It's November 18th, 2006, and this of The Candid Frame.

It's good to have you.

Today's guest is a photographer that I met while I was in Santa Fe, Raul Toussand.

I started becoming aware of Raul while I was down in Santa Fe, not as a result of seeing

him work or seeing his photographs at first, but really by seeing his students work. We were in a

small town in Las Vegas, New Mexico, and I started seeing these, his students taking pictures and portraits of people, and they

were getting very, very close to their subjects, using really wide-angle lenses.

And that's very unusual, because people, when they're usually taking pictures of people,

are not very comfortable with getting very close.

And in talking to the students, they were telling me that Raul was really big about getting

very, getting very tight and getting very intimate with your subjects.

And that became very clear that that's a style that he applies to his own work.

And it's a great effect, I think.

If you take a look at his website, which I'll have a link for on the blog,

you'll see that that intimacy is a big part of his photography,

whether it's photographing people in Mexico,

or whether it's his underwater work

and where he's getting very intimate with some sharks.

I don't know whether I'd do that, but he manages to produce some phenomenal photographs as a result.

And I think you're really going to enjoy the interview.

He decided to start a photographic career after working at Kodak for some

years and chose a very difficult date to begin his business, not knowingly, but just this is a result

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