PixelatedImage Blog

Last month we launched the new Craft & Vision website and invited readers past and present to leave honest reviews of the books. As a thank you for the participation we put an iPad on the line and this morning I’m announcing the lucky winner of that iPad. So huge congrats to Pam Idel! Pam, we’ll drop you a line and get details but I think we’re going to send a gift certificate, so if you want to upgrade or pick something more useful to you, then you’re free to do that.

The rest of you? Huge thank you! It was a year ago I went to Thailand with The Legendary H and he planted the seeds of this idea in my mind, and when TEN came out it changed the direction of things for me and got me involved in a larger community than I ever imagined – and you all are that community, so thank you. We’ve made our purpose to align ourselves with the amateurs – the ones who do this for the love of it (regardless of whether you also make money at this) and I hope our passion comes through. We’re committed to keep offering inspiration and education for ridiculous prices; if you keep reading, we’ll keep looking for new photographers and new books.

Now, the big news for those of you who didn’t win – and there are a few hundred of you -  because I’m feeling the love and I had a nice chat with the folks over at Adobe, they’ve put a full CS5 Master Collection on the line for us. Mac or PC, depends on who wins. This is the mothership of collections, and the one I use daily. Last I checked this was retailing for $2600, so it’s up there as one of the most expensive give-aways we’ve ever had. Stay tuned later this week for the full details!

September wallpapers are here, in both 2560×1600 and 1280×853. *The first versions I posted gave you one extra day, which is good for some but confusing the rest of the world. They’re fixed now.

I shot this in Iceland in the driving rain, with a 24mm/3.5 tilt/shift lens. So struck by the vastness of space in Iceland, and the almost tiny influence of man on the landscape, I decided to explore some of those themes. This is one of my favourite images from that trip, and it now hangs large – 40×60 – on canvas in my home. You can explore all the Iceland images, and my process in creating them, on September 9th when we launch the next eBook in the Craft & Vision library.

I’m off to Ladakh, Thailand, and the Kathmandu valley on Sept.10. After that it gets quiet, but I promise I’ll check in when I can with a postcard.

Click the image above for the smaller wallpaper. Click HERE for the larger one. And if you want one for the iPad, sans monthly calendar, click the iPad:

iPhone shot of dolphins swimming under the bow of the zodiac. Maui.

A quick note to say hello. Kind of feeling guilty for being here and not dropping a line. We’ve been having an amazing time here -yesterday I spent the day in a zodiac off the coast of Lanai, a small island itself just off the coast of Maui. Snorkelling, underwater sea caves, incredible weather, and – most amazing of all a chance to swim, unexpectedly, among a pod of hundreds of spinner dolphins. Can’t begin to describe the magic of it. I’m paying for my indiscretions today, though. Clearly I the sunscreen I thought I was applying liberally wasn’t as liberal – or effective – as I thought.

The festival kicked off last night with a reception, and this morning with a keynote. I spoke about Vision-Driven Photography and the need to discover and express our vision. Before that I spent three days relaxing, and chewing through Seth Godin’s book Linchpin which you should read. Run, don’t walk, to your local library or bookstore and get this book.

My friend Sabrina Henry told me I needed to read Linchpin and I resisted because while Seth Godin is a scary-smart guy he kind of writes like a grade 12 student and I find it hard getting past his writing to the wisdom beneath. Not so with Linchpin; it’s still not particularly brilliant writing as far as craft goes but the content is incredible. It’s been a long time since a book got so much of my attention, marginalia, and circles and arrows.

At it’s core, Linchpin is a discussion of the value of the artist in our culture, and the necessity of being an artist in this economy. It’s got lots of brain food in it, and it connected some dots for me, but it’s also profoundly pragmatic – especially for those in the creative arts who think they have to be less unique, and blend into the crowd, to be a commodity rather than a brand, in order to make it. It also, and here’s a difference, has a deeply human side to it. Anyways, Linchpin really inspired me and with it Seth Godin moved in my thinking from marketing guy to join the likes of Hugh MacLeod (Ignore Everybody),  Steven Pressfield (The War of Art), and writers like Anne Lamott whose combined voices all say that the hard work of art matters, that creation has value and that making a life and a living at this stuff is more likely the less we sell out.

Anyways, love it here. If you’re here in Maui at the festival, please do introduce yourself to me. Corwin and I return to the mainland Monday morning and then the sprint to get ready for 6 weeks in Asia begins.

This is not Hawaii. Just a random beach. But, oh – the batteries that once got recharged here! I love the beach.

Aloha! I read this this morning over coffee,

“The batteries that keep my cameras working might as well die in the darkness of my camera bag if my personal batteries are not constantly recharged by the direct encounters with the natural world that first gave me the burning desire to interpret that experience in photographs.”

Galen Rowell, The Inner Game of Outdoor Photography.

I have nothing to add, except that this is a book well worth reading.

It’s Monday and I am now roughing it at the Hyatt Regency in Maui in preparation for the Maui Photo Festival. I’m hoping to do some actual relaxing and not planning to do much photography but I may find my personal batteries charge faster than I expect, in which case I’ll drop you a postcard and let you know how things are going. Otherwise, you can find me on the beach with Galen Rowell and something cold and wet to drink.

Andrew S. Gibson’s Magic of Black & White series has been one of the most well-received series we’ve produced. Andrew continues his clear teaching about Black & White in the third of the series which we’re launching today. The Magic of Black & White – Part III, Nine Photos, takes us through nine of his gorgeous black & white images with the goal of teaching more advanced techniques to give your images more subtlety and power. Clearly taught in Photoshop, and 5 of the lessons in Photoshop Elements, Andrew takes us through Toning, Split Toning, Exposure Blending, Textures, and the creation of Diptyches and Triptyches, all without losing sight of the idea that our work should be driven by intent with the goal of creating photographs that honour the Artist’s need for expression and the Geek’s need for excellence of craft. And all that without getting mired down – the examples and the illustrations Andrew provides compliment his clear teaching style and make this book a pleasure to read.

We’ve tried really hard to consistently over-deliver on these eBooks – to keep the price to $5 but give you $20 – or more – worth of content, whether that’s inspiring or instructing. Andrew’s given us another book that does all of this really well. If you’ve been looking to take your Black & White photography to new levels and explore new ways of expressing yourself in this elegant medium, this whole series is well worth your attention.

CraftandVision.com is running its usual promotion: use the code WHITE4 when you checkout and get $1 off Andrew’s eBook OR grab five or more eBooks and use the code WHITE20 to get 20% off. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST August 22, 2010.

Iceland, August, 2010

Last week Owen Shifflett wrote a post on Viget.com that made the rounds. I tweeted it. Chase blogged about it. And it got rounds and rounds of kudos and attaboys, among them my own voice. And then something started to bug me. Owen’s title – How Inspiration Killed – Then Ate – Creativity, says it all. It lays the blame for the death of creativity (I didn’t get the memo on this one, but moving on…) at the feet of our need for inspiration and the usual imitation and derivation that occurs in its wake. It’s (still) an article well worth reading. I suggest you read it before you read this post, but once you’re done there, come back here and let me throw my towel in the ring in defence of Inspiration.

OK, done?

Here are my thoughts. Consider them thunk for your consumption and discussion. Comments, as always, are open.

1. This is a case of mistaken identity. What we now call the phenomenon of inspiration is often Inspiration’s doppleganger, Imitation. To be clear about this, Inspiration means to inspire. It means to breathe in, it is the gathering of raw materials. Before we engage in any creative endeavor we must have raw materials. The more we increase our inputs the more raw materials we have to engage the “what if?” of creative processes. What we do with that in-spiration is up to us. We can incubate the stuff, work within constraints, and do something true and unique (hard road) or we can peel the skin off the old stuff and make it look new, look like ours. But faulting an essential part of the creative process for our natural inclination to take the easy road isn’t helpful.

2. Everything is derivative. Ultimately there is nothing that is not created in the context of other stuff. We see two things, combine them and juxtapose them to create something new. We see something we don’t like and we react and move in the opposite direction. But to advocate a creativity free from true inspiration is a step in the wrong direction, which, by the way, is not what I believe Shifflett is suggesting. I think he’s simply using the word the way so many do and in doing so making his point well to those that use it that way. The danger is that in so-doing we villainize an important part of the creative process and suddenly we’re heading in the same direction Owen is arguing against – the death of creativity.

3. Adapt but don’t Adopt. What is needed is an adaptive approach to creative processes, not an adoptive one. In the words of Bono – every poet is a cannibal, every artist is a thief. We all draw from sources outside ourselves. The challenge is in finding your own voice, in adapting elements, thoughts, processes – whatever – and not not in adopting them. One strips former things down, re-purposes them, combines them with parts from myriad other sources still, and takes us to a different place than when we started. The other just likes what he sees, gets “inspired”, steals the original idea, and makes it his own with a can of spray paint. One is creative, results in something new and comes from the in-spiration of many sources; the other is just imitation and while it might well be the first step in learning your craft, it won’t get you any further.

4. Inspiration Comes From Working. Inspiration, in the rare sense that it appears like that bolt from the blue (it never is, but let’s pretend) still comes from working. It doesn’t come from flipping through a book looking for an idea. It comes from putting your camera in your hand and being honest with yourself, and learning your craft, embracing your constraints.

In case it’s not clear, I’m advocating (I think) for the same thing Owen Shifflett is, but I think I want the word Inspiration back. I’d rather re-align our use of the word to its original meaning than cave in to a popular use that leads us in the wrong direction. The more we understand how creative processes work, particularly our own process, and that includes a proper understanding of inspiration or increasing our inputs (and then using them for good and not for evil) the more life and breath we give to our creativity. Creativity is far from death, but if we deny it the need to breathe in and out we’re stepping closer to the morgue.

Updated

5. One more thought in post-script: I think there’s another issue here and that’s where we go to find our inspiration. If our primary source of inspiration is other photographers then I think our work becomes not only more derivative than usual, but we begin to draw from a thinner gene pool and, well, y’all know how that turns out. No one wants to see the results of our artistic in-breeding. We should be drawing from the widest pool, breathing in the purest air. By all means see what other photographers have done in order to learn from them, but when it comes to filling our creative wells, it might just be best to drill into the deeper, purer sources, not just the groundwater downstream from everyone else. I’m not sure if those metaphors work for you, but they do for me.

I don’t normally do this, I usually save my shameless self-promotion for posts of their own, but if this is something you want to explore more,  I discuss creativity and inspiration (the good kind, not the evil twin) in two $5 eBooks – The Inspired Eye and The Inspired Eye II, both available on the Craft & Vision website. Both books look at ways in which creativity happens, and ways to hone your own processes.

There are two organizations I am particularly excited to be involved with right now – one is Focus For Humanity which is an incredible initiative aimed at providing grants to photographers to partner with NGO’s, the other is the International Guild of Visual Peacemakers, an initiative aimed at breaking down stereotypes and opening dialogue between cultures. Both are a little counter-intuitive, both are willfully breaking previous molds of how these kinds of things have always been done, and both have some amazing people with big hearts and sizable brains behind them.

The IGVP has finally launched their website and I’d encourage you to head over to VISUALPEACEMAKERS.ORG and take a look, see if it’s something you’d like to get behind and be involved with. Focus For Humanity Foundation is HERE and you should make that your next stop. The IGVP and Focus For Humanity play nicely with each other and I like to think of them as a left hand and a right hand working together to similar ends. Huge kudos to Mario and Marco, and their respective teams, for putting their hearts and souls into these groups.

Craft & Vision is proud to be a supporter to both, and in the coming months we’ll look for new ways to partner together to build the community of photographers and visual storytellers who seek to use their talents and time for good (and not for evil.)

Me. Shooting in the driving rain in Iceland. Cold. Wet. Deliriously happy.

I’ve never shot in the rain, drizzle, dew, fog, and general “water coming out of the sky in every possible form” as much as I did in Iceland the last couple weeks. There were days my boots were so wet I thought they’d never recover – they were soaked right through, and they’re the expensive GoreTex ones. But as wet and, at times, miserable as I was, there were also times I could have stayed out for hours. See the shot above? Wetter than I’ve ever been outside of a lake or swimming pool, but I was shooting images I was excited about, one which particularly captivates me, and if I’d not got out of the truck, thrown my rain gear on and braved the elements, I’d still be dry and wouldn’t have those images. I didn’t go to Iceland to be dry, but to make photographs.

No one likes shooting in the rain. OK, some do, but they’re unreasonable and suspicious. I’m closer to the “I might have rabies, that’s how much I dislike water” end of the spectrum. But I’d rather make beautiful photographs than stay dry and since the worst weather makes for some amazing environments to make beautiful images, we can either suck it up or find a way to tolerate it.

Worried about shooting in the rain? Scared your $3000 camera will die the moment the first drop of water hits it? It’s a genuine concern, but most cameras these days are pretty resilient. The only failures I’ve had have happened out of the blue on a sunny day, not when covered in water, so statistically I’m probably better shooting in the rain. So my first recommendation is this – stop freaking out about it. Bring a small towel or bandana and wipe the camera off as you can. I use Buffs, a brandname bandana/tube thingy that you can wear on your head (but I put them on my cameras). Protects from elements like dust and rain, comes off fast, and dries the water nicely. I always have one or two of these. Very handy.

I carry a small trekking umbrella in my bag, and that’s come very much in handy for keeping the rain of the lens while shooting, as has the pocket of large lens cloths I always carry. The big worry for me is not my camera dying – because it hasn’t yet – it’s the worry that I’ll get a great photograph only to later notice big rain drops on the lens are noticeable in the image.

I also carry a Think Tank Photo Hydrophobia – and while it’s meant for a camera with a 70-200 lens, it works well with some fussing around for almost any lens shorter than that as well, and while I loathe rain covers, this is the best one I’ve found, far better than the fussy, pain in the butt Kata one I also own and never use. Make sure your camera bag has a good rain cover too – all the Think Tank Photo bags come with one, and my Kiboko bag also has a built in cover as well.

Lastly, a pair of good rain pants and a good rain jacket. Well, I thought they were good until I spent so much time in the driving rain. Now I’m thinking a yellow rubber rain slicker, pants, and wellington boots wouldn’t be such a bad idea. if you wear glasses, a baseball hat works well to keep the drizzle of the lenses in a light drizzle. If the wind picks up, ain’t nothing keeping those specs dry.

Don’t be reckless with your gear, but if you’re wanting to get out and shoot in some really great light and weather, there’s more mood on a rainy day than ten sunny days put together. Stop freaking out, bring an umbrella, put a bag over the camera if you have to, but my tactic for shooting in the rain is to stop fussing, keep the lens dry, and wipe the camera when I can, and go make some photographs.

Within a stone’s throw of the Arctic Circle in Iceland. Photo: Dave Delnea

It’s been a while since an unapologetic gear post but I need to get this out there. I love the Gitzo fleece jacket. It’s not right for a guy to love a jacket this much, much less a jacket that raises my nerd factor to 11. Hell, this jacket goes up to 13, it’s that nerdy. But oh do I love it, and as most of my shooting happens in places where even a vest is too hot, this was my first time to really wear this miracle of recycled water bottle multi-pocketed fleecy goodness. Here’s the official image of it being worn by a man who also models for colouring books, only he looks less nerdy when he wears it. Could be the hair.

The jacket’s not light – but you can put pro-sized bodies and lenses in it, carry more CF cards, lens cleaners, hats, mits, Moleskine journals, flashlights, Leatherman multi-tools, than one person should own, let alone carry on their person while also looking like a member of a Special Ops bowling team or SWAT softball league. Assuming men with that much testosterone and access to guns would have such clubs and/or leagues, this would be the jacket they would wear. But I bet they’d embroider something cool on the back instead of just GITZO, which is what it says now at the base of the neck.

Seriously, this is an incredible jacket and if access to your stuff while keeping warm, if not mildly unfashionable due to the excess of pockets, is important to you, then this thing is a win. No, I wouldn’t wear it around town. Not often, anyways. Maybe for special occasions, like when Bruce Willis and Steven Seagal are kickin’ it in Vancouver and I want to hang out with them but need to feel a little more ready to take on the end of the world or evil Asian Triads while I do so, I might wear it around town then.

The pockets are legion, and huge. There are thick patches on the shoulder and elbows, a large back pocket in which you could stow a small child, or at least 3 Puffins, which is what I wanted to do, and – did I mention the pockets? There are many of them. Many much pocketed goodness! And a huge tab/loop/hang-yer-30lb-jacket-from-this-if-you-can-find-a-railway-spike-deeply-embedded-in-a-load-bearing-wall on the back by which one can carry the jacket, or swing it fully loaded like a Russian kettlebell should you be away from your preferred means of exercise.

I love this jacket, and while it does border only slightly on the absurd side of extreme, I was really grateful for it in Iceland and know I’ll get a lot out of it in cooler weather travel shooting. It ain’t cheap, but nothing with the Gitzo name on it usually is. You can get more information from the B&H Photo website HERE. Despite the sarcastic review, highly recommended. You can have mine when you peel it from my cold dead body (update: my warm, well-insulated, multi-pocketed corpse). Here is another photograph, this time worn by a very rugged, yet contemplative photographer. (Laugh if you must, but my pockets can beat-up your pockets any day!)

Antoine de Saint-Exupery said, “a designer knows he has achieved perfection not when there is nothing left to add but when there is nothing left to take away.” I wouldn’t claim perfection for any of my images, that’s not the point of my quoting this, but I love the idea that a move towards mastery in photography is a move towards including the essential and excluding all else that doesn’t contribute.

I’ve spent the last 3 days working on images from Iceland and building the Iceland Monograph for the Craft & Vision Store, so these images and the things I learned about my own process are on my mind. If there is one thing I am constantly encouraging my students to do it’s to identify their intention for an image and then remove everything that doesn’t support that vision. If that’s a line, a person, a background, whatever, shoot in such a way as to exclude the extraneous. Use a longer lens, a different point of view, a shallower depth of field, a change in the orientation of the frame, or rendering an image in black and white, whatever it is, edit out the fluff until all I am left with is the photograph.

How did Michelangelo sculpt? He removed all the marble that was not part of the statue. While that over-simplifies the means of getting there, I think it well identifies the intent – to be so aware of what you want to say that you remove everything unnecessary to say it.