Remembering Steve Jobs, his home Palo Alto

Even though we knew his stepping down from CEO last Summer was a foreshadowing of what might be looming, I wasn’t prepared for the news on Tuesday. When I heard that he was gone a wave of sadness hit me.  True it wasn’t a sudden and jarring slap like John Lennon’s death, but it hit hard nonetheless.

Steve was our generation’s grand wizard, transforming otherwise mundane objects into fun, creative and empowering machines. For those of us in the visual arts, he helped us open doors that might otherwise have remain locked.

Flowers in front of Steve’s home

We know he was no saint, but dang  he somehow managed to get it right so often that we could set our clocks by his next cool release.

I stopped by his house yesterday and was surprised to see that so many people had managed to find it, how so?  I walked around quietly and appropriately getting images with my iPhone. It was a calm and orderly gathering, but clearly not just the locals who knew where he lived. In fact when I went back today to get some more images with my 5D Mark II, one of the plain clothes police, asked me what lens I was using I replied that it was a 24-70, f 2.8 and we talked about cameras for a bit. When I asked him how how these people had found his house, he replied, “we don’t know, it’s not on the web, but they’ve come from all over the world as far as Hong Kong and Russia.”

I’ve always been amazed at how accessible and open his home is, on the corner of a quiet street in Palo Alto. Far, far from a billionaire’s secluded compound. In fact, we’ve often seen him around Palo Alto, at restaurants, on the street and even the old fashioned Peninsula Creamery.  I’m sure his refusal to wall himself off from the very people  he was able to touch with Apple’s cool stuff, allowed him to stay in touch with us– and with his wizardry somehow know what we wanted next.

We’ll miss Steve, he made a huge  difference. He’s given us new age tools to work our craft, to listen and share and get work done in a new cool way. He became part of our culture, a like a Beatle of high tech leaving us with tons of cool memories and phrases like this for all artists to remember: “Real artists ship” — meaning you gotta get your work out there,  better yet get it sold and shipped off! Annie Leibovitz, Picasso, Ansel Adams — they certainly shipped!

Goodbye for now Steve, we’ll remember you with every click, touch and most importantly, every piece of art you  have helped us to ship.