Loss of a great photographer

The composition is already there," photographer Jay Maisel once told me. "All you you to do is find it."

Maisel understands composition better than most of us who view life through a camera viewfinder. His works about his beloved New York are the art of photography at its best.

The same can be said of Helmut Newton, the German-born high-fashion photographer who died Saturday after an auto accident in Los Angeles.

Newton loved the female form and his stark, black-and-white nudes redefined nude photography. Some called his work pornographic, but there was nothing pandering or exploitive about Newton's work. He loved the human form and that love came through in his work.

Doctors say the 83-year-old Newton suffered a heart attack and crashed his car into a wall as he was leaving the Chauteau Marmont Hotel, his winter home.

As long as we're talking photography, let me add a shameless plug for our new studio's web site (Blue Ridge Creative). We've worked long and hard on our new studio in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. If you're traveling on the Blue Ridge Parkway this summer, take Virginia Route 8 (the exit for Floyd) and come see us.