Oh, Jessie, how I miss you so…
This past week, David duChemin and I spent a few days catching up and adventuring with Jessie. Our choices were limited by rain and more rain, so we made the best of our time by starting out at The Pinnacles National Monument.
It was cold, but mostly dry, so we set up Jessie’s accoutrements and just relaxed, drank beer, some wine and some scotch for good measure. The following day we took a spectacular drive through the Santa Lucia Mountains to the coast where Carmel greeted us with more crappy weather, but, also more good wine. From there we snaked up Hwy. 1 looking for locations to shoot some and to camp, but rain forced us back to Mountain View. We didn’t do any serious photography, but I did manage to take a few snapshots along the way. Jessie is quite the gal, I hope you all get a chance to meet her someday.
Only real, axe wielding, old spice wearing men drink wine named Purple Cowboy.
Heading west toward the Santa Lucia Mountains and the coast.
David setting up one of the GoPro cameras mounted on the roof of Jessie.
Friends in photography
I mostly blog to talk about my learning to be a better photographer and to share photographs that I have taken. Today I just want to talk about the friends that I’ve made because of photography. I’ve only been serious about photography for a few years, but, in this short time I have become acquainted with people that I consider to be good friends, even if I have only met them a few times.
I got to thinking about this because of the recent events in Egypt, and my good friend Marco who lives there with his wife Francesca and his son Max. Marco and I usually touch base every other week or so by email, Twitter, Facebook or Skype. I met Marco on the day before the Italy Within the Frame Workshop this past April. We spent the day “warming up” for the workshop, shooting around Genoa. We
immediately hit it off and spent a lot of time together during the workshop, shooting, talking, processing and drinking Ardbeg. I consider Marco not only to be a friend, but also someone who has helped me a great deal in my photographic journey, especially in my pursuit of pet photography. Since the protests have started there has been very little contact with Marco as internet service has been cut, including all social network sites and cell service. Many a tweets were sent out with well wishes, and the other day Gavin Gough was finally able to reach Marco by phone and graciously relayed the message via Twitter to the rest of us. It was a relief to hear that he and his family were safe.
It’s amazing how much caring there is amongst the photographic community. I guess it’s the bond that we create in pursuit of the craft that we all love.
Amongst the people that I have been lucky enough to get to know over the past three or four years, all have been nothing but kind, generous and giving. Whether through reading each other’s blogs or actually getting to spend some time shooting together here’s a short list:
Marco Ryan, Stuart Sipahigil, David duChemin, Jeffrey Chapman, Eli Reinholdtsen, Sabrina Henry, Craig Allyn Rose, Dorothy Brown…and there’s more.
So thank you to all of you for making my journey into photography and my life richer. I can’t wait to see you all again. And, cheers to Marco. Let’s hope that all turns out well for him and has family.
San Francisco Fog
It’s that time of year, the changing of the weather, the changing of the colors – a great time of year for photographers.
I was out wandering Crissy Field and the Fort Point area this morning with my dog and came across this shot of the Golden Gate Bridge starting to peek out from a blanket of fog. In the summer I tend to hate the fog. Probably because it can be cold, foggy and windy at home but 80 degrees and sunny just 20 miles down the road. In the fall and winter, however, I just love the fog. I love the way it feels and smells, and the way it shrouds the city and landscapes. I particularly enjoy shooting in the fog since it tends to reduce everything to the basic elements of tones and shapes. There’s just something spectacular about the simplicity of a great photograph taken in the fog.
Affirmations
Mpong School, Masai Mara, Kenya
Photography is a huge part of my life, too huge my wife might say, but, like most photographers that I interact with I have a “day job” to pay my bills. Fortunately, I happen love my day job as a firefighter/paramedic and I couldn’t see myself doing anything else. That being said, like every job, even great jobs, there are aspects of being a firefighter that aren’t so enjoyable. I love fighting fires but I hate getting up in the middle of the night. I love helping people but I hate getting vomit on me. I love the friendships that I’ve made but I hate the emotional toll that a hard days work can have.
Yesterday was one of those days.
At about 7:30 in the morning as we were preparing to finish up a very busy shift we got a call for a 3 week old baby not breathing. This is the kind of call that every single firefighter, paramedic, EMT, doctor, nurse and police officer dreads. We arrived within minutes to find a mother performing CPR on her child. My crew of 4 plus the ambulance crew of 2 did everything that we could in our scope of practice including providing CPR, IV drugs and an airway. We had the child in the hospital within about 15 minutes from the time we arrived on scene. The emergency room staff continued attempts at recusitation for about another 20 minutes but nothing could be done and the child was pronounced dead.
These types of calls, fortunately few and far between, can really effect those involved. We did an informal incident debriefing with all those involved where we talk in confidentiality about how we thought the call went and bring up any concerns that we might have. Everyone on scene on the call performed professionally and did an excellent job, I couldn’t have asked for a better group to work with under such adverse circumstances.
Throughout the day I reflected on the morning’s events and couldn’t help but think this is the type of call that is the reason my job exists. This is why we train so hard and constantly work on our skills. 95 out of 100 calls may be non-life threatening, but this type of call completely affirms what we do. That affirmation, at least for me, was the one bright spot in this otherwise completely horrible situation and it helped me cope with the circumstances. What does this have to do with photography?
Mpong School, Masai Mara, Kenya
Well, as my mind wandered I began to think about my work as a photographer. Learning photography is hard. I spend many hours reading, shooting and toiling with sliders in Aperture. I’ve spent many hundreds of dollars on gear. Of course I could settle for a nice point and shoot and a little bit of post processing in iPhoto and get some good snapshots, but I don’t. I labor over my work, I critique myself and push myself to get better. What affirmations do I have for working so hard at this craft?
While in Kenya we visited the Mpong school in the Masai Mara to donate school supplies that my wife had collected back home from her students. The few hours that I spent photographing the kids there were the best that I have ever spent with a camera in my hand. When I look back at the photos they affirm all my hard work. Now, I’m not saying that they are the most technically perfect photos ever taken and I may have too much emotional connection to them to judge them objectively, but, if nothing else, they provide the affirmation for me that I need to keep pushing and working on my photography.
What affirmations do you have?
10,000 hours
Recently I was reading a personal finance blog called The Simple Dollar. In the post the author, Trent Hamm, talks about the book Outliers by Malcom Gladwell. In the book, about success, Gladwell discusses the role that practice plays in becoming great. He references the Beatles, for example, and estimates that it took 10,000 of practice by those individuals to become world class musicians. Trent notes that Gladwell used many more examples for evidence and that the magic number of 10,000 hours comes up again and again.
This got me to thinking about the craft of photography. Photography, being a multifaceted discipline, is tremendously difficult to become great at. Sure, you can buy a nice camera and take “nice” pictures, but, to take great photographs takes years of practice. Does it take 10,000 hours of practice?
I would argue yes. Anyone who takes a lot of photographs will sometimes get lucky and make a great image, but to consistently produce great photographs takes work. It takes work to get to know your gear, to develop your vision and to learn how to edit. It takes work to learn how to see the light properly, how to tell stories and how to frame scenes in the best possible way. Most of all it just takes time to take lots and lots of photographs. Backgammon, my dad always said while teaching me to play, is a game of skill and of luck. To consistently win you must be in a position to take advantage of luck that comes your way via a good roll of the dice. This explains how I feel about learning to take great photographs.
If you were to shoot 3 hours a day, everyday, it would take you 10 years to get to 10,000 hours. While I’m not even close to that, I’m doing my best to get there. How about you? Have you practiced for 10,000 yet?
Chinatown, San Francisco
Although fortune cookies weren't even first made in China, the fortune cookie factory, tucked away in a small alley, is very popular with tourists.
For hours on end this woman makes fortune cookies, probably hundreds an hour.
Amongst the madness that is the sidewalk in Chinatown a fruit vendor samples his goods.
Chasing Reflections
My friend, and seriously talented photographer, Eli Reinholdtsten, just released her first e-book Chasing Reflections through Craft & Vision. I met Eli on the Italy Within the Frame workshop this spring. Her talent and vision amazed us all from the first day, and the workshop was lucky to have her. Eli taught everyone in the group something about “seeing” reflections and soon she had us all stopping to look at puddles and windows with new eyes. I was amazed at what she could find. We could be walking past a window and she would stop you to point out 3-4 different photographs that you could take with different layers and perspectives. Eli has worked on her photographs of reflections with an almost obsessive passion, and the results of the hard work show in her photographs. Eli also has a Blurb book on sale called Folk.
In honor of the release of Chasing Reflections I went out yesterday to chase my own reflections. Now, it may be easy to walk by a store display window and take a photograph of a person walking by or a cable car passing in the distance, but it is very difficult to capture the layers and intertwined stories that you’ll find in Eli’s work. To show a connection between the subjects, to have good composition and the right lighting-all in a reflection-adds an element of difficulty to photography.
If you’ve never gone out with the goal of photographing reflections, do yourself a favor, give it a shot, you’re guaranteed to learn something. Oh yeah, do yourself another favor, buy Eli’s book too =)
Capturing the Moment-
Over the weekend I got to watch some of Creative Live with David duChemin. At one point on Saturday he got to talking about “capturing the moment.” David referenced the great Henri Cartier-Bresson and his focus on the decisive moment. In an interview with the Washington Post in 1957, Cartier Bresson said,”There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative.” This got me to thinking about my own photography and about pursuing photography in general. Not only do we have to learn to operate our gear, about the fundamentals of photography, about lighting and about framing and composition, in order for our photographs to have the best impact we have to learn how to best capture a moment. I began to think about different subjects that I have photographed and how challenging getting the “right” moment can be. I have found that it takes a mixture of patience and skill, and sometimes, just plain dumb luck.
Take this photo, for example. While in Kenya, we had the privilege of meeting Joyce 
and Samuel. We were taken by our friend David of Red Rhino Orphanage to Joyce’s house for tea. As we sat on small stools around a small fire and Joyce made our tea I began to take photos of Samuel, a child that Joyce cares for. I really wanted to photograph Samuel and Joyce together, to capture the connection between this woman and child, a child who she cared for even though he was not her own. I took about 100 frames leading up to this point. Finally Samuel sat on Joyce’s lap and smiled, something he had not done for us yet. Here, finally, I felt like I got the moment that I wanted, a moment that best showed the connection between these two people who, despite their relative level of poverty, still live, love laugh and smile.
Sometimes, the moment is not so obvious. In these three photos, taken in Camogli, Italy, of two fisherman, I wanted to show how these two older men, obviously good friends, played just like two children would. They were sitting on a bench waiting for their boat to come to port so they could unload the days catch. I shot a lot of frames as the two horsed around. Which moment is best? While I like all three photos, I can’t decide which one best shows my vision of the moment. At times, when I look back at these, I feel like all three belong together and collectively convey the moment the best. At other times I’m not even sure that I was successful at all.
Is capturing the moment even something we get better at? Is it a skill we can develop, like our use of lighting and composition?
How do you work on improving your skills when it comes to capturing a moment? Does capturing the moment with different types of photography change your technique? These are questions I’m learning to answer.
Do you prefer to shoot alone?
Recently I was looking through some photographs from a workshop I attended in April, Italy Within the Frame, put on by 
Jeffrey Chapman and David duChemin. I came across a photograph of myself with two other participants that I became very close with, Eli Reinholdsten and Marco Ryan. It got me thinking about whether I work better alone or when out photographing with others. Well, I think my answer is…both.
I do often shoot alone, and, prior to going on the workshop in April, most of my shooting was done alone. I think that most photographers will agree that there are benefits to shooting by yourself.
One, the most obvious, is that there are less distractions, no one to distract your mind, to break your focus. There’s also no one to compete with for the best angle. One day while shooting in Camogli, Italy, Marco, David and I wondered upon some fisherman unloading they’re day’s catch i
nto boxes and onto a truck. The conditions for shooting were optimal-fading sunlight, fisherman with weathered faces, action, colors-it was all there. The three of us went to work, myself frantically shooting. I quickly found myself fighting to get the best angle while trying to stay our of the fisherman’s way. There was not a lot a lot of room to move around either with the water on one side.
On the other hand, this particular moment was a great learning experience. It was very insightful to compare each others shots of the same scene. To look at what both David and Marco captured versus what I captured gave me new ideas and new perspectives. This happened many times during the 10 days that we were together. Marco and I would often wander off, and, inevitably, would end up photographing similar scenes but from different angles or with different lenses. I certainly do not want to be the photographer that sees what another photographer is shooting and immediately copies them, nobody does, but, to compare and contrast your results with another photographer is one of the best learning experiences that I’ve encountered at this point in my learning. Sometimes the results are quite frustrating-the other photographer captures the scene, the light, the expression “better” than you did-but, you learn, and apply that to your next opportunity.
To sum up what I have learned about shooting with others I’d say there are a few key factors that are most important to me. One, too large a group never works. 1-4 people around a scene seems to be about right. Two, good dynamics, as always, are important. Too much talking is too distracting. Too little sharing of your results, and you might as well be alone. Three, you might be tempted to photograph from the same angle or perspective, but try something else. Copying is OK to a point for learning, but, break away from this habit early.
3 Things I Learned Photographing on Safari
I have never thought of myself as a wildlife photographer. While I truly enjoy photographing dogs, I just have never taken to wildlife photography as a hobby. Recently, while in Kenya, I spent 9 days on safari shooting nothing but animals. Not only did I really enjoy the thrill of shooting lions, elephants, giraffe and more, as always, when spending that much time with a camera in my hands, I learned a few things. As I reflect on my trip and as I sort and edit the images I made there I keep coming back to three things that I learned about photographing animals, particularly animals on safari. Here they are, in no specific order.
- Having a good driver will make your trip and therefore your photographs. I know this sounds obvious, but there are a few key elements worth mentioning. First, experience matters. Our driver, Dickson, has been driving for about 18 years. He knew how to read the behavior of the animals, where they tend to congregate, and, in some cases, he even knew about specific animals. A good driver also knows where to best position the car, to park perpendicular to the animals for the best shot and to turn the engine of to reduce vibration. A good driver is so key to your experience that it is worth spending the extra money to have a Landcruiser, not a minivan, and to have no more than 4 people in the vehicle. In short, a good driver has knowledge of the animals, a good vehicle(Landcruiser, not a minibus), and knows how and where to park for the best vantage point.
- Shoot a lot of frames. As my photography skills progress, I have been working on shooting less frames of higher quality rather than using the “spray and pray”
method. I found that when photographing animals, like people, a gesture or look can really make the photo. For example, I in this photo of the lioness with her two cubs, I really liked the way the cubs are leaning into their mother and the way that one of the cub’s tails is even wrapped around his the lioness-it makes the moment. This photo was selected from about 20 photos that I took in close succession. If I hadn’t shot so many, I may not have caught this moment, which, for me, best told the story of the lions interacting with each other as I really wanted to convey how the lions behavior mimics how house cats and dogs interact with each other. Finding a balance of overshooting and undershooting was really tough, and, as I look back at the photographs from the trip, there are definitely times when I am glad that I shot as many frames as possible. - Working within constraints. While photographing on a workshop in Italy, we
were constantly reminded to work a scene-change your perspective, change your lenses, to just wait for the right moment-until you were happy with your results. Having patients, focus and determination like this will definitely pay off. I found, however, while photographing on safari, that I didn’t always have these options. Sometimes, on safari, you have very little ability to change your perspective. You can shoot out the window, or from the roof to get higher or lower, but most of the time you can’t get out of or move the vehicle. Or course you do have limited ability to move the vehicle, but some animals scare easily, or, just won’t cooperate with a change in perspective. As far as changing lenses goes, I mostly shot with a Canon 100-400L. I also had another body with a Canon 24-70L mounted, but, I found that in general, I primarily used the 100-400, even when the animals were exceptionally close. The 24-70 just wasn’t getting the right framing or zoom. And, most of the time I couldn’t even change my aperture, as the available light was too low to shoot above f5.6 to f8 without lowering the shutter speed too much, even with Image Stabilization. Shooting within these constraints really focused me on working on making choices with framing, to constantly rethink and re-shoot.
On a side note, I’d like to thank my friend Marco Ryan for his help with figuring out WordPress.
Small Talk
While in Kenya, on one of our long drives from Lake Nakuru to Masai Mara, I got into a discussion about small talk with my traveling companions, my wife, Mary, and our friend, Tiffany. Both of them commented on how I was good at making small talk with people that we met along the way, from our guides and servers to locals at the lodges.
When I was making small talk I usually asked about families, local customs, living conditions, anything to break a sometimes uncomfortable silence. While both the girls commented about how much they did not enjoy making small talk, I realized that I particularly enjoyed it as a way to learn more about my surroundings-I also began to realize that small talk was helping me as a photographer.
While on a workshop in Italy, with Jeffrey Chapman and David duChemin, I finally overcame my fear of approaching people on the street to ask to take their photographs. In Kenya, while putting my new found skills to work, I often found myself making small talk with my subjects in turn opening them up to my camera all while learning more about them. Not only did this result in better pictures,-I think, at least-it gave me some context in which to remember my subjects and made taking the photographs a richer, more personal and fulfilling experience.
I’ve even found that small talk can be made when you don’t even speak the same language as your subject. Usually a few common words or gestures will do and will change the experience for all involved. Sometimes it may be meaningless, but in the right context maybe making small talk isn’t so meaningless after all.
