show up in the frame. But if you drop small pellets of food, all the koi will come and they will all bounce over each other. And if you shoot that with a, with a slightly longer exposure so that they've moved through the frame, they become these joyful streaks of color and shape. And yet they, you still know, they're organic and they're living. And I, I could shoot and I have, I've shot koi and napper. I've shot koi in, in my, my friend's pond, Thomas Shoes has a pond. I've shot them in my own Pond. In fact, when. When we. When we bought a house in Los Angeles and we. We built the koi pond, I wanted the largest koi pond I could have so I'd have the deep, deep water. And we planted trees around it that would reflect blossoms at certain times of the year, because I wanted the blossoms to reflect on the water. And when it came to selling our house, the new owner wanted to keep my koi, and I didn't have a new home for them, but I made a deal with them. I said, okay, you can keep my koi, but I want legal visitation rights. And I had it written into the house contract that I could go back to my old home, knowing that at certain times of the year, the blossoms would be above the water. And I actually did go back and photograph a couple of times, and including one time when I went back and found that they put an algaecide in the water and the water is all green. And I thought, oh, darn, this is horrible. And I said, no, stop being trapped. Shoot the green. Because. And then when the koi were at different depths, different colors, and I realized that, you know, you. Don't be dogmatic. Just give what. Take what nature offers you. And so. And some of those pictures are awesome because it's organically. This. This water feels different, and they feel magical. So, yeah, it's a constant discovery of what I can accomplish. And I'm. I haven't got bored with shooting koi. I haven't got bored with shooting trees. I love waves, plants. You know, I've tried roses. I have a rose that we grow called Joseph's Coat. And the rose itself is multicolored, and it changes as it. As it ages, so that the colors go from yellow to purples and. And oranges and reds and all in one rose. And, you know, I shoot sometimes with literally sticking the lens inside the rose, and it's out of focus, but all these colors are there in a. In a blur, which is aesthetically pleasing.
- [40:27]
B
It is, you know, your infinite sense of wonder, I think, is a great compass. But what role does your personal intuition play in your creative process?
- [40:38]
C
Well, that's. That's that quiet moment that I take to say, what if? And. And it. And it happens about two or three stages. One is the decision to take the cameras out. You know, I'm going hunting. I don't quite know what I'm going to catch yet. Sometimes I'm going to, you know, a. An agriculture, horticultural garden in the hopes that I will find things and I'll choose a selection of lenses and clean my, my camera so that there, there's no dust on the, the, the, the sensor because that's one of the biggest banes of, of cameras. And then when I get there, I stop and allow the environment to talk to me, to take me out of the visual, but take me into kind of a sensory experience of what, what, what does this tell me that I should be trying to use, to discover. And then, you know, it's shooting trees and zooming at the same time. Causes the trees to look like they're exploding with life. Shooting a tree and panning up the bark. There's a, there's a tree that I'm in love with in Hawaii called the Rainbow Eucalyptus. And it's bark has multiple colors. It's stunning. And we, my wife and I first saw this on the road to Hana when we stopped at a parkland and all these trees with these gorgeous sort of like Disney color box. And the last time I was in Hawaii, I was lucky enough to find one of those trees and, and use the camera, moved it up the, the, the, the, the stem of the tree so the, the trunk of the tree just to see what would happen and how these lines of colors would flow. And then, you know, when I came to printing them, they, they, they have this kind of energy to them because the camera's moving and you don't know what it is, but it's organic and the colors are beautiful.
- [42:47]
B
Fantastic. You know, it really sounds like an essay on serendipity. You describe some of your images as happening to you. What does that moment feel like physically?
- [42:59]
C
You know, this, Chris, when we shoot a photograph, when I'm using a Sony A7R4 and it's got 64 megapixels of recording power, what it does is it when you shoot a frame, it freezes that frame for a moment, two or three seconds, and then it clears so you can take your next image. And I might be shooting waves and trying to catch waves that break so with sunlight behind them so that they're just a joyous spray of water and sunlight. And I'll shoot one and it doesn't happen, shoot another and doesn't happen. Then suddenly one will just fit. And you see it for three seconds and you go, I'm going to find that one again because it, it just said something and you don't quite know what it said, but it just, it all fit. And then you go back and when you're going through your, you know, 200 images, you're looking for that one that spoke to you and you can remember it and you can feel it and, and then gently tweak it, gently sharpen it or gently, you know, hold the highlights down so that it doesn't burn out and that it's still got, and that's the, that's the, the beauty of working in the digital medium is there's things you just can't do in film. In film you've got to kind of affect the whole piece one way or the other. You're either holding your highlights or holding your shadows. In digital I can open up my shadows so that you can make discoveries in your, in the way that the shadows have mysteries in them and structure in them. They're not just black things. And I can also hold the highlights. Which is the brightest part of the frame, which is sometimes where it just burns out, becomes white. I'm always trying to keep some little element of detail in the whites so that there's something for the eye to discover at both ends and that also I'm always, and these are habits, not rules. To me, I find it really nice. Even if a frame is very full of indistinct shapes and forms, if one or two elements are pin shopping and there's one or two lines and it could be hair thin, pin shop seem to root the entire picture in a way that makes you feel that it's aesthetically engaged with you. And I don't know why that happens, but it, but it, it's something I've recognized and I, and I search out now and, and the joy of this process again is I'll take my pictures in. I work with a very, very beautiful high end group of people that print work for me on paper. I, I, I've gone through several different mediums trying to find which works best. I've worked with metal to, to which has a certain tenacity for colors and, and I worked with acrylic fronted images where I've had an inch thick acrylic in front of my picture to try and simulate liquid looking through liquid. And recently I've been working with paper prints six foot wide. And the people at the printing place, which is called Bauhaus, are excited when I come. They say they've never seen anybody get colors out of their printers like mine. And they all help and they all gather around because they say no one they've seen ever comes in and shows them this kind of work. And I take sustenance from that. I take help from that because I figured these guys see their, their images every day. And that they appreciate and are excited by my work that helps to overcome the. The imposter syndromes and the self doubt.
- [46:43]
B
Absolutely. Clearly your filmmaking career shaped your approach to photography. But what I want to know more is. Which has brought you a deeper sense of joy?
- [46:56]
C
Well, that's a great question. The fact that I was able to make Robin Hood with an. An Arab as a companion to Robin Hood after having a child and watching how much effort and watching my wife go through a cesarean emergency cesarean operation and looking at how my mother and father must have looked at me as a small child. Robin Hood has a certain specialness because it was my attempt to create a show that spoke about altruism being a humanistic heroic statement and putting a Muslim, which was resisted when I first pitched that into a story. Working with a Christian together, sharing the options of helping prevent people from being harmed by an evil source that I was very proud of. And that stays with me because I was trying to speak to the world my son would grow up in with the movie Moll Flanders, which I wrote, I knew for two years prior after writing Robin Hood and get. Having the privilege of seeing that movie get made, that I was going to write a story about a woman who was a historical figure in the 1700s. I didn't know who it was. And I looked at Molly Malone, I looked at Nell Gwynn and I searched for who this character might be that my body needed to write. And I was. It was literally a gut instinct. I physically had a feeling that that story was in. In me. And it was like a. A wedge in my side. And I heard this piece about an orphans and foundlings home in England had been turned into a museum. It was on NPR Radio. And they talked about women leaving letters with the babies they abandoned on the doorsteps hundreds of years ago. And I wonder, what, what does a woman write to a child she's abandoning? And I found myself a short while later having lines come to me. And it was, what say you, child, now that you've heard your mother's story? And I thought that there's this little six year old waif, this little vulnerable orphan kid that's been taken somewhere and she's been read her mother's letter, which is her life story, and why she couldn't keep her. And the little girl says, you could throw me out without a crust to eat before I deny that woman worthy of my love. And then the woman says, prepare yourself, child, for I am that woman. I am your mother. And I was in tears And I knew that I wanted to write a story about a woman whose imperfections had held her back from trapping her child and loving her without letting her know all the things she failed at. And then if the child accepted her, then they could bond in honesty. And I didn't dare tell my male partners that I was thinking of this. And I only shared it with my female assistant who had done a thesis on Shiroes at Brown. And I started off on this organic journey to discover the rest of the story. And it was the most amazing writing experience I've ever had in my life. I yearn to have more writing experiences like that, where the story flowed through me. The certainty that it was going to keep coming, that this stream of emotions and character elements. And it was like seeing jigsaw pieces flying around in my head from other scripts, from jokes that my friends had told me, from plots that I started to write and had failed. These things. And I tell people nothing is lost when you work on something that comes from your spiritual place. These things sort of fit together. And I wrote in my. In literally in my spare time, not letting my partners know. So I did my normal work. But for five weeks, this thing flowed out of me. And with not a substantial effort, we got that movie made. And like any movie was making a movie, as I say, solve a million problems. You end up with a movie at the end of it. We went through that. I was burned out to a crisp as a human being once I finished it. But I had Robin Wright star in it. And I was the first movie she was willing to do after Forrest Gump and she turned down 14 movies. And I had made a deal with myself that I respected the medium so much that if I didn't succeed at making this film to the level of qualities and craftsmanship and emotional power that I felt was necessary in order to. To be a valid filmmaker I would never direct again. And I did feel, finally, when that movie was completed, that I'd done something that was bigger than me. And again, it has a birth scene in it. My daughter's metaphorically being born in that movie. And it's about women being worthy of absolute love despite having imperfections. And I. And I think that the gift was again being told to make a film that spoke to my daughter and the world she was going to grow up in. And I went to the head of MGM at the end of the film process once he was happy with the film. And I asked if I could put my mother's. Dedicated to my mother. And I've dedicated it to my mother in her maiden name so that people didn't necessarily know. But for me, making a film that had a statement about love and trust and invalidating imperfection and making mistakes in life was, was a giant accomplishment. And feeling like I'd done that well enough that I could keep directing if there was opportunities was. It was a tremendous personal sense of accomplishment that is unmeasurable and. And also I was able to help get other movies made like Harriet. I helped to get Harriet made. I'd initiated the script writing process with the original author of the script. I found who Harriet was and managed to sell a studio and financing the development which eventually became the movie that was Oscar nominated. And I'm incredib. Incredibly proud of that because again, it's like the privilege of making something that is about altruism and is about a person of incredible vulnerability turning around and finding strengths to change the world. And those stories need to be told and need to be out there. So I'm very proud of those. And my photography doesn't speak to that kind of potency. But what I'm doing now is just trying to illuminate people to see nature as a part of our life journey, to be, to be responsible for helping to protect it or helping to nurture it. There's a thing called biophilia, which is the nature. If we, if you're sick in a hospital and you can see greenery out the window, apparently you get sick, you get better quicker. There's a thing called forest bathing which is if you. And it came from Japan where people will go through forests and touch the trees and they, they. It stimulates their health centers and it stimulates their chemistry and makes them feel happier and stronger. There's things going on that we, we, we have yet to discover why these, these parts of us are touched by it. We all have. An enormous number of us have vestigial pasture land in our front yards which we mow. Why do we do that? I don't know, but I'm sure it's biologically important. So having a respect for nature also means we have to have a respect for each other because we're 90% water, we're sea creatures, we, we came from the oceans. So when I'm photographing the oceans, I'm cognizant that that's where life started. I'm. I'm shooting things that have 4 billion years in production. So those things are in there, but I don't want to talk about them because then it's like the medicine. It's like saying, I want you to watch Robin Hood learn how to be nice to a Muslim. No, no. I want you to watch Robin Hood have a hellaciously fun time, have cheering session and fall in love with these characters. And at the end of it, oh boy. You learned about altruism and you learned about helping people and you learned that two religious definitively different characters can actually help each other and we don't have to look at each other in such a malicious way that there, there's good things in everybody. So those things are there.
- [56:13]
B
Something of the castor oil and the orange juice. I adore that perspective because it's a way of healing groups and individuals through your art, which in my opinion is the highest call art can ever attend. With your work and with the work that you've presented to the world. How much of your personal healing have you done? Have you felt resolution over, for instance, this gap that you feel over your mother? Have you healed any injuries from old lovers? Have you healed injuries from your childhood? Generally speaking, what has the photographic piece of your work done to heal you?
- [56:53]
C
I'd like to think that my mother didn't think I wasted my life.
- [56:59]
B
That's fantastic. There's no way she could ever say.
- [57:01]
C
That you wasted your life. I don't believe that at all. Well, it, you know, you're uncertain when someone sacrificed themselves in a way to get you into the world and didn't get to experience her own children growing up and see our children growing up. Yeah, I think there's an obligation to do good. I, I, I, I'm so lucky. I was mentored into Hollywood by Norman Jewison and he reached out after seeing my very first dramatic film. I was very scared to write dramatic stories when I was. We started a company when we were 22 years old and my partner John and I made a lot of very visual and very nature oriented and very self generated movies that we were able to sell. But I too scared to write a story. And then I finally a friend of mine, an ally, told me that there was a film group being a series being put together where they were giving $10,000 to filmmakers to make a self initiated story. So I wrote my very first drama at that age of 2032 and it was the most painful experience because I worked with an old documentary crew. I didn't know how to lay out a screenplay, I'd never worked with an actor. And at the same. And then I put together this film that ended up being awful and then doctoring and fixing it and, and then not realizing that that's what you normally do, you actually put all these things together and try it. Oh, that didn't work. Try this. You know. You know. And Norman J. Reached out to me and said he would like to mantle Mimi in Hollywood. And I'm going, holy crow. And I look at my life and I go. My mother would want me to see how far I could go. We had a company, we had stuff, we had clients, we had. We would take the money from the movies we made for profit and put them into the movies that we wanted to make. And I came to Hollywood because of Norman Jew and, and his desire to give back to the industry. And I was, I was the person and I overcame my fears of, you know, that Hollywood was going to laugh at me because I was the church mouse and, and I actually ended up with Stallone. He was making this movie called Fist with Stallone. And still I showed Stallone some of our movies. And Stallone then asked us to start consulting on his films. And he saw us as non Hollywood. He saw. And what we discovered was no one in Hollywood knows how to do. It was fascinating. We thought we were the, the outsiders that were. But the producers didn't know how to operate an editing machine. They didn't know how to go sell a project so that you got your money to get to be able to make your next one. They didn't know how to pick up a camera and run over and grab a shot. They. They didn't know how to write a. A contract because if you didn't have safe contract with the distributor, you never saw any money. We done all of that before we came to Hollywood. My partner had won more. Is John Watson won more awards presenting than any editor in Canada. And I was always giving him this very visual, very florid, very inventive footage. And so suddenly that that gift of Norman bringing us here allowed us to come to Hollywood and start our lives again. And I decided that I must give back as well, like Norman and, and I've made a point of. I wrote a screenplay, a book on screenplay writing which was designed to try and help people in the way that it was the book I would have wanted to read when I was starting out. About the vulnerability, about your voice, about overcoming stress, about not being boxed into rules and, and creating from your natural creative energies. And they may not be the same. There's so many books on screenplay writing which are so frickin rule bound they annoy the shit out of me and they're. They're good for checking, you know, you want to go through a checkbox once you've written a script, great. But each of us is an instrument. And if I forced you to write exactly the way I write and tell you you're wrong if you don't, I'm destroying something of great value with no out of pure ignorance and selfishness. So I've tried to give back to master classes, teach. I taught at USC several times, and I'm trying to arm creative people with tools to take on selling their vision, which doesn't exist yet. There's nothing more magical than having a dream and making it a reality. And, you know, the school system doesn't know how to support that. They don't. They don't teach salesmanship in school. And yet salesmanship is a simple set of rules. First of all, you're selling to a buyer, so you have to figure out what are the buyer's needs in terms of what you can sell them that they will gain from it. Then you have to overcome objections, which is listen sincerely to their issues and find solutions that keep you both have a conversation, build trust. And you know, whether it's getting employed or whether it's getting to sell something that you've created, those. Those things are the things I want to share with people. The final draft screenwriting program, the people that run that run a contest every year where there's seven to 8,000 entries. And I meet with the winners every year to tell them to take advantage of this moment when they've succeeded in getting an award that puts them on the basis of being able to start their careers in Hollywood. And people will listen to them and give them those opportunities and not to imposter syndrome themselves out of it.
- [62:58]
B
Fantastic. You are an amazing alchemist of image, of thought, of feeling, and of personal growth. And I have to say, Pen, truly, it's an honor to have sat with you today. I thank you so much. And hopefully you will have other opportunities to sit with me in the future.
- [63:16]
C
Well, thank you so much. I. I really enjoyed the opportunity to explore in the terms and the goals that you have created around your show, which I find fascinating.
- [63:27]
B
Thank you so much. I'm. I'm truly honored by that. Take care of yourself, and I'll talk to you soon. All right, Lovely.
- [63:32]
C
Thank you.
- [63:33]
B
Bye. Bye.
- [63:37]
A
Pen Densham reminds us that imagination is not an escape, but a form of perception. That the world is not simply seen, but felt. And that the camera in the hands of a true visionary can become an instrument of contemplation intuition and quiet revelation. His photographs do not merely depict nature. They translate its image, inner life, its turbulence, its tenderness, its evanescent truths. They are mirrors, mandalas, dreams. They invite us to remember that beauty is not ornamental but essential, not decorative, but medicinal. Pen, I would like to thank you personally for widening our field of vision and for reminding us that the unseen, the unspoken and the unrepeatable are often the closest to the soul. For my listeners, you may explore Pen's work, his exhibitions and his book Qualia at pendenshamphotography.com this has been the observable unknown. Until next time, stay curious, stay awake, and keep looking where others do not.