PixelatedImage Blog

Joe McNally has been slaving away on his recent book. It’s now done and only weeks away from being released. I share the same publisher as luminaries like Joe, Vincent Versace, and Scott Kelby. How I got past the selection committee for this club I have no idea, but if I keep my head down and not make too much noise I’m hoping they’ll never discover the error of their ways. I digress. Joe’s book is coming and the fine folks at Peachpit Press are giving away three copies of The Hotshoe Diaries, Big Light From Small Flashes.

All you have to do to get in on the action is leave a comment with your name, your email in the email field, and give me your word that you’ll download the PDF  sample material of the book (you can do that by clicking HERE, which will download the PDF). Joe knows his stuff and whether you use off-camera strobes  a lot or only a little, you will learn much about the quality of light that will only benefit you, even if you’re one of those natural-light-only purist types.

Following 2 months after the release of The Hotshoe Diaries will be Within The Frame, a book that has the dubious distinctions of both being abbreviated as WTF, and being written by me. So when WTF comes out, we’ll do another giveaway. Or maybe I’ll lean on Joe and let him do the honours on his blog

Ok, free Joe books. Who’s in?

As always, this is a randomn draw. I’ll pick 3 names on or near the official release of the book, email you for your address, and ship these when they arrive here from the publishers.

It’s not often I look at a landscape photographer’s work and am possessed by an immediate desire to see all of it, travel with him, learn from him, but yesterday I watched a podcast by Bruce Percy on his travels in Patagonia and I’ve been able to think of nothing else. He does a workshop in Patagonia that dovetails with a workshop on Easter Island and I’m trying desperately to put it out of my mind, to no avail.

This is going to sound strange, but I don’t look at a great many portfolios by other photographers. I discovered long ago that, far from inspiring me, it often makes it harder for me to be creative about my own work. If I see work I love, I’m saddled with the burden of trying not to copy it. If I see work I do not like, I’m saddled with the equally unpleasant task of keeping my mouth shut. Hey, I’m not proud of it. Anyways, after seeing the podcast on Patagonia I literally had to, was compelled to, sit and look through Bruce’s work. It’s breathtaking, inspiring, luminous, and – dammit! – it makes me green with envy over some of the places he’s captured so beautifully.

If you have time today – hey, this is a short post, go now – spend some time on Bruce Percy’s site. Be sure to watch one of his podcasts too, he’s got one of those fantastic exotic accents we Canadians desperately wish we had.

I got an email today from a photographer I deeply respect – Mitchell Kanashkevich is an uber-talented photographer with vision in spades – and he’s joining the blog world. I’m excited to get a window into his images and thinking; his work is so good I know his blog will be a treat. You can find his work online HERE and his blog HERE

Welcome to the blogosophere, Mitchell.

I’ve spent the last 2 mornings at what has quickly become my favourite place in Kathmandu. Where it is doesn’t matter, and truth be known I’m not sure it’s the kind of place that would benefit by being over-run with photographers. In broad strokes it’s a place where people go to spend their last days.

I hesitated to go in, and when I did, was told by a very severe-looking bureaucrat at the office that it would be best not to photograph. As always, I respected this. For a while. And then I began to meet the residents, hold their hands, watch the fire in their old eyes, and everything in me told me to quietly shoot,  that photographing these old souls would be the best way I could communicate with them. Moreover, their body language begged me to do so. So I spent a couple hours with them, both yesterday and today. I photographed some of them, printed their images for them, and watched the joy on their faces. But mostly I just spent time with them, held their hands, listened to them babble away in Nepali. It did not, I think, expand my portfolio much, but it expanded my spirit immensely.

In all of this I met an older photographer from the UK. His name, too, is David. David is older than old school – shoots with a broken Nikon FE2, now stuck at 1/250, and no-name film. He’s roughly shaven, carries his kit in a crappy shoulder bag and his camera hangs from a leather shoe-string. He has nothing about him that marks him as a “real photographer.” But to see him with these old Nepalis, to see him greet them and meet the sparkle in their eyes with the one in his, and to see him photograph them – it’s like a dance, graceful and kind, and in those moments I watched this, nothing else about my craft mattered – all the rhetoric about which lens is better, which camera bag to use, or whether Lightroom trumps Aperture…none of it meant anything. I felt like I was in the presence of a master.

Meanwhile tourists were coming in, looking at the old people, snapping photos and rushing off to see more interesting things, and the often predatory hazard of this craft came rushing back to me and made me angry. Made me want to chase after these people, take their cameras from them and not give them back until they’d spent some time with the residents, done more than looked at them, but truly seen them. Presumptuous indignation, I know, but that’s how I felt.

Now, I don’t know what David’s images look like, but that’s very much not the point – the point is that he’s found something greater than the image itself – he’s found such joy in the moment of creating that image that I suspect if he ran out of film tomorrow, the bloke would just keep shooting all the same.

Sounds daft, I know, but if you could have seen it…you’d wish every photographer on earth could spend a day with him, and then a day with these truly beautiful people.

I’m not publishing the images from this trip, they’re for another project entirely, but the image above is one of the ones that hit the cutting room floor this afternoon, so I’m using it to illustrate this post. The woman in red is one of the many beautiful women I’d love to adopt and take home with me. That they spend their days here with no one other than their peers to love them is tragic.

Exif: 85/1.2L at f/3.2, 1/320, iso 200.

Near the beginning of my photographic journey I was given two books – both of them by Freeman Patterson. The first I have recommended several times here, Photography and the Art of Seeing, the second is Photography For the Joy of It. Re-reading them now I suspect they are at the very centre of who I’ve become as a photographer.

I want to leave you with a quote from Patterson, and the recommendation that you add Photography For the Joy of It to your reading list. Here’s the Amazon link. And here’s the quote:

In making photographs, two things are important above all others – the subject matter and you. Photographs are what happen when you and the subject meet, and you use a camera to describe the meeting. A photograph is a visual description of the relationship between the subject and the photographer; and a good photograph is one which clearly shows the character of the subject while revealing the photographer’s response to it.

If you think of a photograph in this way, you’ll find your personal direction as a photographer emerging and becoming clearer. Sometimes it takes a while to understand what’s happening, and to decide upon what you expect from the relationship. Good relationships require a lot of give and take, and a lot of hard work. But the process of coming to know yourself through interaction with someone or something else is very satisfying. In the end, you get the picture – of both of you.

If things have gone the way we’ve planned, I am still in Ladakh. We overnighted in Leh last night but will be heading out to a more remote village today, overnighting there after photographing in the village for the evening, then back to Leh tomorrow. We fly to Delhi on Saturday ending the Lumen Dei tour. I fly to Kathmandu on Sunday, the 28th, and will be – should be – back online shortly thereafter with an actual update. Thanks for hanging in there with me through this last few weeks.

I’m giving you another well-deserved break from my rants – not all of which, it seems, have been appreciated by others. I was accused, of all things, this week, of exhibiting sour grapes towards the very people for whom I freely labour by writing this blog.

My rant about gear being paramount to vision rubbed some the wrong way. Alas, the internet is a tough place to express an opinion, unless you clarify everything and put italicized caveats on every thought, you’re bound to be read out of the current context by someone. If I’ve been sour to to anyone out there, let me know and I’ll happily apologize. But if you think gear is a substitute for vision or having something to say, we’ll just have to happily disagree.

To be great, art must point at something. To be a good artist, one must have something to point at. The better your craft, the more clearly and powerful your pointing can be. Gear only makes it a little easier, a little faster. The hardest work is creative, getting what’s inside, out.

In an effort to give you all a break from my soapbox, and point you in the direction of another one – here’s an inspiring lecture by David Griffin of National Geographic on the power of the photograph. Follow THIS LINK to the TED page to watch it. Thanks to my friend Wes for pointing it out.

In 1952, celebrated photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson wrote Une Decisive Moment, a book filled with both his photographs and philosophy. One concept, the titular “decisive moment” has become so well-known as to become cliche and then suffer the same fate most thoughts and theories suffer when their commentators and quoters drift too far from the source material. Here, then is the context for that phrase, and the definition given it by HCB himself:

“the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms that give that event its proper expression.”

Lately when I hear the decisive moment concept mentioned, it is frequently invoked to imply a moment when a person smiled just right or when a motion is frozen at its apex, and while these might be, generally speaking, decisive moments, I think HCB meant much more. In fact, it’s fashionable of late to criticize the concept with a dismissive “yeah, but every moment is a decisive moment.” Maybe, but that has nothing to do with what Cartier-Bresson was saying.

Yes, in life there may be many, many decisive moments, but I believe HCB was being specific to the frame. Within the strict geometry of the frame not all moments are equal.

According to HCB each scene at one particular time would have a moment where the gesture and geometry come together to express the nature of that scene in the most aesthetically meaningful way. Likely, it can only be judged in hindsight that this moment was in fact decisive, and it doesn’t entirely exclude the possibility of other decisive moments within that scene.

Remember, HCB was talking about the two-dimensional frame , not the near-infinite views and perspectives of our real-life perceptions. So yes, experientially life offers many decisive moments, but when you’ve translated a scene to two dimensions and are looking at them on the light-table, a few of them are likely to be stronger than others – and learning to see that decisive moment before you squeeze the shutter rather than afterwards, is the point.

I think we can all agree that within a frame certain compositions exist that express our vision of a scene better than others. Certain geometries exist at one moment that make an image more powerful than they would be had we waited a moment later. HCB was not saying some moments were good and some not worth photographing – he was saying that composition and the placement of elements within a scene was important and that the timing of the capture had a significant role to play.

When we say, “yeah but every moment is decisive” we’re really saying that we either misunderstand Cartier-Bresson, or that composition is unimportant. It’s a little like those schools where kids don’t get graded for fear of wounding their self esteem. It may do the kids fragile little ego a world of temporary good but his math skills are going to suck by the time he’s in grade 4. Dismissing every moment as decisive won’t improve anyone’s composition skills. It’s the image you capture that matters, not the ones you miss, decisive or not.

*The strong possibility exists that (1) HCB needs no defending, least of all by me, (2) some people understand HCB’s decisive moment concept better than I do, and simply disagree with him, and/or (3) I’m the one who misunderstands. I’m OK with all three, really. But my opinion stands. Until I change it. So if you get bent way out of shape by this, feel free to leave a comment, but don’t look for a fight. I’m a lover, not a fighter, man. Rabbinic though suggests that the questions are often more important than the answers, but that doesn’t mean yeshivas aren’t full of heated discussions. Feel free to weigh in.

The Travel Photographer links to a great article by Vincent Laforet. It’s a lengthy one but for aspiring professionals it’s a must read. The title, The Cloud is Falling, should suggest that Laforet, who I have great respect for, spends the article running amuck and crying “the sky is falling, the sky is falling.” He doesn’t. Not really. But ignore this article and the realities it represents at your own peril. Read The Cloud is Falling HERE.

One of my sponsors, Data Robotics, has just announced a Firewire 800 version of the DROBO – of course I had to find out from RC Concepcion on his Layers Blog. Once of the quirks of sponsorship – they send me stuff but don’t really talk to me. More info on the FW 800 Drobo HERE.

While we’re talking about harddrives, Western Digital makes some of the smallest, cheapest ones out there. I have a couple of the smaller USB Passport drives but the USB keeps me from using them when I travel on assignment. Western Digital now has Passport Studio drives that are USB 2.0 and Firewire 400. They’re bus-powered, small, cheap, and they come in 250 and 320gb sizes. All this means I can carry less drives and all of them are capable of being bootable back-up drives. Here’s the link to the 250 GB drive at B&H. They come with cables, a carry bag, and a 5 year warranty. I’ll be buying a couple of these, replacing my handful of 80gb drives.

Chase Jarvis has a short but encouraging post called My Photography Mistakes #2496 – check it out HERE.

There are some excellent videos of lectures by photographers like Steve McCurry from the Lumix Festival for Young Photojournalism. I’m watching them as I write. Here’s a link to the Rob Galbraith site which’ll give you a comprehensive set of links.

The current issue of PDN is The Career and Self Promotion issue. Be sure to get a copy if you’re not a subscriber.

Be sure to check in on Scott Kelby’s blog to read today’s guest post by landscape photographer Stephen Johnson.

Thanks for your patience yesterday in the wake of my lack of inspiration. I still feel like I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel, but I’ll kick it up a notch tomorrow.

James Nachtwey opens the LOOK3 Festival – read about the inspiring conversation between Nachtwey and Time’s MaryAnne Golon on PDN Online HERE. I respect this man more than I can say. (If you’ve never seen his TED speech, head over HERE to A Thousand Words where Jordan Nielsen has it posted.)

From that PDN article:

“When you see so much pain and so much sadness, do you feel you still have the capacity to love?”

That question drew oooohs as it was asked by Time’s MaryAnne Golon to photographer James Nachtwey. His answer drew a thunderous standing ovation.

“Witnessing pain and sadness is an act of love,” he said.

In light of that the rest of this stuff is just trivial.

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David Ziser has an excellent post on building your client base. Read it HERE.

The LAYERS Blog has an excellent tutorial up on solving underexposure problems. Most articles of this sort scratch the surface but don’t get beyond the “move the exposure slider over” kind of advice. This one is solid and I guarantee you’ll learn something new (guarantee not actually guaranteed.) Link HERE.

Moose Peterson linked to a deal on the Epson R1900 if you’re a NAPP member. And you should be. Check out Moose’s post for the links and details. If you’re not a NAPP member, here’s another solid reason to join.

Scott Kelby wrote a candid post yesterday about forgetting to put a memory card into the camera. Read that HERE and then go HERE for my solution to it (if you’re a Canon shooter.)

When I was in the throes of falling in love with photography, a young man looking for something to be good at, some way to express myself, my mother gave me two great gifts. The first was the Pentax Spotmatic, and not the camera I thought I wanted/needed to begin my illustrious journey in imaging. The second was a copy of Freeman Patterson’s Photography and the Art of Seeing. That Spotmatic is long retired, though I have another sitting on my desk as a reminder of my roots and my first-love. The book is long gone, probably disappeared in the chaos of one of many moves during college years, but yesterday I bought another copy and it’s sitting here now, not far from my Spotmatic. You know you’re getting older when you get nostalgic about these things.

I’m not writing this as a trip down memory lane; I’m pretty sure you don’t care that much. I wanted to encourage you to consider two things.

1. Go back to the beginning and recall what drew you to this art to begin with – what was it that you loved so much about photography that you’d commit to spending so much money on glass, metal, film, or all the digital detritus that litters the path to imaging these days? Do you still feel it? If not, it’s time to grope your way back to that, to rediscover the joy of seeing in new ways, expressing yourself in new forms.

2. Read Patterson’s book. It’s on it’s way to becoming a classic and many of us wouldn’t give it a second look. There are no pictures of shiny gear. There is not a single discussion of which camera or lens is better. The photographs in it do not move me the way they once did. But the exercises Patterson discusses, the concepts surrounding learning to see, are not just theory – they are absolutely critical.

Re-reading this book has been more than sentimentality, it’s been a reminder of the very first lessons I ever had in photography. If you read here often I assume it’s for more than just the cute little buttons at the head of each post (in fact, more than likely it’s despite the buttons! Deal with it.) I assume you get something from what I write. In some ways you’re reading the 20-year distillation of my original experience with this book. It’s what started me on the path of nurturing the artist and not just allowing the geek to run amok. If you have a chance, go to the source material and read, absorb, Patterson’s Photography and The Art of Seeing.