Platypus Theater Archives

What's a platypus? By definition, it's an Australian aquatic egg-laying mammal, having a soft pliable bill shaped like a duck's, webbed feet, and sleek grey fur – at least that is what I told my co-workers at the Palm Beach Post when I signed up for a Platypus Workshop.

I was becoming a video junkie...Suddenly, my day job--a still-photography veteran photojournalist--seemed to come up quite a bit short in comparison to some of the new-wave storytelling techniques I was seeing on the Internet.

At the end of the two-week course you'll have a 3- to 5-minute story that will probably surprise you. Mine sure surprised me.

When I was first asked to help produce television to go with one of my newspaper stories, I was outraged.

Just as I was getting prepared to go off to the Democratic Convention in Boston, I got last-minute e-mail from David Lyman, the director of the Maine Photo Workshop. He had a last-minute cancellation from an instructor who was going to teach a two-week Digital Video course, and he wanted to know if I could fill in."

My first event was the Pug Halloween Party and that's when I realized that "Pug People" were a unique group.

I now observe life not only in moments, but also in sequences.

I started photographing blues musicians years ago while on assignment for the National Geographic Traveler magazine."

The film tells a personal story of what it was like to be an "embed" and presents a war you didn't see on TV."