PixelatedImage Blog

I know I get excited easily, but I’m more jazzed about today’s ebook release than I’ve been for a while. We’ve started a new series called The Print & The Process and I can’t wait to get it out to you. Which is good because today we’re releasing VENICE, A Monograph, the first in this series. What excites me most is that it steps out of the pattern of the other ebooks we’ve released and does the same thing in a different way. We’re all about combining solid photographic teaching with inspiration and this new series does just that, but it does it a little differently.

VENICE, A Monograph, was shot over 5 rainy days in Venice this past May. A rare chance for me to shoot something much more personal than my usual work, this project allowed me to explore themes of loneliness and solitude and create a small body of work purely for the purpose of discovery and self-expression.

The first 30 pages are the photographs, displayed simply without text or distraction, allowing them to stand on their own. Those are then followed by a discussion of the how and why of my process, and notes about each image, including all relevant EXIF data. Sure, I talk about gear and technique, but those are only the way in which the images were created and one of the things we don’t often explore in photographic education is our intent. This discusses that as well.

VENICE, A Monograph is a 47 page ebook in a downloadable PDF format and is laid out in landscape format to make viewing as good on the iPad as it is on desktop and laptop computers.

As always, the Craft & Vision eBooks are only $5. Looking for a deal? Buy VENICE before June 12, 2010 (11:59pm) with coupon code VENICE4 and get it for $4. Buy 5 or more titles using code VENICE20 and get them all for 20% off. If you love them, please spread that sweet lovin’ and tell the world. As long as you spread the love we’ll keep the prices ridiculously low.

Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @CraftAndVision – Our social media ninja, Sabrina Henry, gives you great educational and inspirational links every day. High on inspiration, low-ish on shameless self-promotion.

This is one of those long “cram as much into one post as possible” posts. The last month’s been sparse around here with all my travel, so now’s my time to play catch-up.

ITALY WITHIN THE FRAME

The iWTF trips were amazing and as Jeffrey Chapman and I get ready for next year’s offerings I’m already getting homesick for the places we called home during our time there. I enjoy all my workshops but these ones were special; might have had something to do with the spectacular scenery, and seemingly unending food and wine that was simply incredible. Loved it. It was a new thing for me, shooting in Europe for the first time in years and finding my rhythm, especially where photographing people was concerned. But your vision adapts to new places and new constraints, and I came home with images I’m proud of. Most of my images there were experimental and I’ve found that looking at all my work that way frees me to take more risks and be less safe. Anyways, amazing time there. If you click on the image above it’ll take you to a slideshow of the work I shot there. This is a rough edit and the post-production was done in a hurry on the road, but here’s a first look. Click HERE or on the image above.

By the way, there are still spots on the Kathmandu Within The Frame workshop in Nepal this fall. Click HERE for more information.

WHAT NOW?

Weirdly, I am now home for a stretch. I’ve got brief trips to San Francisco, New York City, and Maui planned for one thing or another, but until I take off for Lumen Dei India in September, I’m around for almost three months. During that time I’m wrapping up one project, beginning another, and working on releasing a few more Craft & Vision books to you. Then it’s Lumen Dei India in September, Kathmandu Within The Frame in October, and I think a personal trip to Antarctica in December before starting it all over again for 2011. Phew. I just exhausted myself typing that.

CRAFT & VISION RELEASES

I’m excited to tell you the Craft & Vision team is about to release a few more eBooks – including the second volume of Andrew S. Gibson’s The Magic of Black & White (which I’ll talk about later this week when it’s released), and the first three in a new series called The Print & The Process, which allows the photographs to take center stage, accompanied by a discussion of the creation of those images. I’ve got two coming out but the one I am most excited about is called CHASING REFLECTIONS by Eli Reinholdtsen. Her work is simply amazing and has inspired me in a way I haven’t been in a while. Makes me love photography all over again. Andrew’s book gets released this Thursday, May 27th. We’ve been working hard to keep up with the technology and have decided to change the layouts to a native landscape format so they read easier on both laptops and iPads. Have an iPad? Get the GoodReader app and these eBooks look fantastic!

AND FINALLY…

I just made the last tweaks on Vision & Voice (oh man, do I hope they’re the final ones!) and I’m happy to tell you that at this point it’s early for the deadline which means it’ll go to press on time and release on time. I had a heck of a time with this one. I’m no technical writer and there were days when the Artist and the Geek struggle was heavily in favour of the Geek and the Artist was begging for mercy. The fact that we got it done at all without me spending my advance on whisky is a miracle. But, it’s almost done, I’m still sober, and I’m thrilled with how it looks. It’ll be out in July and with that the vision trilogy will be complete. Until I do the fourth book which I’m embarrassed to tell you I’ve just begun. I know, I said I was taking a break….

LAST WORD.

One of the things that most surprised me in Italy was how taking a more experimental approach and spending such concentrated time with other photographers rejuvenated my vision and my passion for this craft. If it’s been a while since you felt that perhaps you’ll find your muse in a surprising place; stop taking this so seriously, comparing yourself to others, and expecting certain images. Let go, let it be a little more playful or experimental, grab a 50mm lens and go shoot something just for fun. We take things far too seriously sometimes.

Phew, that was a long one. Check out the Italy photographs, I’ll be back in a couple days with a few more things from the backlog in my brain, and the release of Andrew Gibson’s The Magic of Black & White – Part Two, Craft. Have a great weekend. And if you’re in the Commonwealth, a happy Victoria Day Weekend to ya.

I think one of the things I love most about photography is that it often elevates the mundane. When you stop a moment, and preserve it forever, and take the care to frame it, light it, and chose one moment over another, you effectively tell the world – or anyone who cares enough to look at your work; Look at this! And if, even in these mundane moments of life, we find something worth looking at, worth showing the world, then we’re effectively saying, Nothing is mundane. When the elements all come together within the simple frame of a photograph to produce something greater than we’d have noticed without that captured moment, it’s magical. And as life is full of these moments, waiting to be seen and captured, they’re magical whether we do or don’t have the camera. The moment is the point, not the photograph. Photographers are learning to see, to stretch life out into a long series of noticed moments, and there’s a gift in this – if Socrates is right and the unexamined life is not worth living, then the unobserved life seems equally tragic. Sometimes a moment is just a moment, but isn’t that what life is all about?

If the poet-philosopher stuff doesn’t appeal to you, here’s the other stuff. We were eating lunch and this man was beside us with his wife. I shot this from the ankle, the camera resting on the floor, with a Zeiss 50mm/1.4 set to f/16 and prefocused. And then I waited. I shot it low because no other angle gave me the lines this one did. Not sure why but I love this photograph and if it’s all I come back from Italy with I’m content to have seen this moment. Makes me smile every time.

I’m still plugging away in Venice. Yesterday it rained cats and dogs (and I got my boots wet – stepped in a poodle) but I came back, soaked, with some images I like. Was one of those evenings you just go and apply yourself to the work, look for the muse and hope she’s not hiding in a cafe somewhere while you’re out getting wet. I fly home on Sunday, so I’ve got 3 more evenings to shoot, including today, so I need to run. Ciao bella.

I photographed this man in Senegal earlier this month during some much needed time off. The encounter was so typical of much of my travels. You meet someone, drawn by their smile, their character, and with permission you raise the camera. And then it vanishes. For one reason or another that authentic thing that drew you disappears behind what? Something cultural that makes many African men get very stoic in the same way it makes asian girls flash a peace sign and cheesecake grin? Fear? Nerves? Whatever it is, that mask is often a layer of protection we don and in so doing we prevent our true selves from being seen. My job, because of the kinds of images I want, is to help draw that mask back down.

I am not seeking smiles, per se. Those can be as fake as the other masks we were. I am seeking a genuine expression of humanity, and while the stoic mask – or the cheesy peace sign – is certainly genuine, it’s not the vulnerable person underneath I capture in those cases, but the mask itself. What does it take to draw that mask down? Vulnerability on your own part. People trust those who trust them. I show my subjects my trust by being willing to stumble badly over language in attempts to communicate, or simply to clown around with them. Take the moment less seriously and often they will too. Portraiture is a dance and it needs to be approached as a collaboration. The more willing you are to wait it out, slow down, and be vulnerable, the more readily your subject will be able to do the same.

Click on the image above to see the complete sequence in a larger image.

I’ve been sitting on these for a while, wondering what to do with them and finally got off my butt and decided to put them into a slideshow. It could be a while before they make it into my portfolio as I’m still figuring out a complete re-build, so here’s a glimpse at what I shot. It’s a rough edit and to my horror I saw that I’ve left a couple dust spots in there which I’ll remove as I do a final edit, so consider this a glimpse at my sketches rather than the final work.

This trip was a lot of fun for so many reasons, not the least of which was the company and the learning curve which I find invigorating, if not at times frustrating (the learning curve, not the company!) Thanks to those that travelled with me on this trip. If you’re reading this and have some of your images you’d like to share, drop a note and a link into the comments.

Click HERE to open that slideshow in a new window.

The cover of Paul Nicklen’s new book, Polar Obsession.

I’m captivated by Paul Nicklen and his work right now. His book, Polar Obsession, is on its way from Amazon and I can’t wait until it arrives. I haven’t been this excited about a book coming my way for a while. I might even be more excited about this one arriving than I was about VisionMongers.

Paul Nicklen grew up among the inuit in the far  – FAR – north of Canada. He studied to become a biologist. He mapped out his career plan on a scrap of paper when he should have been studying for a genetics final in his 4th year at University of Victoria. He failed the exam but found a career. I’m so intrigued with Paul for several reasons. The first of course is that his images are breathtaking. I don’t care any more about seals per se than I do about, I don’t know, toy poodles. But his images make me care. His images of the arctic and antarctic make me care, make me want to be there. Hell, they make me want to get into that water with him. But more than that, I suspect I’m drawn to him because, like the visionmongers I profiled in the book, this is a guy who seems to do it because he can’t NOT do it. He cares deeply about his subject. He has leveraged his expertise and his own story, and found a place shooting something few others are shooting with such great affection.

A person with a reason to shoot is lucky. A person with a passion, an obsession, is damn-near unstoppable. And I think their images show it.

A leopard seal feeds Paul Nicklen a penguin. Antarctic Peninsula.
© Paul Nicklen

So to start the week of right I’ll stop yapping and refer you to some of the inspiring bits I’ve found on Paul Nicklen.

First, his own website is here. Be sure to look at his galleries and read his story. PaulNicklen.com

Next, a great YouTube video about some of the experiences behind his leopard seal images HERE and his underwater polar bear HERE.

PDN has an article on Paul Nicklen HERE.

Finally, if you’ve got a few shekels left after buying my recent barrage of books, you can find Paul’s book, Polar Obsession, HERE on Amazon.com

Yesterday a lot of people said a lot of very kind things and though I’ve never needed reminding how much I like y’all, well, yesterday just capped it. Your support and encouragement means a lot to me. So I’ve got a little something for you, just to say thank you. I’ve put together 16 of my favourite wallpaper-type images into one collection and I’m giving it away. Well, that’s not entirely true, I’m giving it away to you. Others that just stumble upon it in the store, well, they’ll pay a whopping $2 for it. But not you, you get it free. Because I love you.

At the bottom of this post there are links to put this into your cart and check out. So go ahead, put it into your cart, then use this coupon code: FREE1104 and you’ll be whisked through the free checkout line. Thanks again for being the one of the best communities on the internet – I’m honored you’ve thrown in your lot with me (UPDATE – Turns out there is a limit of 100 of these downloads a day, so CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD DIRECT FROM MY SERVER – please let me know if there are any further issues. Apologies for the oversight.)

This will come to you as a zipped folder. Unzip the folder and you’ll have a folder of 16 jpg images. Not sure how PC people do this, so if you’re good with this stuff, feel free to leave instructions in the comments. But Mac peeps should just be able to move all 16 images to their iPhoto library. Assuming you’ve got your photos to sync on the iphone, plug the iphone in and sync that sucker. Then choose the image you want and set it to desktop wallpaper. In theory this should all be pretty painless. If not, ask for help in the comments and I, or someone else, will try to help.

I had the distinct pleasure of spending a couple days with Dave Taggart recently. Dave flew up to spend a couple days with me working on his craft and getting out a few bugs before he joins us on the Kenya tour in January. In the lead up to our time together I spent some time looking at his work and the image above – called Ready To Fly – was one that jumped out at me, and then lodged itself in my brain.

Ready To Fly is a moving example of Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive moment.” It’s also a great example of juxtaposition, and an image that has a deeper theme. It’s got humour, too, but as the romans once said – In Risu Veritas – or, In Laughter Truth – there’s something true being said in this moment. It reminds me of lines from a Bruce Cockburn song;

And as I’m walking this prison-camp world
I long for a glimpse of the new life unfurled,
The chrysalis cracking and moistened wings uncurled
like in the vision John saw.

Isn’t it all what we hope for? That the decline of age is bringing us to the cocoon and not only the grave?

It’s also a great example of pulling any element from the frame that doesn’t add to the image – in this case pulling the vibrant colours to let the gesture and symbol take the stage. Thanks to Dave Taggart for letting me share this image. You can see more of his work HERE.

Last Friday I posted a short slideshow of images shot in Lamayuru, Ladakh. Thanks to all for the kind words left in comments and sent in emails. There were a number of requests for a how-to, so I’ll do my best to be helpful. Truth is there isn’t much to tell in terms of technique. I pointed the camera and let it do it’s thing while I worried about not getting trod on by a horse, donkey or yak. In situations like this the meter on my 5D does remarkably well. But remember, HOW I meter is not as relevant as what the histogram looks like. I shoot first, meter later. Sort of. HERE’s an article on that.

I shoot in AV, chose an aperture (f/16 in the case of the image above, ISO 100, 1/100sec- (see, the “Sunny 16 Rule” really works!), then check the histogram and try to balance the dark shadows and the bright backlit sun. But here’s the thing – perfect exposures are not what these images are about. These images are about mood, so I wasn’t afraid to blow the exposure, plunge the shadows, or even get way too much lens flare. I grabbed my 5D instead of my newer 5D MkII because it’s my kick-about camera; with the 17-40 lens on it I honestly don’t care what happens to it, so I take more risks, and don’t mind burying it in the dust and chaff of harvest. If you study my work you know I tend towards simple, clean compositions. This was an intentional departure, having already shot some harvest scenes that were front-lit, perfectly exposed, and boring & lifeless (see below).

I post-processed these (the slideshow images not the image above) in Lightroom with very few tweaks. In some cases I made the blacks darker. In most cases I added vignette, pushed the clarity slider way to the right, and added some fill light. In other cases still I pulled back the saturation and bumped the vibrance. I don’t have a formula, just the desire to retain or finesse the dusty, luminous feeling of a warm autumn day in the gold of the barley fields. That’s the key, and it’s what forms the spine of the book I am working on now to compliment Within The Frame.

Within The Frame was primarily about capturing your vision within the camera. The next book, the one after VisionMongers, is about capturing your vision in the digital darkroom of Adobe Lightroom. Most books out there answer the question, “how can I make my photograph look better.” Instead, this next book ask the question, “How can I make this image express my vision?” It begins with being conscious of your vision, the feeling you want to express in your image. Sure, adding contrast might be the answer. Or it might not. Begin with your vision for the image, and play in the darkroom until you’ve brought the digital negative into alignment with that. Forget the recipes and shortcuts, and instead learn what each setting does to the aesthetic of the image. Just the same as you do in camera.

I hope this is helpful in some way. I know it’s vague. Between you and I, I think the reason these images work is because I took the risk of getting in there, shooting against the light and pushing my face (and camera) around in the dust and dirt. As my portfolio fills up with safer images, I find myself drawn more and more to the need to express myself with less perfection and more mood. Perfection is over-rated and seldom touches the heart.

This is a short slideshow of some of the images I took in the village of Lamayuru last month while in Ladakh in the north of India. I love Lamayuru, and fear for what progress means for this place. While there we were told that this might be the last harvest done without mechanization, and while machines bring good they can also bring the erosion of cultures and values. For every gain there’s a loss. These images aren’t a commentary on that, just a celebration of the beauty of the harvest.

This is Thanksgiving weekend up here in Canada, so Monday’s likely to be a break for me while I give thanks for all I have – my family, my health, my place in this world, and for you who are a part of this growing community of good folks. I’m deeply grateful everyday, but this weekend I get to show it by eating more pumpkin pie and turkey than is healthy. On Tuesday my trainer will kick my ass for it. I can live with that. Happy Thanksgiving to all of you.

Click the image above to open the slideshow in a new window.