PixelatedImage Blog

Impression I, II, III
All three photographs were made with my iPhone 4, cropped to 4×5, and processed with the Magic Hour filter, all in the Camera+ app. I tweaked curves slightly, and added borders in Photoshop after import.

One of the first things I did when the Ottawa Hospital finally let me have a Day Pass to go wreak havoc in Ottawa was make a bee-line for the National Gallery with a friend. What I most wanted to see, and hadn’t for a few too many years, was the work of the Group of Seven. I could stand in front of them for hours. I’ll let you look them up when you have a moment, but I strongly recommend you do. They were my first love affair with impressionism, and if you have time, and ever find yourself in Kleinburg, Ontario, the McMichael Canadian Art Collection has what I believe the largest collection. But I’m getting off track.

There’s something about the impressionists, and I’ll as happily spend a day in Paris’ Musée d’Orsay which houses a lot of European Impressionist paintings, because they feel like something. More than mere illustration they illicit, at least in me, stronger emotions. I never studied Art History; I probably should have. But I know what I like; I know what moves me. And standing in front of paintings of Algonquin and the north shore of Lake Superior, I wondered how I could put that kind of mood into my own work, in ways beyond the obvious. I’ve been thinking about it for weeks.

And then last Friday we drove Corwin, my manager, back to the airport and it rained and rained. I spent the entire drive with my iPhone pushed up to the window, having more fun creatively than I have had since the moments before I fell off the wall in Italy. I don’t know that I’ve accomplished what I wanted, but I’ve found clues. These three photographs feel the way I feel about the countryside I grew up in, at least on certain days. And to me, the ability to express those things is increasingly important.I’ve said often that photography is a way of pointing, of saying “Look at that!” It’s also a way to to say, “I feel ___________about that,” in the hopes that others might see it, and feel it that way too.

______________________

Tuesday is June 28, and we’ll be releasing A DEEPER FRAME, my first eBook in over 6 months. Everytime we release an eBook, we offer discounts for a few days. Well this time the discounts are, um, well, deeper, I guess. Join us here tomorrow for that announcement.

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.

Copyright Elliott Erwitt.

During my time in NYC I met Elliott Erwitt again. Not in person, but through his work. It’s been a couple years since I first looked at Erwitt’s work and for some reason seeing it this time made a significantly different impression on me. In fact, Erwitt kept popping up. The first time was in the Chelsea Market, an installation of his Italy work was there – probably about 30+ images. And then I saw his work on postcards in several stores, each time thinking I should really pick some up and never did. Finally I found myself in the Phaidon bookstore standing in front of half a dozen limited edition Erwitt prints, trying to will myself not to shell out for his deeply intimate photograph of a man – Robert Frank, as it turns out – kissing his wife in a kitchen in Italy.

Erwitt’s work has so many layers of Impact it’s hard to know where to begin, but the two that strike me most often are his sense of timing and his sense of humour, both of them often in the same moment – timing being one of the keys to great comedy.

I’m always of two minds about looking at the work of others. At the wrong time it gives way to imitation – good for flattery and even for a certain stage in the learning process, not so good if you stall there. But there’s so much to learn from others and how they see, and I couldn’t believe how utterly transported I was by Elliott’s work in Chelsea market. I stared at some of the prints, and while aware of the technical prowess they exhibited, it was so much more than that and THAT is where I want my work to go. I want my work to be so much more than the sum of its technical parts, so much more than just a bunch of layers of impact. I want my work to resonate with others the way Elliott’s does for me – because when I was done looking at his work and sat on the plane reflecting on it on the way home, I wasn’t thinking about how great the photographer was – I was thinking about the moments, and the magic of life itself: something heavily on my mind since a close friend discovered she had incurable brain cancer. Life is short and photography is a means by which we can expand it, reveal its hidden corners, notice even the most minute and fleeting moments. It’s not about photography, it’s about life. Erwitt does that for me and that makes him worth spending some time with.

See more of Elliott Erwitt’s work on his website HERE though the work on the website is not, in my opinion, anywhere near his best. But his books are on there and worth a trip to Amazon or your local library to spend some time with him.

Shortly after I started Craft & Vision I approached some of the photographers from whom I myself get inspiration and I asked them to work with me to bring what they do to my readers. My friend Dave Delnea, whose work and career you can explore in VisionMongers as well, is the first photographer out of the gate and I’m thrilled to be able to release his eBook, Below The Horizon, in the next week or so.

Below The Horizon, Understanding Light at the Edges of Day is an inspiring 40-page PDF ebook, much like others in the Craft & Vision line-up. It was reading Delnea’s rough drafts before going to Kenya that pushed me to create some of my favourite work in a long time. Here’s what I wrote in the Foreword:

I shot the image on this page while on safari in Kenya this January. It was reading the rough notes that eventually became this book that finally opened my eyes to the possibilities to be found in shooting at the far edges of day.  Like so many great learning moments, it was the inspiration I took from Below The Horizon that pushed me to get out and play with this stuff.  The information in this eBook is valuable, but as David himself points out, it’s not rocket science.

Shooting at the edges of day and learning to see the interplay possible between light and time, and how that affects the aesthetics of the image, has opened a whole new world to me. I came back from Kenya with images that excited me more than any I’ve shot in a long time, in part because playing with this stuff, and learning to understand it, creates images that do what I want all my photographs to do: create mood and the feeling of being there. I want my work to say “It felt like this…” not only “It looked like this….”

Take the time to absorb this stuff, but when you’ve done so, shut the computer or turn off your tablet, and go out in the growing or fading light and play. Learn, as David suggests, to see the light that’s only here for a few minutes every day. Everyone shoots when it’s easy to be awake and handhold the camera above 1/60, shooting in the near darkness will invigorate you, inspire you, and produce images with uncommon mood and visual pull.

We’ll be releasing this in the next week or two. When we do there will be, as there was last time, a limited-time discount offered for both single books and a bunch of them at once, as a thank you to my readers. This is an excellent addition to the growing line of ebooks at Craft & Vision and one that has personally inspired and energized my own work. I’m really proud and excited to offer it and the moment it’s up it’ll be announced here.

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

Richard Avedon, Self Portrait. 1923-2004

“I hate cameras. They interfere, they’re always in the way. I wish: if I could just work with my eyes alone. To get a satisfactory print, one that contains all that you intended, is very often more difficult and dangerous than the sitting itself. When I’m photographing, I immediately know when I’ve got the image I really want. But to get the image out of the camera and into the open, is another matter.”

“And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible.”

“I believe that you’ve got to love your work so much that it is all you want to do. I believe you must betray your mistress for your work, you betray your wife for your work; I believe that she must betray you for her work. I believe that work is the one thing in the world that never betrays you, that lasts. If I were going to be a politician, if I were going to be a scientist, I would do it every day. I wouldn’t wait for Monday. I don’t believe in weekends. If you’re headed for a life that’s only involved with making money and that you hope for satisfaction somewhere else, you’re headed for a lot of trouble. And whatever replaces vodka when you’re 45 is what you’re going to be doing.”

I’m not sure Richard Avedon and I would see eye to eye on everything, but I love his passion and there is something in the spirit of what he did and the things he said about what he did that warrants learning from him. Take some time online at some point, or at your local library, looking at the work of Avedon. As far as portrait photographers go, he was his own man with his own voice. Remember, the point is not to find photographers you like or even agree with, but photographers from whom we can learn.

Reminds me of a line from an early Bruce Cockburn song, Maybe The Poet:

You and he may not agree/but you need him to show you new ways to see…

There’s this great story about William Shatner ( aka Capt Kirk aka the Priceline.com guy) at a Star Trek convention. Clearly a bit put off by his fans he yelled at them to “Get a life!” Ok, not much of a story, more like a cautionary tale about biting the hand that feeds you, but I’ve always liked it. And it relates. Sort of. (Updated: Turns out the Get a Life thing was an SNL skit. But it was still Shatner. I stand corrected. Thanks. That’s what I get for blindly telling apocryphal stories without consulting the Google. )

I just finished listening to a short audio interview of Jay Maisel by Chris Orwig and in it Maisel says a couple of things that, if you read between the lines, are his way of imploring us to get a life. Want to be a better photographer, he says, be a more interesting person. Want better photographs, don’t study photography, study life, that’s what he’s saying.If photography is an act of expression, and for most of us it is, there must be something there to express. Want more to say? More texture? More depth? You need to be a photographer who first has more depth, more texture.

Maisel gets a bad rap as being a real hard-ass, and he might be, but while I suspect it’s only one of those gruff NYC exteriors, I think it’s still important to listen to him. Each time I’ve heard him speak he says something that makes me think, re-calibrates me. In fact the more I listen to photographers like Jay, people who’ve made a life and a living through their lens for a long time, the more I wonder why they truly don’t seem to give a damn about all the trappings that the pixel peepers are bent out of shape about.Why? They’ve found something they care about more – life. Now, whose photographs do you want to look at? Someone who cares deeply about cameras and inverse square law, or someone who cares deeply about life?

Listen to Chris Orwig’s short interview with Jay Maisel HERE. If you’re wanting to here what someone with substantially less to say, you can listen Chris Orwig’s short interview with me, HERE.

**

I’ll be out for the next few days. I’m taking some time to get away and do my annual thinking and planning with fewer distractions than home. And then I’m spending 24 hours with my friend and manager, Corwin, for our twice-annual Think & Drink – a planning session that is un-necessarily helped by some good single malt scotch and coffee. Not together. Coffee in the morning. Scotch in the evening. So, that might mean a couple shorter posts this week. But I wanted to leave you with two things.

1. My friend Mitchell Kanaskevich has two ebooks out, I’ve directed you to them before. He’s offering a Two for One sale and if you don’t have these two pdf books, they are well worth looking at. You can find him and his books HERE. I’m a fan of Mitchell’s work, take some time to look at it while you’re there.

2. This November is packed for me; too much going on. I had planned to release the next ebook closer to the end of the month. It’s done and ready to go, but I got a few comments last time to the tune of, “For the love of Galen Rowell, slow down, duChemin!” So I know I promised to space these things out but there’s just too much going on behind the scenes for me to space everything out perfectly and if I leave it too close to Christmas y’all are going to have to decide between buying a $5 ebook and that knick-knack for that co-worker you don’t really like and I don’t want to put you in that awkward position. So, Chasing The Look is coming out this week.  And by “this week,” I mean tomorrow. And the official release of VisionMongers is a week from this morning. Like I said, busy. But ya gotta make hay while the sun shines and that means I get these things out while I’m not on assignment or working on my next print book.

Thanks a bunch for your kind anniversary wishes. Sharon and I had a great time getting away from it all. We were socked in by rain which was just perfect for spending a weekend in a cottage nestled into the BC coastal forest with a fireplace, endless pots of tea, and the one I love. Thanks again for the kindness.

My friend Darwin Wiggett is one of those impossibly talented photographers whose work I can look at for hours. Very different from my own work, his landscape work is gorgeous and always moves me. After yesterday’s post I thought I’d go back to Darwin’s site and spend some time there – particularily looking at the way in which he uses light and time in his images. I stumbled on some things I hadn’t seen before, including a few downloadable PDFs that I want to point you towards. The first is his Paint With Time article, the second his Expose Right article. Check them out HERE. (Warning: Start playing with this stuff and you’ll be ditching your plans to buy that expensive new lens and spending more than you ever imagined possible on ND and ND grad filters. I’m just sayin’…)

Darwin is an excellent teacher and goes into technical details on a level I just never get around to. He illustrates things really well and for the paltry couple bucks he charges for the downloads, it’s money well spent. Darwin’s a kindred spirit – he talks about gear only as it pertains to technique and technique only as it pertains to vision. He’s up there with Bruce Percy at the top of my list of photographers at whose feet I’d like to spend a week learning. Fortunately, Darwin’s got some awesome workshops, books, and articles and is very open about sharing his passion and his knowledge. He’s also featured as one of my profiled photographers in VisionMongers, along with Chase Jarvis, Zack Arias, Karl Grobl, and others, so he’s in illustrious company.

All of this, and my jet-lag, pushed me down to the water’s edge yesterday morning. I sat on English Bay as I do most mornings with a muffin and coffee, and looked at the light. For the rest of the week I’m going to use my jet-lag for good and not for evil and take my little black box and tripod down to shoot the light and the land. One of the perils of vocational photography is that it’s so easy to lose the excitement, but I’ve found mine again and I can’t wait to grab my gear and my coffee, check the tide charts this morning, and go shoot. Can’t wait.

One of my favourite how-to books is Vincent Versace’s excellent Welcome To Oz, A Cinematic Approach to Digital Still Photography with Photoshop. (For the book go HERE, for the DVD series, look HERE. ) It’s unlike anything else out there and was a real eye-opener for me. If you’re not familiar with it, or with Vincent Versace, I suggest you look into it.

As a follow-up to Welcome to Oz, Vincent’s just released 2 tutorial dvd sets under the title Return to Oz. One is called The Lazarus Effect, the other From Oz to Kansas 2.0. The first deals with recovering lost details, the second with black and white conversions, and while I am still waiting for the postman to bring mine, I’m introducing them to you because I know Vincent’s other work and love it. Vincent is a rare breed, and if you like my teaching I suspect you’ll like his – he talks alot about vision and expression, so these are bound to be infused with much more than just technique. Read the Afterword to Within The Frame to get a sense for the passion Vincent has for this art.

Like I said, I haven’t seen them yet, but they’re coming and I wanted to tell you about them now because by the time I get them the Introductory pricing is likely to be over. If you order before the 27th the pricing is $59.95, and each comes with a bunch of extras, including photoshop actions and Nik plug ins.

For more information on Return to Oz: The Lazarus Effect click HERE. For more information on Return to Oz: From Oz to Kansas 2.0 click HERE.

A hodge-podge to start the week.

Photoshop World in Boston is over. And I missed it. And friends like RC kept twittering about what a great time they were having. Way to rub it in. Anyways, PSW happens on the west coast in Las Vegas this September October and I’m plannig to be there. Now that PSW Boston is wrapped the Photoshop World Website now has details about the Vegas conference . See you there.

Speaking of PSW and NAPP, the latest issue (April/May 2009) of the official magazine of all things Photoshop, Photoshop User Magazine, should be arriving in mailboxes soon (pictured above). Look for my article, Global Workflow, in the Lightroom section.

I’ve spent the last few days reading McNally’s latest book, The Hotshoe Diaries. I have so much respect for Joe and that probably taints the way I read his stuff but judging by the huge numbers of people who love him and his teaching, I’m not alone. Still, I’ll keep this brief and understated. The Hotshoe Diaries is truly excellent and should have a copy. I don’t do much flash work but Hotshoe Diaries, like Moment It Clicks, encourages me to do more of it, to see it in different ways. But even if I never picked up another flash, I’m learning more about light, and there isn’t a photographer on the planet that can’t use that kind of learnin’.

And while I am on the subject of flash, if you’ve read the book and are left thinking about the mountain of gear you want, remember that Joe’s work is excellent because Joe knows his craft, not because he has a mountain of gear. Some of his best stuff is shot with one camera, one flash, and some gels. So, before you go all spendy on your credit card, take a look at the simple lighting tools made by David Honl. Joe mentions them in his book and I’m a fan of them too. Convenient, lightweight, easy to pack, and if you’re smart about it and pack it all into a small stuff bag with gaffer tape and whatever strobe, cable, remotes, you use, you’ll have a lighting kit always ready to go. Check out David Honl’s line of flash accessories HERE.

Almost Web 2.0′d to Death. I’ve been making a real effort to understand and get under the hood of Twitter and Flickr. Flickr is still kicking my butt, if only because I feel like I need more time to give to it if I’m going to do it right. And Twitter, that never-ending stream of 140 characters worth of mostly garbage, well I nearly gave up. And then a couple folks – like Seshu -  heard me gasping for air in my little corner of the Twittersphere and pointed me to Tweetdeck. I’ll write something later about why I use Twitter at all, but for now – if you use Twitter and are finding it overwhelming, try taming it with Tweetdeck.

Lastly, and I’ve saved the best till last – if you have ever wondered what truly excellent portrait work is all about, wondered “How do I create portraits so good people will be talking about them – no! – BLOGGING about them- in 20 or 30 years?” – then you need to click THIS LINK right NOW. It will mesmerize you in a way that is not unlike the proverbial train wreck. Haven’t laughed this hard in a long time…