PixelatedImage Blog

The latest in the Craft & Vision eBook line-up is now out. Close To Home, Finding Great Photographs in Your Own Backyard, is a 37-page book about the challenges of finding the extraordinary in what we’ve come to see as mundane. We touched on this recently in Kathmandu while I was struggling to find my vision, having a tough time seeing the place in new ways. So many people assume that the most exotic places are low-hanging fruit, and to a degree they are. But what if you live in that exotic place? At some point Kathmandu gets mundane and the idea of flying somewhere new is really appealing. Problem is, there’s likely a photographer right now in that “somewhere new” and he’s thinking the same thing – about getting out, pursuing the new, the obvious.

The images are out there. It’s not the scenery that needs changing; it’s our vision of things. It needs a tweak, a tune-up. And this book is a great step in that direction.

Stuart Sipahigil is a talented photographer; we traveled to Italy together on a workshop last year and I was immediately impressed by his character and his eye. Come to think of it, he was on the same trip as Eli Reinholdtsen. Must have been something in the wine… Anyways, you’ll love this book. It’s packed with great images, almost all of them taken within a few miles of Stuart’s home, and the text is filled with thoughts and ideas and creative exercises to help you see things a little differently. It’s one of those books that inspires you to get out there and gives you enough information and push to get you out of the ruts we all so easily fall into.

Special Offer on PDFs
For the first five days only, if you use the promotional code HOME4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of Close to Home for only $4 OR use the code HOME20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes start at 1:00am PST, October 28, 2010 and expire at 11:59pm PST November 1, 2010.

Added Bonus! This release comes hot on the heals of a new, and generous relationship with Livebooks. I’m in the middle of rebuiding my website galleries and my experience with Livebooks has been amazing. Everyone that buys Close To Home during the discount period will be entered to win a one-year subscription to Livebooks, hosting included.  Livebooks is the kind of company I love to work with and I’d love to set one of our readers up with them as well. You can buy one book, you can buy 5, but one of them has to be Stuart’s, and you’re in the draw. Good luck!

It’s been a long time coming but I’m almost ready to roll out changes on my portfolio. Many additions, tonnes of edits, and new groupings. This has been way too long overdue but I’m thrilled with how it’s come together, in large part due to Livebooks. These will be accessible on the blog through the portfolio link at the top, and soon also directly at DavidduChemin.com.

I’m almost finished. A couple days ago I invited people on Twitter to feel free to watch the site as I built the galleries. If you’re interested, though there’s not much action now – just nearly completed galleries – you can find the galleries here at this temporary URL – http://davidduchemin.sites.livebooks.com/ I always hated those Under Construction pages people put up on their sites, so feel free to poke around while I sweep up the dust. *Update, October 27 – The galleries are now live at http://gallery.davidduchemin.com/

Surprisingly, after all my raving about Livebooks, I got a call from them asking if they could help. I said they could and that I’d like a Livebooks subscription to giveaway to my readers. We’re working on details but I’ll be giving away a couple Livebooks subscriptions in the coming days, one connected to the release of the next eBook this Thursday, another with no strings attached when I launch the galleries officially. In the mean time, feel free to drop by.

November wallpapers are here early, in both 2560×1600 and 1280×853. If it’s OK with you I’ve decided to forgo the monthly calendar. Leaving it off is much less work for me but also makes these a little more timeless.

I shot this on the edge of Tso Moriri, a high-altitude lake in Ladakh. This was really just a scouting shot, I wanted to go back the next night but life had other plans and (a) the tents were taken down the next morning, (b) my boots were stolen, and (c) I ended up desperately sick. It’s a good reminder to get the shot while you can. There might not be a tomorrow. Weather moves in. Things happen. Life gets in the way. Shoot it while you can.

The smaller wallpaper is all yours by clicking the image above, the larger one can be had by clicking HERE.

I’m posting this early in hopes that we can all move on from the Nikon discussion, which I posted after so many questions about my decision to make the switch. And I gotta tell you I nearly put money on the fact that this community would respond well to that post. I should have done so, because with the exception of one person who posted anonymously (#155) telling me I was getting a demerit point for using the word “retarded” in a derogatory sense, the comments and discussions were amazingly free of the usual lunacy these topics instigate. So you all get gold stars and my continued respect and thanks for keeping this community one of the exceptions in the online photography world (and there are others, but you make this place special. Thanks!)

I am approaching this post with trepidation knowing what kind of strange misplaced fury these issues bring up in some people. If only some people put as much energy into their creative lives, eh? But you are not those people, so that’s why I’m not keeping this to myself. You folks are friends and deserve to know the reasons for my descent into madness. The horror,the horror, etc.

The Short Story.
I’m making a slow transition to Nikon. Nothing to see here. Move along, Citizen.

The Longer Story.
OK, first, let me tell you why I’m even talking about these issues. First, my motto for a long time has been Gear Is Good, Vision Is Better. Some people have latched on so strongly to the last part of that that any mention from me about gear has sent them into an existential funk from which they only recover when I post something about my creative angst. I like gear. Gear is, say it with me folks, good. Without gear we’d be sketching images on napkins. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. My criticism of the photography industry is in the way gear has been sold as a substitute of vision. It’s about the addiction to gear and the belief that it will make us better photographers. It won’t. However, gear is important. If it wasn’t all the people that holler at me about this stuff would be shooting with a Kodak Brownie or old 110 camera, but they aren’t.

Photographs Matter.
Gear is important because it creates the aesthetic which is the expression of our vision. Sensor size affects the look of the photograph. So does the speed and focal length and the quality of your optics. A Tilt/Shift lens does things your 50/1.8 can’t do and never will be able to do. Polarizers and tripods and all this stuff – it affects the image. But let’s remember – it’s the image that matters most, and therefore the tools of its creation also matter.

Brands do not matter.
I am not moving to Nikon because I like the logo better or stopped liking the red stripe of the Canon L-lenses. I am not moving to Nikon because they are cheaper or sexier. My move to Nikon doesn’t mean my Canon bodies stopped working for me, nor that yours will stop working for you. It doesn’t mean you should move to Nikon. This move doesn’t mean I will now refer to myself as a Nikonian any more than I once refered to myself as a Canonista. I snicker at people that use those terms, and so should you. This world has enough meaningless boxes and labels. I am not a Canon Shooter or a Nikon Shooter. I am a photographer, that’s all. Brands don’t matter; photographs do.

The Sigma Factor.
I am moving to Nikon for several reasons. It is starting as a slow transition and I will shoot both systems for a while, even possibly forever, though I doubt it purely for economic reasons. So here’s the deal.

I was approached by Sigma recently and asked if I would consider a sponsorship. They would give me access to their lenses if I would, in return, give them access to some of the images created through those lenses. I had already been thinking about getting a Nikon (reasons to follow) and this seemed like a good chance to do so without selling the farm. Selling the farm for lenses is always a bad idea, in my case it’s an even worse idea, primarily because I have no farm. One of the appeals of Sigma EX lenses is solid quality for considerably less than the pro-lenses from Nikon or Canon, and most of my readers simply can’t afford to buy a box of pro-optics. So this allows me to test and experience and recommend much more affordable lenses. Will I stop using pro-lenses? No. But I think it’s healthy to remember that beauty can be created without the highest level of gear.

My sponsorships are built on honesty and I am in no way obligated to say things about products I wouldn’t say to my own mother. In fact my sponsors know that if they send me crap I will send it right back. My value to them and to you is my honesty. I’ve used Sigma before and am excited to play with some of their optics again, but not once will I recommend you buy something I wouldn’t myself buy and use. There, I said it.

So Why Nikon?
I’m a teacher. I can’t tell you how stupid I feel when a student approaches with a Nikon in her hands and says, Hey how do I…? And I just shrug, looking dazed, and then I point over their shoulders, scream, “Look, there’s Joe McNally, ask him!” and turn tail and run for the hills. So I began this process by deciding to get a Nikon for that reason alone.

And then I started playing with them. There are some things I will miss about Canon, like the big scroll wheel on the back. But you know what, I’m a survivor, I can deal. In my limited experience and from talking to friends who own Nikon, here are some of my reasons. Even if some of these are subjective, I stand by them.

1. Ergonomics. I love the feel of a Nikon. Always have. After a long Pentax phase as a kid I shot Nikon film cameras and loved them.

2. Focus. Sorry, but I fight with Canon focus and even on my 1DsMkIII it struggles more than the Nikons I’ve played with. I know this hurts, but Canon’s just not gaining new ground fast enough. This is a biggy.

3. Low Noise in Low Light. In a word, amazing.

Those three sealed it for me. But here’s two more.

4. The Look. Different cameras, different looks. Not the look of the camera, the look of the photographs. Ya wouldn’t fault a guy from switching film stock, would you? Is the difference noticeable? I think it is. It is a case of one being better? I don’t think so. Just different. My 200mm isn’t better than my 85mm, they’re different. Vive la difference!

5. The small things. I’m out shooting and want to level my Canon? I need a bubble thingy. I want to shoot intervals? I need a $300 cable release that doesn’t even have an off-button. The D3s allows me to drop in 2 x 64gb CF cards and shoot to them in a variety of ways. My Canon 1DsMkIII makes me use 1 CF card and 1 SD card if I want to do that. Retarded. I can use the D3s batteries in the grip of the D700, allowing me to take one set of batteries and charger, not two. Sure, small things, but they matter. Also, rumour has it the flash system on the Nikon isn’t prehistoric.

6. Don’t even get me started on the Canon Explorer of Light thing. Hey, why are you still reading this part? I said don’t get me started.

So together those were enough to sway me. As an artist who relies on his tools full time, both for my own work and the work of clients, making this transition makes sense to me. Is vision still better? Of course it is. Will my photographs suddenly get better? I strongly doubt it. But will it be easier to create those images in the face of the creative and situational constraints that already make photography difficult? I think it will, and that’s worth something to me. Does any of this really matter? Not so much, but c’mon, we all love the tools with which we work, and if we can find tools we enjoy using more, then why not?

Comments are open, because I just know some of you have something to contribute, but if this turns into a debate or fan-boy gathering for either brand I will shut them down faster than hands off a greased pig.

A moral and an update this evening.

A year ago I said I was going to re-do my online portfolios. Promised myself an overhaul. I was going to give some thought to an updated logo and a website overhaul. And then Craft & Vision exploded all over me and it’s taken this long to clean it up. But you know what they say, planning is really only guessing, and you can never anticipate the road ahead or the things that will come your way as a result. So it’s now over a year later, and the cobbler’s children still have no shoes. But they have something much better. A year ago I could never have anticipated the route this would all take and if I had stuck to the plan I might now have a very snazzy website but not being doing some of the projects I am most enjoying right now.Craft & Vision is one of those. So are some of the recent personal trips. In December I’m going to Jamaica and bringing a housing and learning to do some underwater stuff. All things I never planned.

The moral of the story is to hold things lightly, plans included. Be open and receptive. Same thing happened two years ago. I was looking to fill gaps in my schedule, and started a small brand called RedCollar, a studio devoted to photographing pets and their owners. I was pretty excited about it. And then I got a book deal. What to do, what to do. Sticking to the plan would have me knee deep in drool and hair balls; being receptive to things not going to plan has given me something much, much better.

The update is that I’m now on track with a new portfolio site – replacing Evrium’s Fluid Galleries with LiveBooks and a companion site for the iPhone/iPad, as well as splitting things out from PixelatedImage which will soon only be this blog and related community. My own work will wind up at DavidduChemin.com and will have my more recent work, all in much larger images. I’m pumped by how beautiful it’s going to look. In addition to that I’m unveiling my new logo. With the changes over the last few years, and a move towards including fine art and landscape photography, and in the near future a little more adventure photography, I needed something new and more representative of where I am going. I wanted something retro, something a little timeless and classy and clean. I kind of wanted the graphic lovechild of deco and swiss inspired design. And I wanted a DC-03 airplane. So there may be tweaks, but the artwork at the top of this post is the new look for the new brand that will represent my personal work. It’s small, I know, but you’ll have to wait for the whole thing to be unveiled.

Sorry this one’s a little detail-y and completely free from rants. Getting home is always a mixed bag – nice to be home but digging through the pile is tiring. And then there’s the jet lag. It’s not even 6pm and I doubt I’m going to make it past 6:15pm. Today was exhausting, but exhilarating. Got so much done, including placing orders for new gear (remember the post I promised about adding Nikon to my toolbox? It’s coming) and dealing with paperwork for an Antarctica trip I’m taking next December (2011) with Andy Biggs, John Paul Caponigro, and Seth Resnick – but I’m wiped. More to come, but not tonight. Goodnight, friends.

Bonus: My partner-in-crime, Jeffrey Chapman has posted a photograph of me skinny dipping with my Gitzo and Canon 1DsMkIII in Kho Samet. Anything to get the shot. Don’t worry, it’s suitable for work (depending on where you work!) See Jeffrey’s blog HERE.

I just walked through the door a couple hours ago, sifted through the pile of mail and stuff that builds up over a 5 week+ absence. Tomorrow I’m on a plane again. Feeling a little rough around the edges!

The images above and below are two I shot in Kathmandu while feeling I was having a hard time seeing things. The man in the top image was blind and sat there each morning, statue-like, hoping for alms. The contrast between being both unseeing and unseen struck me. This man kept me conscious of people being unseen, and it might have been that that made me both angry and saddened by the tourists and photographers I saw on this trip.

We teach our students to engage people wherever possible, to create images that have some context of relationship, and to give subjects the chance to say “No.” I think this is just basic respect and the recognition that others are no less human for the fact that they live elsewhere or wear different clothes. So why do I see over and over and over and over again the tourists with cameras who act like they’re at the zoo? I see it so often it makes me furious. They walk around, checking things off on their mental checklist as though to merely have looked at it is to have experienced it. They have vacant eyes, raise cameras at people without ever really seeing them, and they move on without so much as a handshake, a cup of chai, or a Namaste. Hell, not even a nod or eye contact. It’s not even the zoo, it’s worse. At least people interact with the monkeys.

Perhaps that’s the reason I shot so little work with people, I think I’m just way more sensitive to the issue right now. But man, some days my camera made me very uncomfortable on this trip. Sometimes it stops us from really seeing people, really enjoying a place.

When I expressed my difficulties on this trip, a number of wise voices reminded me to take a step back and just relax. Great advice. We all photograph for different reasons, but I want my photography to enhance my life, not to be a substitute for it. And I want my images to be more than a record of what was there, but what I experienced and truly saw.

Anyways, I’m rambling. I wanted to drop a line and say hello, let y’all know I’m home. A little ragged, but man is it nice to be home again, if only briefly. In the past I’ve posted things that my jet-lag-addled brain has come up with and it’s always been a bad idea, so I’m stopping now. Glad to be home, thank you all for the kind words and concerned emails.

Boudha, Kathmandu
Canon 1Ds MkIII, 85mm, 1/160 @ f/1.2, ISO 800

After the last post, and what one reader called my exhausting angst, I’ve been shooting very little and just enjoying this place. Guess I just needed a break.

I’m really grateful for the comments left, and for the thoughts and ideas expressed in them, but I trust you know I don’t share this stuff to get sympathy or even input on solving a problem. I don’t think the creative process – complete with challenges and struggle – needs solving. I was sad to see one reader tell me he was checking out, cancelling his subscription and moving on because he felt my speaking honestly and openly about the struggles was “disappointing and misleading.” You can’t please everyone, and I’m not about to try.

Still, that outlook saddens me, though I understand it. I’m just not sure anyone who expects to create photographs that stir the soul, either our own, or of others’, can expect to do so without the struggle.

To be sure, the struggle is not the be all and end all. This is not angst. And it’s far from hopeless or even self-pity. It’s living life with a strong desire to find hope and beauty, and those things come not in the absence of struggle, but through them. Much like faith, which is not, as it’s often sold to be by hucksters, denial of doubt, but a choice of the will in the face of doubt. The reason I keep on about this stuff is because so many people, like me, wrestle to express something more, and are willing to put in what is sometimes surprisingly hard work, to find beauty. Once in a while our successes lull us into thinking the wrestling is over, so it hurts all the more when we find it’s still there, lurking in the corners of our illusions about mastery, etc.

We all have dry spells, and as some of you have pointed out, those do not signal failure, they herald possibilities.

I’m lying in bed with food poisoning right now, not sure when I’ll have a chance to hit Publish on this. But if this struggle I’ve been engaged in is in fact a search for beauty and a way to express it, then last night – before the gut rot started – was another milestone in that search. We left the hotel to find butter candles being lit, and rushed to dinner. When we came back it was raining, and the women tending the candles for the faithful were under umbrellas that bounced the gorgeous light around and added elements I’ve not seen here in 4 years of visits, proving once again that beauty is in the unexpected places, and is more like a lover playing coy than prey to be hunted. She has her own ways, and I find that makes the struggle much more enjoyable, and so much worth the effort.

Sorry if you feel the angst exhausts you at times, I really am. If you need to check out, I can recommend some conspicuously angst-free blogs that will focus entirely on kittens and rainbows and ways to make photographs with very little effort.

Thank you again for being the kind of community that embraces the mess and humanity of this art. If I survive the wrath of last night’s Veg Manchurian, I promise lighter things ahead, like trying to explain why this Canon shooter is beginning the switch back to Nikon, which I abandoned when I transitioned to digital. That one ought to be full of chuckles and giggles. Put your helmets on.

PS – 24 hours since I wrote this. Beginning to feel better, at least enough to get out of bed. We leave Kathmandu this morning for 3 days in Bhaktapur, then on to Bandipur.

We’re on the second full day of the Kathmandu Within The Frame workshop, based in Boudhanath, and man am I struggling. My first task here is not creating a body of work, but teaching, but I believe the best teachers are the ones that are always learning, and man am I learning. The hard way.

I’ve never shyed away from just being honest, but man is it hard to admit the struggle I’m having right now. The creative life rarely exists in a vacuum, and mine increasingly exists with the demands of photographs for books, ebooks, blog posts, etc. That pressure – and I put it on myself – is becoming hard to deal with. It stands in the way of seeing things. In the case of Kathmandu, I’m here now for the 4th time and I’m repeating myself. Even the shot at the top of this page is a repeat of one I shot for Within The Frame. Heck, it’s even the same man! And it feel like the pressure to make photographs is the very thing preventing me from doing so.

On top of this I’m re-thinking the way I approach people. I’ve photographed people for the last 6 years, and it’s always been difficult, but it’s getting harder. Perhaps I’ve just lost my nerve, perhaps I’m becoming more conscious of the people themselves and less willing to intrude. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I’ve been there done that and the photographs that once said what I longed to express, I’m no longer burning to shoot.

Whatever it is, it’s a good reminder of the winding road of creativity. We’re never in the same place twice. We change. The things we see change. And so the way we photograph changes. I talk and talk about how hard it can be to create great images and sometimes I think my readers roll their eyes. Truthfully it’s not usually this hard. But right now, it feels like it’s killing me. All there is to do is push through it. Keep at it. Get my ass out of bed at 5:30am and remind myself that Resistance (see War of Art, Pressfield) is at least as hard at work as I am. Creating photographs is my work. Sometimes it feels like play, but it’s work. The work.

Why am I telling you this? In part because it’s the principle. Lots of blogs tell you about the latest toy and how great business is and how amazing the latest images are. But I’ve always felt like this blog has been a bit of an exercise in disclosure and that part of the value has been in relating my own journey and struggle. No photographer I know finds this easy all the time. No artist I know doesn’t wrestle the muse to the ground at times. Not the ones creating meaningful art. Maybe the meaning is in the struggle, I don’t know.

It’ll come, I know it will. And if it doesn’t then there’s a lesson in there about my work, my methods, or just the reminder that the well from which we all draw isn’t bottomless – it’s never bottomless. Might just be time for a re-fill. We’re in this for the long-haul, so short-term road-blocks aren’t the end of the world, but not paying attention to those road-blocks, and the lessons they have for us might be the end of our work.

But whining/suffering artist crap aside, being in Kathmandu again is amazing, particularly Boudha which is the Tibetan side of town, and a serene place in the middle of the chaos of the Kat.

October wallpapers are here, in both 2560×1600 and 1280×853. This one’s a little experimental, lacks the monthly calendar (I’m in a hotel in Bangkok heading to Kathmandu tomorrow), and has an experimental logo as well. Figured if people are going to hate it, they might as well hate it for multiple reasons. If you don’t like it don’t freak out; for one, I’m not likely to see the comments for a while and by then it’ll be too late, and for another, it’s just a wallpaper and it’ll get changed in less than a month. Unless I forget November’s and then you’re stuck with it for TWO whole months and, frankly, I’d moan about that too. Anyways, shot this heading up to Khardung Lah, the highest motorable road in the world at almost 19,000 feet in Ladakh. Last year we rode Royal Enfield’s over it, this year we took SUVs and almost didn’t make it.

I’m auto-posting this for Monday, October 04, by which time I’ll be with the Kathmandu Within The Frame team. It’s still going to be quiet around here for a while but I’ll try to chime in with a postcard if I can. Kathmandu has a tough time with consistent electricity, let alone internet. But if I can get a postcard to you while sipping a chai on a break with the team, I’ll do so. Promise.

The smaller wallpaper is all yours by clicking the image above, the larger one can be had by clicking HERE.