PixelatedImage Blog

I wrote this just over a week ago, then I took a tumble over a 20-foot wall in Pisa, Italy. Somehow it seems even more relevant now. As for the fall, here are the short strokes: I was trying to get a better angle on a scouting shot, made a poor decision, lost my balance and fell. This was not the kind of risk I’ve been talking about recently; it didn’t seem risky at all, just a bad decision. I fell between 20 and 30 feet depending on who you ask, and landed on the concrete below. 6 days later I’ve been evacuated by an incredible team from MedJet Assist and am now in Ottawa close to my family. I’ll be here a while. I’ve got multiple fractures in my ankles and pelvis and will require surgeries and at least 6 weeks of hospitalization and 3 months off my feet. I am told there’s a chance I’ll never walk the same again, but I’m fighting those odds. I am profoundly grateful to be alive; the last two people that fell off that wall are dead. I am also profoundly grateful not to be paralyzed. But right now the over-riding emotion is gratitude for the incredible outpouring of love from people all over the world, people I’ve never met who are offering help and prayers and such kindness. From the bottom of my heart, thank you so, so much. Thoughts of your kindness and support have brought me to tears more than once today as I’ve finally been able to get online. Thank you!

If you want more info (and photographs) on the incident in Pisa, check out Jeffrey Chapman’s blog HERE or Eli Reinholdsten’s blog HERE. Huge thanks to the Italy and Croatia Within The Frame participants for being so good to me, and my deepest apologies that this accident cut off our weeks together. I was so looking forward to traveling together.

A few photographs, then the thoughts I wrote down last week. In light of everything, they resonate ever deeper now.

Risk Part II, The Power of Failure

After beginning the discussion on risk, my brain started churning through some of the responses and push-back left in the comments and I think the discussion isn’t even close to over just yet.

The first thing that needs qualification is that my point is not that we ought to engage in risk for the sake of risk. My point is that we’ve one short life and while we’ll all look differently at what it means to fully live that life with no regrets, it is often the fear of risk that stands in the way. Overcoming that fear gets us to a place where we can more intentionally engage life, become the people we long to be. Just getting over fear for the sake of risking without examining the results of those risks is, to my mind, pointless.

The second thing I think that needs to be picked apart is the “what about my stupid job?” mentality, which I think has been so beat into us we can no longer see it for what it is. We’ve been conditioned (in a non-paranoid, no-conspiracy-theory kind of way) into leaving school, getting a job, working until retirement, and being a productive bee in the hive. it doesn’t have to be this way. People make a living in thousands of unlikely ways and it’s truly unlikely for most of us that we’ll end up dead on the side of the road while people pass by, shake their heads, and mumble, sotto voce, “see, he shouldn’t have quit his job.” Once above the survival line – and I’d argue we need much, much, less to be happy than we think – it’s important to remember that we work to live, we do not live to work. When work gets in the way of you living your life – then that work no longer serves you and it’s time to change.

Clear your debt as fast as you can. Live on less. Pull your kids from one of their over-priced after-school activities and let them read a library book. Give the car back to the dealer and get one you can actually afford. Save some money. And don’t, whatever you do, wait until “the time is right” before you make the changes your soul is hard longing for. I know, it’s not practical. Practical is safe. Practical is boring. Practical isn’t working for you now, not if all this talk of living life to the fullest resonates with you,  and it isn’t going to work for you in the future.  I don’t know that Gandhi, Moses, Jesus, Einstein, Ben Franklin, Louis Pasteur, Albert Schweitzer, or any of the thousands of unknown adventurers, inventors, poets, or general misfits, ever saw much use for practicalities. They lived with the same realities we do. It is they about whom we tell stories.

So all this was floating in my mind and I began to think about possible first-steps for the fearful ones that long for something more. I think that first step might be failure; the very thing we seem to fear. In the years leading up to my bankruptcy I was terrified; i’d seen the writing on the wall and it was truly frightening. I thought I’d lose it all. I thought I’d never recover. I had fear after fear. And then I walked into my trustee’s office, signed away my debt under a heaviness of shame and guilt – and failure. And to my shock I survived. Not only did I survive, I thrived. I learned lessons I’d never have learned. And I learned that falling down hurt less than I expected. It hurt, of course it did, but not even remotely did the brief hurt outweigh the good that came of the risk.

There’s deep strength in failure. It’s a gift to fall down and get up. Coddle a child and don’t let him eat a little dirt or lick the occasional frog and that child never develops the kind of immune system that keeps him strong. It’s the same with our character. Failure builds immunity, gives us strength, makes us familiar with the actual possibilities that come from risk and robs our fears of the power that comes from the unknown. The more you fail, and learn from those lessons, the less frightening future failures appear.

As with risk, failure for failure’s sake isn’t the point. It’s a waypoint, a portal through which we pass. To return to the idea of living a good story, think back to your favorite stories: the good ones require the protagonist to risk. The epic ones, the ones that really move us, require the protagonist to risk it all. They don’t do so for the sake of the risk itself: they do so because the price of not doing so is too high. Without risking it the village will certainly be destroyed, or the love of their life will certainly be lost. Risk is not the point. Nor is failure.

The stakes are so high. We won’t get to the end and get a do-over. This is not a trial run. What we do here matters. Being fully ourselves, fully alive, and fully engaged with the world around us requires we wake up and shake the sleep from our eyes. I sat with a cancer survivor recently, someone who’d fought for her life to overcome odds and now lives cancer-free but in a job that by her own admission is killing her soul. it was a thrill to see the light come on in her eyes as she realized it didn’t have to be this way. My God, if you can live through the fight of your life and beat cancer, why would you not fight tooth-and-nail to live the days you’d snatched from the dragon’s jaws with every ounce of energy and passion and make it worth the fight?

These are just the thoughts of a self-confessed idealist. You are welcome to dismiss them and go back to the cubicle from whence you came. You probably have some very good reasons to suggest that I’m full of crap, and probably crap from unicorns and fairies. My only push-back is that I’ve seen people living profoundly impractical lives as missionaries and bush-doctors and artists and adventurers and I think, without exception, they’d agree: the risk of doing nothing and playing it safe and never falling on your face is a risk they could never live with. If failure gets them there faster, then it’s not so much to be avoided as embraced.

A quick postcard from last night in Vernazza, Italy.

Sometimes I flirt with crossing a line on this blog, a line that puts this blog squarely into the motivational genre; a genre I don’t generally care for. So you’ve been warned – this isn’t about photography, but life (and what is photography about if not life?)

Last year I decided to make a change in my life. I bought a truck, sold my stuff, gave up my condo and a fixed address and set out on an adventure that’s still barely two months old. My plan was to spend the rest of 2011 traveling North America when I wasn’t photographing or teaching internationally elsewhere. And then I started the journey itself and things began to change. I began to like this lifestyle more than I thought. I miss having a home less than I expected. I had more time with people than I imagined. I found myself settling into the rhythms of nomadism and I started to dream bigger and allow myself a few more “What Ifs”

And then my buddy Zack Arias hosted a meet-up event at his studio in Atlanta and that night was magical for me. I met some amazing people, including Zack, face to face for the first time. And Zack, if you don’t know him, is the kind of guy with no shortage of opinions on things. One of those opinions that evening was that I should speak to the group, and say “something inspiring” or something. I declined. He insisted and told me that “in one beer, you’re on!” I figured I could make my beer last all evening and avoid speaking entirely, until he made it clear I was on when his beer was done, not mine, and I got the feeling that wasn’t going to take long.

Not sure what to say, I told the story of the last few months and the growing awareness of the brevity of life that had led me here. And the more I talked (a barely coherent mix of spontaneous babbling and preaching) the more it galvanized something in my own mind; a feeling that I’d passed a point of no return. I have written before that life is short, but it’s becoming more than a passing feel-good idea; it’s becoming the place from which I make my biggest decisions. I am moved more than ever by the awareness of the brevity of life and that the fulfillment of our dreams and longings aren’t simply things that accidentally happen to us. Life is complicated and at times feels more like something that happens to us than something we make happen, I know, but people live extraordinary lives because they overcome those circumstances and choose to do the things they dream about.

But too many people don’t listen to their dreams at all. Or they listen but allow the dreams themselves to get drowned out by the desire to fill their homes with stuff or even just to play it safe, or – and this is more likely – they listen to their fears.

The culture we live in would rather watch great stories on movie screens than live them. Why? I think it’s fear of risk. The bigger the risk the greater the potential reward but also the greater the potential for “Oh God, Oh God, we’re all going to die!” or something similar. Fear is the loudest voice in many of our lives. Fear of rejection leads us to buy some crazy stuff, as well as keep our voice down when it should be loudly telling others “I love you.” Fear of the unknown keeps us close to home. Fear of fear keeps us in therapy. So we’d rather watch Braveheart and imagine ourselves with that kind of courage than risk finding out for ourselves if we have it. Makes sense. Afterall, Braveheart gets horribly disemboweled at the end. But while our hearts swell with resonance as William Wallace says “All men die but not all men really live,” we wash it away with popcorn and sodas and go back to sleep. That very quote, or the sentiment it reflects,  points to two things for me, and these two things make it easier to listen to something other than the fear.

1. All we have is now. I’ve said it before: none of us lives forever. The time to make a change is now. You may not be able to pack the house and go on an adventure right now, but you can put yourself on a path to doing it. Don’t wait until you’re 65 and retired. You might not be around or in good health. The time is now. Don’t be the one breathing his last breath wishing he’d gotten around to the things that were most important. Live with all the passion and energy you’ve got now. Now is all you have. Each moment matters.

2. Risk is inevitable. We all risk, day in and day out. You fall in love at first sight with someone amazing and you’ve two choices, both involving risk. You can act on it and risk rejection, or you can sit on it, do nothing, and risk losing what might be the best thing you might ever experience. Sure, rejection’s painful (but not certain), but it’s nothing compared to the life-long regret of letting her slip away (absolutely certain). You have a dream and the only way to get at it is to make some changes, live sparsely, and pull your kids out of school for a year. You can do it, and risk failure (not as likely as it seems) or play it safe and let the dreams remain un-lived (absolutely certain).Life is about risk. The best stories hinge on it. But even those risks aren’t as big as they seem. It’s funny how we often prefer to listen to fears and avoid risks that are only potentially painful, and in so doing sacrifice our dreams – a loss that is most certainly painful.

It could be that the last thing you want to hear is another sermon. I get it. None of this stuff is easy. There were moments of nerves, and even overwhelming fear, as I was staging to give up so-called normal life. It’s taken some painful decisions and course-corrections over the last few years to get to this place. It’s taken falling down and getting back up. One day my diabetes may prevent me from pursuing these adventures. All the more reason to take a deep breath and do it now. I had planned to go back to Vancouver at the end of this year – it was the “sensible” decision. Instead I am looking into what it will take to come back to Europe and live nomadically here for a year – to spend time on the British Isles and Scandanavia before taking the boat to Iceland for the summer, then to drive to Istanbul or Marrakech or Ulaan Bator.

All those many words to say: don’t settle. Your dreams will be different than mine, but the regret for not living them will be the same. Life is short. Choose your risk intentionally, don’t try to avoid it. Live a great story; don’t settle for merely watching them. Whatever got stirred in you when I wrote the first blog post in the Life is Short category, I hope you’re moving towards it. Because those dreams are part of what it means to live life to the fullest.

We’re a little late releasing this most recent eBook; since Craft & Vision started I don’t think we’ve had a month without at least one release and March 2011 just slid by without so much as a peep. Today we’re announcing the book that’s taken us so long to come out with.

Last September I met Piet Van den Eynde in Ladakh (Piet is pronounced Pete. Or Peat. Or Peet. But not Pie-Et. That’s just wrong. Europeans spell weird but they aren’t crazy)  as we traveled together through Ladakh. Over the course of those two weeks he continually astonished me with the breadth and depth of his post-production knowledge and skill, as well as his ability to teach it, and English isn’t even his mother-tongue. He was really excited when we agreed to publish with him but I don’t think he knows how excited we were to be getting a teacher of his calibre. Dude knows his stuff and teaches really clearly.

So today we’re announcing The Power of Black & White In Adobe Lightroom & Beyond, A Masterclass, by Piet Van den Eynde. This is a huge book. It’s 100 spreads, so the equivalent of what we used to call 200 pages. Frankly it’s large enough to be a proper print book that you’d shell out $30 for on Amazon. (Note: This extended size means you’ll buy it once for the same ridiculously low price as always, but you’ll be downloading it in a few sections. It’ll take a little longer to download but this way should present less problems for everyone.)

But size shouldn’t be why you buy it. Bigger isn’t always better, sometimes it’s still crap, just more of it. Not in this case. The value comes from learning from someone as skilled as Piet is. When we released Andrew Gibson’s Black and White eBooks, the response was amazing – and it should be, they’re excellent books that we’re proud of – but we also got a lot – I mean A LOT – of feedback saying, “When are you going to do something more specifically for Lightroom?” The answer is: now.

I’m not going to recap the book’s content – all you need to know is that it’s full of incredible teaching and will take you some time to chew through it, but by the time you’re done you’ll know more about great black and white conversions – and not the egghead stuff that uses numbers and secret-handshakes in photoshop – than you ever thought you’d know. And for $5 you aren’t going to get this kind of value anywhere else.

But wait! There’s more! Because Piet spends a little time talking about the power of plug-ins like NiK Software’s Silver Efex pro, NiK has ponied up 3 full versions of Silver Efex Pro, which anyone that buys this masterclass is eligible to win if you buy the book within the first 5 days, which also happens to be the time frame during which you can get the book for $4, or buy 5 ebooks for the price of 4.

Special PDF Offer
For the first five days only, if you use the promotional code BWLIGHT4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of The Power of Black & White in Adobe Lightroom & Beyond (A MASTERCLASS) for only $4 OR use the code BWLIGHT20 to get 20% off when you buy 5 or more PDF ebooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm PST April 16, 2011.

I’m in Pensacola, Florida. This dune was in Galveston, Texas. I’m a few days behind on importing new images.

Woke up early this morning and went walking with my camera, tripod and a thermos of coffee to shoot the lagoon in the morning mist. I was churning something over in my mind and it struck me as something that might be worth sharing.

Don’t allow yourself to be seduced by your subject matter. A beautiful scene isn’t necessarily a beautiful photograph.

Don’t allow yourself to be seduced by how hard you worked to get that photograph. You can climb Everest and still make a photograph that illicits only apathy.

Don’t allow yourself to be seduced by the gear you made the photograph with. Your new 24 megapixel camera or 600mm lens wonn’t make it a great photograph, they just create the potential for filling a really big frame with stuff that didn’t look great at 80, 200, or 400mm.

Instead allow yourself to be seduced by, and fall in love with the light, the moment, and the geometry of the frame. Fall in love with those things, and then work hard with the gear you have, be it an iPhone or Leica, to show us something beautiful (or unjust or funny or ironic or…)

Actual conversation in Louisiana, somewhere on the bayou. I’ve been thinking about it ever since and suspect- just maybe – the human brain doesn’t do well on the toxic combination of gator, frogs and deep-fry. I do love it here, and the people are great, but this one was too funny not to pass along.

Me: I’m not from around here, what’s in the gator basket?

Long silence…

She: Gator.

Me: Uh huh. And is there anything else in the gator basket?

She: I guess you can have fries or onion rings or baked potato.

Me: Onion rings please. Do you have beer?

She: Yes.

Long silence.

Me: What kind of beer do you have?

She: You know. The usual.

Yet another long silence as I plumb the depths of this woman’s intellect realizing I’ve already seen the bottom far too quickly.

Me: And what might the usual be in these here parts?

She: Oh you know, Bud Light, Coors Light, Miller Li…oh, wait, we’re out of Miller Light.

Me: And do you have anything without the LIGHT in it?

She: Oh, you mean like Bud WISER instead?

Me: Yes. Yes, I do. I will have (in the absence of any real beer) a Bud WISER please.

Monument Valley in Utah. Me and my shadow.

It’s now been well over a month and 5500 miles since I left home. And while I’m conscious of how nervous I was when I left, I’m now well past that. I am, not to rub it in, deliriously content. As I write this I’m taking a break from some much needed admin work and writing towards the next deadline on Photographically Speaking. I’m in a hammock. On the Gulf of Mexico. In shorts. My Virgin MiFi is on Jessie’s dashboard and I’ve got wifi. In a hammock. On the Gulf of…oh, I mentioned that part? Sorry.

I’ve been on my own for only 4 days now and that part’s been hard; after traveling with friends Al, Dave, Jeffrey, and Corwin, I’d become accustomed to having company. But I’m also finally getting some work done, so there’s an upside to that. The trip, otherwise, has been fast. Too fast at times. I need to keep reminding myself – and others – that parts of this trip were meant to simply be an adventure, a getting from A to B, and while I don’t always have time to photograph, I’m having a really great time. I talk to people in restaurants and cafe’s, oddballs come talk to me about the truck (Is that your rig, boy? That’s a GREAT RIG!) and I’ve connected with some great people at some impromptu tweet-ups.

I’ve learned to embrace the anarchy of camping where I am not supposed to. I’ve learned to chill when Jessie has new smells and noises. Speaking of new smells, I’ve learned how long one can go without a shower before one can simply no longer tolerate one’s own self. I’ve learned to lean on strangers for local intel and that living on the road can be much cheaper than living at home if you do it right. Not that that’s the point, but it’s nice to be returning to a simplicity with which I was once much more familiar. I’ve learned that while Starbucks (despite the new book about it) has lost it’s soul, and no longer makes coffee I like, it has tea and free wifi and is practically EVERYWHERE, which is one reason I now loathe it. Homogeny and I don’t get along. But I’ll do almost anything for free wifi, apparently.

Umm, excuse me but I don’t think you spelled Home-made correc…oh…I see….Hmmmm….Suddenly I’m not hungry.

I’ve learned to be more creative about finding solutions to things. One of my big challenges was the desire for spare fuel cans, though I was frustrated by the total lack of a place to put them on the outside of the Land Rover. And then I found the Trasheroo – a backpack that goes on the spare tire and now easily carries two 2-gallon jerry cans of spare diesel and still has room for my trash, bags of ice before I get them into the cooler, and even a tripod when I’m heading out to shoot and want it accessible. I’ve learned that a fold-up sink from REI can be filled with ice, hung from the bumper, and hold at least 6 bottles of local micro-brew and/or some milk.

Working in “the office upstairs” and trying to  get it done in half the time with twice the computing power. Doesn’t seem to work.

I’ve learned – or rather I am learning – to relax. Somewhere along the way during the last 4 years I got into a performance mentality and have felt a lot of pressure to produce. It’s not a mindset that’s good for me, and it’s not a mindset that produces art I am pleased with. And I think I am learning to stop listening to those voices. Of course my tent’s been an office more times than I can count and I am currently writing this on what’s meant to be a break from writing and I still have deadlines to meet, but I’m also in a hammock with a bottle of Anchor Steam, so I’d say it’s a fight I’m winning.

I’m in Galveston now, will spend the night here, then onwards. Tomorrow I’ll be in Louisiana and if I’m not eating jambalaya for dinner there’s going to be trouble! If you’re in Atlanta don’t forget to come hang with Zack Arias and me on the 12th. 7pm at his studio. Would love to see you.

Bridge over the Rio Grande, New Mexico, 2011.

More and more I love twilight – it allows a greater focus on line and color, and – as in this case – nothing done in Lightroom except removing one dust spot with extreme prejudice. It took me 2 hours to find the frame I wanted and wait for the light, but then I just let the light do it’s thing.  Nikon D3s, 14mm, 30 seconds at f/22, ISO 200

Sitting here in Santa Fe wishing desperately I could stick around for a few days. Love this town. Spent yesterday evening at the Rio Grande and this morning we drove along the Rio Grande Canyon until it spit us out and we arrived in Santa Fe in time to check into the Hacienda at Hotel Santa Fe and take what was the first shower in a time frame I would prefer not to mention. This is my last evening traveling with Corwin and tomorrow Jessie and I take him to Albuquerque and kick him to the curb. From there we move south and east, to Dallas, then down to Houston, and along the gulf in a mad rush – I know, too fast – to Atlanta where I’ve got a tweet-up/meet-up evening planned for April 12th at 7pm at Zack Arias’s studio and y’all are welcome to come. Then I’m off to Italy for workshops in Cinque Terre, Tuscany, Venice and a week on a sailboat with 5 lucky participants in Croatia before coming back.

I’ll try to check in but my big priority over the next 10 days, aside from getting to Atlanta for my flights to Italy, is getting the next big deadline on the book finished. I’d like to shoot a little here and there, and I’ll check in on the blog and Twitter as I have reception and time, but I thought I’d let you know the lay o’ the land.

Desktop wallpapers are here for April, fresh from Bandon, Oregon. Enjoy. I hope you’re in the mood for, well, moody. Click the link above for the small one and HERE for the much larger one. Enjoy!