PixelatedImage Blog

February 2008, Mongolia.

This is one in a series of shots of this little boy that I return to over and over again. He packed more energy and personality into his little frame than any child I’ve met, and I’ve met many, many children. He had a look in his eyes from the moment we started that said “put your seat-belt on, Photo-man, because you are my plaything today and I am going to exhaust you before you can crank out 100 frames on your fancy camera. Think your camera focuses pretty fast, don’tcha?” And then the sugar kicked in, red-lined, and I started earning my keep. Eventually we wrapped him in that blanket like a burrito to slow him down. It didn’t.

What you do not see is the sparse frozen hillside and the pervasive smog of Ulaan Batar’s many coal-burning powerplants under which his family’s borrowed ger (yurt) tent sits. You do not see the poverty. I framed it that way because he doesn’t see it either, so pre-occupied was he with growing up, imagining that he was Spiderman, and chasing his beleaguered German Shepherd puppy. This little boy had great hope, imagination, and kindness. He almost came home in my duffle bag.

Almost anytime I speak of my job with others they ask how heartbreaking and difficult it is, and to be honest there are few trips that don’t find me lying in bed one night with tears rolling into my ears as I stare at the ceiling. But it’s equally true that on these journeys the time I spend with the poor teaches me more about those things I could never buy - hope, dignity, strength, even joy.

Exif: Canon EOS 5D, 24070/2.8l at 38mm, ISO 100, 1/100, f/7.0

Photograph taken for, and property of World Vision.

Chapter One of McNally’s The Moment It Clicks is called “Shoot What You Love.” Much wisdom in those few words, there is.

If there’s an imbalance in the learning of the photographic art these days it’s in the great deal of attention we give to the technical minutiae of the craft to the neglect of vision and passion. It results, to put it crassly, in the photographic equivalent of playing with yourself. It might be helpful for discovery, but as a means of expression it’s rather useless. There are some who will be content to do this all their lives, but at some point most of us want more.

The eye is not the only organ involved in photography, the heart is vitally important. The better your “eye”, the better your craft. But it’s equally true that your craft will be wasted if you do not shoot from the heart.

Abandoning my other metaphor, let me try this one; if you’re happy with photography that is the literary equivalent of technical writing, then knock yourself out. But it’s the passionate stuff - the sonnets, the dramas, the tragedies, the poetry, that long echo in the human heart and captures our imagination. Shoot a poem, not an instruction manual. People will gladly die for truth and beauty, rarely has anyone done the same for mere accuracy or precision.

By all means memorize tables of hyperfocal distances if you must, but do it so you can better shoot your passion. On the other hand let’s not become so polar in our return to the emotional side of the art that we make the error of abandoning technique; one serves the other and it’s a disservice to your passion to neglect your craft.

In short, check your geek:artist ratio. Make adjustments as needed.

Moose Blogs A Piece of Paper
Sometimes ya just shoot nothing good, but that’s part of the process. Read this, from Moose Peterson’s blog.

Chase Jarvis Renounces Light Meters
Chase has a good post on forsaking the old hand-held light meter. Here’s the wisdom:

But one thing is for sure: don’t ever confuse all the silly little gadgets and the silly little numbers with what it means to simply and eloquently capture a moment, a scene, or the essence of a human emotion - whatever it is that truly inspires you. You’ll be much better off for it, I promise.
Read the whole thing here.

Photo-Guru Says “There is No Un-Suck Filter”
Scott Kelby on his 7-Point System. The question: Is there anything the 7-Point System can’t fix? The answer:

Absolutely. It can’t fix bad photography….The System just won’t make a bad photo good. It’ll make a decent photo better, a good photo great, and a great photo outrageous, but it can’t fix bad composition, an out-of-focus image, or a bad concept. You’re always better off getting it right in the camera. That way, you can spend less time fixing it in Photoshop and more time finishing it in Photoshop….

Did you get that? I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again and again - there is no un-suck filter. Seeing Photoshop as a finishing tool, and not a fixing tool, results in better photography. Vincent Versace talks in terms of Photoshop being an emery-board not a jackhammer, and I think that’s a helpful outlook.

Check out Kelby’s 7-Point System For Adobe Photoshop CS3 here

I’m en route from Tampa to Vancouver, briefly stopped in Denver for a coffee and a change of planes.

On Friday I spent the day with Scott Kelby, had lunch, did some shooting at the Tarpon sponge docks, did a very quick one-take interview for Photoshop TV, and then went out to dinner at Maggiano’s Little Italy. Maggiano’s was spectacular, and I’ll let you know when the Photoshop TV episode airs.

In between all those things there was some scheming and I hope to be able to share those details soon with you. In the mean time, let me say this: you will never meet a nicer group of folks than the gang that runs the National Association of Photoshop Professionals. If you haven’t joined the gang yet, and you spend any amount of time in Photoshop, it’s time to send in your dues and start drinking the kool-aid.

Scott Kelby is truly one of the nicest, kindest men I’ve met and the team he’s assembled is second to none. Scott’s got me convinced to go to Photoshop World in Vegas from September 4-6, 2008 - the line-up of teachers looks spectacular. More information here.

We just had a spot open up on the Lumen-Dei tour in Kashmir, which leaves us now with 2 free spots - if you’re looking for an adventure and a chance to work on your chops in a spectacular environment, now would be a good time to talk us. More info here.

Rumours had me all excited about the possible announcement of the Canon 5D Mk II on April 24, but once again the rumour mill let us down and Canon’s going to keep u waiting a little longer.

Lastly, a word about “my gear is better than your gear” syndrome. While I was at the NAPP intergalactic HQ we were discussing a recent string of comments on Scott’s blog that got a little heated. It all started because Scott made some comments about Lightroom and did not give corresponding comments about Apple’s Aperture. And it all went downhill from there. So. Two unsolicited rants for all of you who might ever, ever, be tempted to go there.

Rant the first.
A blog is generally not an effort in unbiased journalism. It’s personal, and its content is decided by the author. Unless we are paying for content we have no justification for the entitlement that seems to get tossed about. If you don’t get what you hoped for on one blog, go to another, but forgo the complaining.

Rant the second.
My choice of hardware and software in no way implies that your choice is wrong. Something’s gotta give here folks, and any time we spend on the ramparts defending our brand/platform of choice is time we aren’t out working on our craft. If you’re so sure your favourite brand is that much better, then go out and create something so true, beautiful, and creative, that it silences the critics. Until then, go work on your art. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it - Gear is Good, Vision is Better. Make a choice, let others make theirs, and then get on with it. A carpenter who loves his tools more than his craft is not an artisan, he’s just a tool-enthusiast. Have a great weekend. Go shoot something you’re passionate about. (Baring that, shoot something colourful, like shells. Or something.)

Beginning to feel the need to be out in the field again; walking, shooting, exercising my eye and my passion.

I’m in a bit of a hiatus right now between assignments. I head to Florida tomorrow, then in July to Hawaii for a week to teach photography - at this point it’s not until September that I head back to Kashmir, and then a month in Kathmandu, and if plans go well Christmas and some of January in Cuba. In between there somewhere are a few weeks on assignment with World Vision and I’m already beginning to wonder where they’ll send me this time.

So as I wait, I’m flipping through Lonely Planet’s The Travel Book, and my shelf of LP country-guides, and dreaming. On a tangent, one of my favourite movies is High Fidelity and it’s given me a tendency to make spontaneous top ten lists, but I’m rubbish at lists of albums and songs, so I make my own. Back to the subject at hand; here is my current top ten list of countries I would like to shoot in again, of for the first time.

1. Cuba.
I want to get there before US foreign policy changes and the embargo lifts. Don’t get me wrong, it’s high time the embargo was gone, but I want to shoot there before that happens. Hopefully that’s happening sooner than later.

2. Lalibela, Ethiopia.
One of the coolest places I’ve ever been. Possible THE coolest. I was there for Orthodox Christmas a couple years back, but my time was far too short. I’d like to go back for a couple weeks around the same time, or for Timkat.

3. Vietnam.
Ever since reading Anthony Bourdain’s assessment of Vietnamese cuisine and culture in his book A Cook’s Tour, I’ve wanted to go.

4. Mongolia.
I loved Mongolia, but want to return in the summer. Two to three weeks exploring the steppes and living in a ger would suit me just fine. If I could go during Nadaam that would be a bonus, so long as I could get out of UB for the festival.

5. The ’stans.
All of them. Or any of them. But not in the winter.

6. Iquitos, Peru.
Loved it, but it’s been a long, long time and I’d like to go back with the eye I have now. Iquitos is the largest city in the world inaccessible by a road, and there’s just something about having a beer in the cooler evening breeze while watching the Amazon river float by. While there a side-trip to Machu Picchu.

7. Galapagos Islands.
Three words: blue. footed. boobies.

8. Tibet.
I’m hoping to make a short detour while I am in Kathmandu in October, but if I do it’ll be too short. I’d love to take my time there.

9. The Sudan. Or Mali.

10. Rural China.
Way, way out of the way. And a couple days hiking on the Great Wall.

Of course, these will have changed by tomorrow morning. So - you have two weeks and money to burn - where would you take your cameras?

*I’ll be in transit all day tomorrow, and Friday is taken up with clandestine meetings with big, important people. I’ll post late Friday, or sometime this weekend. Until then, talk amongst yourselves.

January 2007, Nizzamudin, Delhi, INDIA

This is one of the first images I shot in what has come to be my favourite countries. India is, simply, an astonishing place.

This is the shrine at Nizzamudin, a Suffi place of worship and one of the more magical places I’ve ever been. It’s a place where you can easily lose time and space and truly forget when and where you are. I was there with Matt Brandon - another first - and as he led me into this space I watched him speak with vendors and stall-keepers in his fluent Urdu, feeling very much like an outsider. So I put my camera to my face and quietly shot what came to me, feeling like I didn’t belong and hoping that hiding behind the camera would make me invisible.

This image, two men drinking chai adjacent to the shrine, sat in my archives for well over a year before I re-discovered it - a witness to the fact that images don’t always say the same things, sometimes they resonate only after they’ve sat with us for a while. Sometimes our expectations of what images we “should” have captured get in the way of truly seeing the ones we did capture. This is that image for me.

And now, a couple trips to India later, this image more and more captures that time and place like none of my others. It captures for me the relationships, the gender roles, the way people take time to drink chai and talk and just “be.” It captures the agelessness of a place completely obsolesced by the modern world, and my longing to be in such a time and place where people slow down and move a little slower. It also pokes at my sense of injustice over the role of women in the majority world; reminds me of African women doing laundry or making meals while men sit lazily in the shade and talk the day away. Makes me uncomfortable, throws me emotionally off-kilter as I place myself on the floor beside those men and feel her presence there behind me. Makes me feel guilty, unable to enjoy my chai. Reminds me that while I’d left Canada thousands of miles to the west, I’d never really left my own culture. And maybe she had nothing at all to do with those men, though her proximity suggests otherwise. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but still even that is revealing. This photograph probably implies as much about me as it does them.

We stayed an hour or so, it felt like a day. We ate mutton on saffron rice at a first floor restaurant on the way out - one of the best meals of my life, I can still taste the mutton on my fingers and hear the din of the street below (should wash my hands and get my ears checked) Longing to return. Only 145 days.

Exif: EOS5D, ISO 800, 1/3200, f/2.0, 135/2.0 L lens. No idea why my ISO was so high. It’d been dark in the arcades and alleys, I was probably distracted.

Three final things I wanted to leave you with in the On Design series.

1. Balance.
It doesn’t fit into the C.R.A.P. acronym we’ve been looking at - but your material should have a sense of balance - the elements and the white space (negative space) should balance with each other so the piece (logo, page, business card, whatever…) doesn’t feel like it’s leaning. If you’ve been looking at a piece for a while take a breather from it, then come back and look at it with fresh eyes. Asking someone else to look at it doesn’t hurt either.

2. Embrace the white space.
The more cluttered your design, the less the eye will want to move through it, or be lead in the direction you are hoping. Being generous with the margins and spacings, when it’s appropriate, will give the elements in the design more impact. Filling it to the gills with elements only dilutes the impact of each.

3. If design is not your strength, farm it out.
Amateur design is a sure way to communicate to an intended market that you yourself are an amateur. It may not be true, you may be a brilliant photographer, but if you send out marketing material that looks sloppy you are signalling that you do not understand the importance of visual language - and that’s bad. Focus on what you are good at, farm out the design as soon as you can. But don’t let that stop you from learning. The more you learn about design, the stronger your photography will be.

Be sure to pick up the Non-Designer’s Design Book, or The Robin Williams Design Workshop both by Robin Williams and both available from Peachpit Press.

Remember to send yor business card by email to enter the CRAPPY Design contest. You have until the end of the month to send in your cards - the winner gets a 300x Lexar 4GB Compact Flash card. Email’em to me.

My limited edition monograph, The Pixelated Image, made Scott Kelby’s Top 5 List today. It’s a long list of favourites from gear to books to teachers to places. The Pixelated Image made it to his Top 5 Photography Books That Will Inspire You list. Quite an honour coming from Mr. Kelby.

This book is a collector’s item. Only 100 will ever be printed, they’re hand-signed and numbered, and they aren’t cheap. The funds I am raising from the sale of this book are going towards my Women and Children First project which is a creative funding solution to get me shooting for NGOs working in the developing world with women and orphans and vulnerable children. Lots of great groups out there need photo-resources for fund-raising and advocacy, this will help me get there for one or two of them.

More information here.

Inspiration is the intangible we all run on as creatives. It’s the in-breathing that gives us the spark, the a-ha! moment. It’s what pulls us out of those ruts. No matter how you do it, you need to be aware of what inspires you so you can pro-actively pursue it. Especially when you’re in the rut and can’t see over the sides. A year ago I wrote this post on the nature of inspiration - if you’re looking for some, give this a read.

In the mean time - comments are open - what inspires you?

This is REO, a 6-week old Cocker Spaniel I had a chance to photograph this week-end. One of my photographic ventures is RedCollar Photographic. My passion is shooting the world and creating photo-resources for the humanitarian and NGO community but I can only be out on the field so much. So, RedCollar is a something I’m rolling out to keep me out of mischief while I am in town and not already doing commercial work here in Vancouver.

I’d encourage those of you who struggle to make a living at this to diversify. Target your marketing to each individual market - don’t be a jack-of-all-trades shooter - and make sure you specialize in each of those markets, but intentionally diversifying your markets to a couple areas of really solid expertise is an excellent way to make sure you keep shooting.

So why do I photograph dogs and their people? It was an intelligent lateral move. Much of what I shoot for World Vision involves shooting children and animals. Shooting people and pets here at home allows me to extend my expertise in one area to another, while allowing me to hone my skills for my primary client. Each one feeds the other. I’d be less likely to shoot weddings (however, I have shot in war-zones with the UN kicking around, and that’s like several weddings I’ve been to…). It’s also a market without high-end competition, and one in which people are heavily invested emotionally - which means solid income.

Diversification, when done right, allows you to retain your positioning without diluting your apparent expertise. When done right it can be a powerful tool for staying in the black.

Check out the rest of Reo’s images at redcollar.ca

May’s wallpaper. Shot just outside the houseboat in Kashmir on last year’s Lumen Dei trip. Clicking the image should bring up a full-sized image. Click the thumbnail and a full-sized (1280×853) image will open in a new window. Right clicking that should allow you to save it and make it a desktop wallpaper. It’s early this month, mostly in an attempt to wrap my head around the new blog functionality.

In the migration to the new blog earlier wallpapers have been deleted. Call them casualties of progress. I thought about keeping them, but then what kind of sicko wants old, out-of-date calendars? We don’t encourage that kind of aberrant behavior around here.

Speaking of Lumen Dei, there are now less than 150 days until we converge on Delhi. We have 1, possibly 2 remaining spaces - if you’ve been stalling, now’s the time. (Get the “what the heck is he talking about?” here: Lumen-Dei.com)

**If these are too small for you, leave a comment with your preferred screen resolution and I’ll start offering a larger one.