What do you see?
A new feature of this blog for you all to chew on. I’m going to present a picture and then ask if you see the things I think are photographically significant. I may give some broad hints if I am feeling nice. Here is the first one- This picture of me was taken at the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, Oregon in July. This is a teaching shot I set up during a workshop. I am trying to get a head shot of a tufted puffin. Study the image and count the photographically significant things you see. Here is what I see: I am hand holding a 70 – 200mm lens because my tripod is not with me. To get proper support I for the long lens I have 4 points of contact- foot, other foot, knee, elbow. the more points of contact the more stable I am going to be and the better the image will be. The camera’s plane is parallel to the plane of the puffin’s head allowing me to shoot more wide open and thus giving me the softest possible background. I was shooting at f5.6 It is a rainy cloudy day. This means that there is very little contrast so the white on the puffin’s face is less likely to blow out. Even so the exposure compensation was set to -.7 to capture the white properly. Also the low contrast will give me more detail in the black feathers and richer orange on the bill. I am in an aviary in a controlled situation. Getting head shots of tufted puffins in the wild is not possible unless you can find a extraordinary circumstance or have a 2000mm lens. There are not crowds of people around because I went early and went straight to the aviary which I had scouted out the day before. Behind the puffin are lots of choices for soft out of focus backgrounds- I can shoot him against the green of the plants, the black of the shadows or the light brown of the fake rock just by slightly moving my position. Because it is July the bird is in high breeding plumage thus it is looking it’s best. To my right I can kneel down and shoot the puffins and murres swimming in the water at their eye level- always the best perspective. My gray hair nicely matches my pants I need to wear longer socks!
What’s New
News Flash……..New Equipment Being Developed! For years I have been asking camera manufacturers the same question, “What’s new?” and getting the same answer, “Can’t say.” Well, that is no longer good enough! Through extensive research I have discovered what the next big things are going to be. Some of these are pretty exciting so get your orders in early. When I lived out west I was constantly plagued by blank blue skies. What I would’ve given for some beautiful white puffy clouds. Wait no more! Introducing Bucket o’Clouds, the cumulus cloud container. With Bucket o’Clouds just pop the top and let out however many clouds you wish in your composition. The longer the lid stays open the bigger the clouds. Refills available at authorized shady dealers. If you would like more precision in placing your clouds try the Ansel Adams Cloud Gun. Attached by a tube to the Bucket o’Clouds the Cloud Gun shoots the clouds exactly where you want them in your picture. Available in large caliber Thunderhead or delicate Summer Whiff the Ansel Adam Cloud Gun is the perfect accessory for precise cloud placement. Don’t you hate cold hands when you are photographing? Well, you will suffer no more with the Nuclear Pod Warmer. Just drop the little radioactive tablet into the hollow leg of your tripod, wait for the warm red glow and, viola, your tripod leg is now a hand warmer! And there is nothing to turn on or off – your Nuclear Pod Warmer has a half-life of 500,000 years! Surely that should be enough time to find a shot or two. For those of you with a camera mega-bag that weighs as much as a small car you might be interested in the Antigravity Bag made by PhotoDirigible. Lighter than air, this bag will follow behind you on a short tether as you wander hill and dale. No more sore shoulders or achy back. No more kneeling down to retrieve your gear. Get the Antigravity Bag and leave your problems floating behind you. Another handy accessory is the Far Horizon Binocular. Ever wonder what is over the next ridge or what will happen next week? Try the new Far Horizon Binocular. Designed with an interior Black Hole that will actually bend light the Far Horizon Binocular helps you pick your photo-locations and see what to expect in the coming week. Not appropriate for betting on sporting events or to take a peek at future Stock prices. New advances in aerosol science have led to two new photo-sprays. The first is used on those pesky breezy days when you are trying to photograph wildflowers and they just won’t stop moving. Designed to temporarily paralyze air molecules, Breeze-B-Gone creates a pocket of still air around your subject. The second spray, Eau de Bad Picture, attaches to your camera body and releases a spray of noxious fumes when the camera senses your composition stinks. Similar to the new aerosols is a new water-based photo spray paint that guarantees proper exposures. Always medium in tonality, just spray Bracket-No-More on your subject and snap away. Comes is photocard gray, barn red, grass green, good as gold and north sky blue. Two more composition aids are coming to a camera store near you. The first, The Screamer, is a visual and audio signal that is triggered whenever your camera senses a good composition. Just swing your camera around and when you see the little green Screamer indicator inside your viewfinder you are pointing at a pretty picture. To tell how pretty your picture is activate the audio signal. If you hear polite applause you have a nice shot, cheers a pretty shot and wild, joyous screams a cover shot. The second compositional aid prevents bad compositions by locking your shutter whenever you try to take a not so pretty picture. Known by its anagram, Y.U.C.K. Your Ugly Composition Killer not only prevents ugly pictures but also stops bad critiques at your next camera club get together. If you have a tendency to ignore the critical little voice in your head try a more obvious preventive, theUgly Stick. Spring loaded and attached to your tripod, the Ugly Stick springs out and gives you a good whack you if you try to ignore the Y.U.C.K. device. The Ugly Stick is also good for cracking coconuts and getting complex ideas into your noggin. Two new filters are hitting the shelves soon. The first is the Flaw Filter, named after my friend Frank, that corrects flawed subjects. Light coming from a marred subject is digitized and analyzed for data interruptions, corrected and then reconstituted before it hits the film or sensor. Parents will like this filter for family pictures to remove both troubling body art from their children and criminal boyfriends from daughter’s side. The second filter uses old Mood Ring technology to increase your satisfaction with the scene you are photographing. By rotating the outer ring, the Wish Filter, can improve the quality of the light and/or the saturation of the colors depending on your desires. The photographer must be touching the Wish Filter and thinking warm thoughts for it to work. It does not work on humans to enlarge or decrease various body parts. Sorry. The handiest new invention is the Edible Photo Vest. Wear it close to your skin for warm meals or outside your clothes for cool, refreshing snacks. The EPV comes in several flavors including glazed donut, vest tartar (good for wildlife photographers), cheeseburger and tuna. A lite version, rice cake, is in development. For those of you trying to get published and becoming frustrated get the Tabletop Publishing House. Built like a doll house with little action publisher figures, it lets you jerk around the editors rather than they jerk around you. Comes with an immolation kit for when you have truly had it. And finally, there is a new support group for people who can’t stop talking about their wonderful photography. Be the first to sign up your camera club bore for On and On and On.
The Power of Your Work
I am up in Rockport, Maine, halfway through a weeklong workshop. There are many other image makers here – amateur and professional, color and black and white, film and photo. In my mind, they are all doing important work. Some are documenting poverty in rural Maine. Others are capturing the hard lives of the coastal shore men. Last night, another teacher showed her 12 year project following the tragic yet poignant life of an overweight, diabetic adolescent girl who died before her twentieth birthday. All important stuff. There are college students here as well, working on their craft, learning to be professionals, nurturing their creative spirit and exploring the edges of their discipline. I am teaching a nature photography class, sharing my techniques for photographing wildflowers, harbors, forests and shorelines with 16 other photographers. A little bit of focus, a touch of exposure, two dashes of depth of field, mix with light and, viola, a picture! I have always felt that I was working well below the cultural art radar, subterranean, in fact. But that’s okay with me. My work will never appear in important museums, it will not bring viewers to tears or to arms and it won’t provoke deep discussions or be considered fashionable. I just photograph pretty things in pretty light and I occasionally wrap them up in pretty words. That is what I do. Not very exotic, not at all edgy and not really very important. I am not looking to change the world; I am just trying to open a few eyes. Lives won’t change because of my work….or so I thought. A couple of days ago I was sitting on some rocks overlooking the well-photographed Down East coastline and lighthouse of Pemaquid Point. There were photographers everywhere and one of them who I didn’t recognize at first walked up to me and said “Well, hello, David Middleton!” People who I don’t think I know walking up to me and saying hi is a fairly common occurrence for me. This is not because I am particularly well known but because I have done workshops for many years and I have a terrible memory for the people who have suffered through them. His face was familiar but I apologized for not being able to remember his name. “My name is Bob, but there is no reason you would remember my name. You might remember, though, that you saved my life.” Two years ago at the end of a workshop one of my students took me aside and said to me “Last year at this time I was having a really rough time. I was out of work and in the hospital in considerable pain. I had no hope and I was on a suicide watch. A friend visited and knowing of my interest in nature photography gave me a copy of your book, The Nature of America. I enjoyed the pictures and your writing but what really hit me was the Nature Photographer’s Calendar you included in the back of the book. You listed a different place to photograph for every week of the year. That calendar changed my life and gave me a reason to live. I wanted to see and photograph every one of those places. I wanted to live again. You gave me hope. You saved my life.” I was asked the other day “If I don’t care about earning money with my pictures why should I show them to anyone?” I told him this story as my answer. Don’t underestimate the power of your work. You may be unaware of the positive influences of what you are doing, of what you are creating, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I was lucky, Bob sought me out and told me of how I had changed his life and in doing so he had enriched mine. Keep shooting; keep sharing. You may think what you are doing is not very significant in the grand scheme of things but I know otherwise. And so does Bob.
The Joys of Information
Every workshop I teach I am asked about ‘secrets’ of being a professional photographer. I have my standard responses – work locally/regionally, know when not to photograph, spend time looking, write – that people seem to understand if not fully appreciate. I think what they really want to hear is: ”buy such and such camera and such and such lens, go to such and such place and on every odd-dated Tuesday photograph such and such. Then do such and such and send it without delay to such and such. Oh, and be sure to notify your bank of the huge sums of money that will shortly come your way.” Well, of course it doesn’t work that way but that doesn’t stop people from wanting it to work that way. These are the same people who are convinced that if they only got a better camera and a faster lens they would surely be able to make it as a pro. Right after I finish with this I am going out and buy a better pen so that my writing will improve and some expensive new pans so I can compete with Emeril. The other ‘secret’ that I mention is the need to be an information junkie. It is actually more than a need; it is as essential to being a successful professional or very accomplished (not necessarily the same) photographer as breathing is to being a successful human being. Of course no one gets this. People want to take pictures not read books or ask questions or struggle to figure out what the heck that was that they just took a picture of. That would be work and unpleasant and, “by God, I do enough of that in my office.” This is why information is essential to all photographers. Information helps you to be a better photographer. The more you know about whatever it is you are photographing the better your pictures will be. It is just that simple. If you love photographing wildflowers the more you know about their natural history the easier it will be to find them, the easier it will be to recognize a good one and the easier it will be to emphasize the important characteristics of them in your photography. If you love photographing barns the more you know them the easier it will be to find them, the easier it will be to recognize a good one and the easier it will be to emphasize the important characteristics of them in your photography. If you love photographing wildlife the more you know about natural history the easier it will be to find your critter, the easier it will be to recognize a good one and the easier it will be to emphasize the important characteristics of it in your photography. And especially with wildlife photography the more you know about your subject the more you will be able to anticipate important and interesting behavior and therefore be ready to get the shot when it happens and not be distracted lamenting your blinkies. The side effect of all this is that you will simply enjoy the photographic process more and photography will be far more satisfying. If enjoyment and satisfaction are not your ultimate goals (okay and to make some money as well) in photography go crawl back under your rock and wait for the Great Stick of Enlightenment to visit and give you a whack on your head. Well, you must be interested in what I have learned in my reading on the natural history of South African animals that I will be photographing very, very soon. If you are not you soon will be! Here is some of the stuff I have learned. Elephants are really big. They are so big that they are able to communicate infrasonically which means that they are able to make sounds below the threshold of human hearing. By using infrasonic sound they can communicate with other elephants several miles away. This is why you never see elephants with cell phones. Elephants also have really big grinding teeth that migrate from the back of the jaw to the front of the jaw as each tooth grows, is worn down to a flat useless nubbin and is discarded. At any one time they only have four teeth (one on each side, top and bottom) actually do the work that teeth do. That is why you also never see elephants in dentist offices. Think about it. You would know if there was an elephant in the dentist chair before you…….you can fill in the punch line this time. I just finished reading that male juvenile giraffes (teenagers) “have a preoccupation with necking” as if male juvenile anything’s don’t. Male juvenile giraffes neck so much apparently that they become distracted and the behavior actually ‘prejudices their survival.’ And this is news that any parent of a teenager doesn’t know already? Giraffes also have really long tongues- 18 inches long in an adult giraffe. It is no wonder then why they like to neck. Teenagers, with far shorter tongues, have no excuse. Cheetahs are the only cats without retractable claws. This, in effect, gives them track shoes and much better traction when they run and chase down their prey. They also can cover 30 feet in a single bounding stride and have shortened faces and enlarged nostrils to make air intake more efficient. They do not have tongues that are 18 inches long. This is why you never see cheetahs and giraffes necking. Pangolins (you might know them as scaly anteaters) have tongues that are as long as the length of their bodies, which can be three to four feet long. The tongue actually curls up in an expandable pouch in the top of their throat and is attached to two floating ribs that act as an anchoring prong. I think I ate anchoring prongs once in New Orleans. And finally, and this is a good one, rhinoceroses have backward
Publishing Unplugged
Publishing Unplugged — The Inside Story There are many things I don’t know. Anybody who knows me knows that this is the height of understatement. The list is too long for an issue let alone an article in Outdoor Photographer. There are though a few things that I do know. I know that I can’t just turn over dirty sheets; I actually have to change them. I know having four-wheel drive means that when you get stuck your walk back will be longer. And I know that anyone who has ever taken a picture longs to have it published in a magazine or calendar. The catch is that most people not only don’t know how to go about getting published, they go out of their way to make it much more unlikely. Any editor or publisher can recite a long list of common things photographers do that virtually ensures they will never be published. Here are the common misconceptions and pitfalls plus their remedies to getting published. Consider this the Do-Bee and Don’t Bee of publishing. 1. The hardest thing to sell is a single picture, that is unless it is a current picture of Elvis, the Loch Ness, Big Foot or Paris Hilton in a library. The reason it is so difficult to sell is that everyone is trying to get his or her single picture published as well so it becomes the most competitive (and therefore lowest paying) get-published strategy. Your chance of getting a picture in the Sierra Club calendar is .4%. That is a nice way of saying that the likelihood of not getting in the Sierra Club calendar is 99.6% and the percentages are the same for all national known calendars. Magazines as well really don’t have much use for a single picture. In Outdoor Photographer there are just a few single pictures published each issue yet Rob Sheppard, the Editor, gets thousands of them submitted every month. Again, a single picture, all by itself and with no connection to anything else (an essay, a feature, etc.) is an abandoned orphan unlikely to find a home. So what is the answer? All photographers take are single pictures, after all. The answer is you need to supply a reason the picture should be published. That reason can be because it is part of an article or because it is part of a photo essay or because it meets the need of a regular feature. Getting right down to the nitty-gritty, the innocent take and submit single pictures, the pros take and submit a set of related pictures, better known as a story. Professional photographers are actually storytellers. We submit stories in the form of an article, or a book or a theme calendar. If you want to get published regularly, begin to think of yourself as a storyteller and start taking pictures that tell stories. 2. If you only submit images you are cutting your chances of getting published way down. Very few books or magazines print just picture stories or what are called photo essays. Those good old days are long gone. Books and magazines, even web sites, publish packages of pictures and words. This is because pictures and words tell the best stories and the better the stories the more readers and the more readers the more money the book or magazine or web site can earn. If you just submit a compelling set of pictures for the magazine to use what you are really doing is hoping that the editor also happens to have lying around a compelling set or words lying around that just happen to be perfect for your pictures. Not going to happen. But if you submit a complete package of words and images to a publisher than you have a much more likely chance of getting published. Struggling pros take only pictures. Successful pros take pictures and write. It is as simple as that. I know, you are a photographer, not a writer. Well, so am I. I just find enough words to make sense of my pictures. You are not writing a novel, you are just using a few words to compliment your images. Pretend you are telling the story of your pictures to a friend and just write down everything you would say in that conversation. If I can write, you certainly can too. 3. It is commonly believed that only the very best images are ever published yet in almost every publication we ever see, no matter what it is, we see a picture that we think is really inferior or that we have a better version of. This is because publishers don’t get paid to look for and then publish the very best pictures ever taken, their job is to find pictures that are good enough to use in the publication. Good enough may mean handy at the time, it may mean at the right price, it may mean in the right format, it may mean of the right subject or it may mean having the right palette of colors. I had a picture published in OP a few years ago of the famous Wild Goose Island scene in Glacier National Park. It was a nice picture but it was far from wonderful and it certainly wasn’t even close to the best picture I have ever seen of that scene. Many of you probably have better shots of Wild Goose Island and you probably thought that at the time when you saw my image. The reason you didn’t get a call from OP was that my picture was good enough. Why waste time and money looking for something better when what you have is good enough? So don’t get discouraged if you have seen pictures published that are better than yours. If you can supply the need (the story) for the picture to be used and the picture is good enough it will be used. If you don’t supply the story, you have no chance. 4. You must
Pizzas & Photography
Observations: 1. Here is the difference between John Shaw and me: he is John Shaw. Now that that is out of the way lets get to some serious photography stuff. 2. When John makes a Boboli pizza he carefully lays out every ingredient in just the perfect place- he forms a pinwheel of absolutely symmetrical spinach leaves, followed by perfectly concentric circles of peppers and mushrooms topped off with perfectly even layers of cheese laid down in alphabetical order, cheddar first, then jack, then mozzarella and finally Parmesan. Enough of that, back to the serious photography discussion. 3. When I make a Boboli pizza I just pile on the ingredients, nothing neat or symmetrical about it. A handful here, a handful there, smush it all together and stick it in the oven. You see, whenever I cook, Willy Nilly is my sous chef and Sarah Dippity is the Maitre d’. Sometimes you sit where the food is good and sometimes you sit where the food is great. I mean, after all, how can you mess up a Boboli pizza? Where was I? Right, serious photography stuff. 4. As you can imagine John takes much longer to make a Boboli pizza then I do. He doesn’t so much create a pizza as he constructs it. He is the Frank Lloyd Wright of the pizza mongers, an architect of Italian cuisine. John doesn’t follow a recipe; he consults a blueprint. I won’t go into it but you can just imagine his lasagna, it belongs more in Architectural Digest than it does in Gourmet Cooking. As I was saying about photography….. 5. I, on the other hand, am more from the Jackson Pollock school of Boboli Pizza making. As a matter of fact, from a distance you would be hard pressed to tell one of my pizza creations from a Pollock canvas. In close, mine would taste better, usually. Sorry, I was distracted. Getting back to serious photographic subjects…. 6. In the end, so to speak, when all is said and eaten, both creations come out looking pretty much the same. You can tell my pizza from John’s at the start but at the end, one man’s poop is pretty much like another man’s poop. Trust me, this is the stuff I know. I have done it once again, haven’t I? Gone off on a wild hair of a tangent and I have yet to get within yelling distance of a point. Or have I? Maybe there was a point, even a photographic point, that was there all along but you just missed it because you were distracted by my scintillating storytelling. Or perhaps, I went through all that just to be able to write the line “one man’s poop is pretty much like another man’s poop.” Oops, I wrote it again! Well, as tempting as it is to admit that it was all a rouse to include the word ‘poop’ in this essay four times (remember, I was the first and only person to ever get the words ‘Viagra’ and ‘padded bras’ into an Outdoor Photographer article.) there actually is a point to this article. What may that be, per chance? Read on, Grasshopper! I have done a lot of presentations in front of big groups promoting my two new books, The Nature of Vermont and The Photographer’s Guide to Vermont, both published by the Countryman Press of Woodstock, Vermont. (By the way, anyone with enough wisdom to be reading this essay certainly has enough wisdom to go out and buy one or both of my books.) I have noticed a few things that always seem to come up at these presentations. Most of them involve technique. People always say that they love taking one kind of picture but when they show it to others it is not well received. They almost always ask me about what the proper technique is to photograph flowers or forests or moose or sunsets or whatever. When I get them to explain a bit further they will tell me that they really like doing something one way and that they are pretty good at it but they are consistently told that their way is the wrong way and they should really do it another way. What is that all about? First, I never knew that there were technique police out there. Apparently, there are only certain ways that things should be done and if you don’t do them that way then you should expect a visit from the technique police. Who knew? I always though that the object of photography was to be creative and to express yourself artistically in the process of making pleasing images. If you like taking landscape shots with a telephoto lens then who am I to tell you that you are wrong. I like taking landscape shots with a very wide-angle lens, so what? As long as you have good technique and get pleasing results don’t let anyone else tell you that what you are doing is wrong and you should change your evil ways. This is photography not the Stepford Wives! This often happens at photography workshops where the pro insists that the students should do things his or her way because that is the right way to do it. Excuse me?!? That is one way to do it and it may be an effective way of doing things but it is certainly not the only way of doing it. More likely is that it may be the only way the pro knows how to do something. If you like taking out of focus flower shots by stacking extension tubes then go ahead and stack away and don’t let anyone tell you that flowers should be shot with a 105mm macro lens with the flower entirely in focus. If you like shooting portraits with a 24mm lens right next
Male Bags
On a plane, once again, heading home after another workshop. This time though, I am surrounded by adults- the only screaming toddler is twelve rows back and well out of my mind. I have just finished a ten-day workshop with two extra teaching days tacked on meaning that I have been talking everyday, all day, for two straight weeks. Once I get in this blabbermouth-mode it is very hard for me to stop. Just a couple of days ago I did a talk on marketing for 60 students and had 40 slides but I still managed to talk for more than 2 hours. Will I just shut up, already? At the grocery store the bagger asked if I wanted plastic or paper and I launched off on a 15 dissertation of slide mounts! I need help. I made an interesting observation during rare moments of silence these last two weeks: Men carry much bigger camera bags than women do. And I mean much, much bigger. Why is this? Is their gear bigger? No. Are their photographic needs greater? No. Is there some sort of testosteronic imperative requiring all this stuff? No. Do men just like stuff more than women? Me thinks the answer here is yes. My hypothesis is that men are bigger gear-weenies than are women. Men like all the stuff they carry and they at least subconsciously, measure themselves based on the size of their bags. They think the bigger their bags the better they are. (There is a very obvious digression here that I would normally revel in but knowing the stern hand of my editor I will save him the consternation and just move on. Know though that it is dancing joyously in the back of my mind safely out of reach of his cruel hand.) If this relationship between bag size and quality of output were true then it would seem the biggest people, whether male or female, who could carry the biggest bags would be the best photographers. Extending this beyond photography it would also mean the baseball player who could swing the biggest bat would be the best or the stripper who had the biggest……I think we better stop right here. Where was I? Oh yes, big bags. It has been my experience that women are just as good at photography as men are. There is no gender-based component of quality in any of the creative arts. This then again begs the question that if women can make just as good pictures while carrying less stuff why do men carry all that extra gear? We have already figured out that men like carrying as much gear as they can and that it makes them feel good about themselves but it must go deeper than that. Perhaps there is a more fundamental, perhaps even a more profound reason for this universal male behavior. Let’s look at the wonderful world of animals to see if we can find an illuminating example. The lowly dung beetle is a marvelous creature. Its lot in life, as suggested by its name, is as a do-do devotee. Living mostly on the forest floor in the tropics where soil fertility and available nutrients are very low dung beetles take advantage of sporadically and randomly placed steaming heaps of excrement. Yes, you and I would perhaps choose an alternative lifestyle but from the beetle-de-do-do point of view these piles are gold mines. Why? I am glad you asked! Beetles lay eggs from which little beetle grubs hatch. If all goes well, grubs eventually grow and metamorphose into adult beetles but they need easy and plentiful food to do so. There in lies the rub. In the highly competitive and nutritionally challenged tropical rainforest reliable sources of food without much competition are hard to come by. Dung, though, meets all the requirements and is literally manna from Heaven. (Yes, that is an odd definition of Heaven, but I am talking from the beetle point of view. Let’s not dwell on it). What could be better? Imagine walking around one day with your future family on your mind when all of a sudden you sense a huge stash of food nearby that would feed your offspring until they turn into adults and are able to feed themselves. You would be pretty excited about getting your piece of that pie, so to speak. And you wouldn’t hesitate to get your reproductive thoughts focused because this gold mine isn’t going to wait for you and it isn’t going to be prime picking for long. You’d be hoping a female would come by pretty darn quickly to take advantage of your newfound wealth. Back to the beetles. Males are the first to arrive at the dung and they immediately busy themselves cutting out prime pieces of poop. Then, with their front legs down on the ground and their hind legs on top of their stash they roll their putrid plunder away from the mother lode and stake their claim to it. This is no easy feat though. Imagine doing a handstand while pushing a huge ball of fudge through the forest with your feet. You gotta admit, dem beetles sure are impressive! After a male has staked out his territory surrounding his pill of poop a female dung beetle arrives looking for the best nursery for her eggs. (Can you imagine the real estate ads? Large round piece of shit house, nicely formed, firm but not solid, soft but not runny, low maintenance, walls edible, available for immediate occupancy.) Picking the male with the best ball (in other words the biggest) the female mates and deposits an egg inside the selected ball. The male then digs a small hole, buries the ball-with-egg and then rolls another one and waits for another female to admire his ball. When the female is finished she flies off to look for another big-balled male. Inside the buried ball of do-do the egg hatches, the grub eats his home and
Lifestyle or Career
“It is like snorkeling up a muddy river.” “Excuse me?” I said. “It is like snorkeling up a muddy river.” “Okay, what is?” “You don’t want to know.” “Okay” “But it is really like snorkeling up a muddy river.” “What is?” “You don’t want to know.” This is pretty much typical of the brief conversations I have during breaks in my teaching presentations. Someone from the audience is nice enough to come up and talk to me while everyone else is running out to a) leave as quickly as possible b) find a bathroom or c) leave as quickly as possible. I usually am trying to figure out a) what I am going to babble about next b) where the nearest Diet Pepsi is or c) how I can leave as quickly as possible. Where was I? Right, presentations and snorkeling. The scene of this conversation was a group of 100 or so serious photography students that had spent weeks learning all the necessary information needed to become a professional photographer. I was supposed to talk to them for a day about the real life and business of being a pro- one part inspiration, one part honesty. It is a presentation I truly enjoy doing even though I find it to be one part not nearly long enough and one part entirely too long. I always start off with a question for the participants: How many of you want a photography lifestyle and how many of you want a photography career? As you might expect almost all of them raise their hands dutifully to show that they want a photography career. The ones that don’t haven’t returned from the bathroom yet. But then I ask them how many want to be called a photographer with photography business cards and photography stationary and photography clothes and photography stuff and travel all around the country and to far off exotic places taking pictures. I also add living in a place that is new and different and pretty and wonderful and usually western and very livable. Pretty much all the hands go up again. I then ask them what would happen if they realized that the best place to have a career in photography was back where they came from and what if earning money meant sitting in an office most of the day rather than traveling all around and visiting exotica for most of the year. I don’t get much response from this question. This is because these students, who range in age from 20 to 60, like all people who want to become professional photographers are sick and tired of sitting in an office all day long earning money. They want to be their own boss, out on the road doing exciting things and still earning money. They are listening to my presentation for the chance to learn how they can earn money with the least amount of trouble and the most amount of travel and photography. You see, most of them don’t actually want a photography career, what they want is a photography lifestyle. If someone actually wants a photography career than they have to think of photography as a job, a real job. Real jobs require dong things that you really aren’t very excited about doing but that are necessary to earn money. It means sitting down at your desk every day at 8am and making phone calls and contacting editors and working on your images. Yes it does involve getting images but not as much as most people think. If you accept photography as your job than you also accept whatever lifestyle is necessary to support that job. The job dictates the lifestyle not the other way around. If the lifestyle comes first and you do a job as it fits into that lifestyle than you have a hobby and not a career. This is pretty much how the first thirty minutes of the presentation goes. Nothing like shattering dreams and frustrating your audience as a way to earn their respect and continued attention. When I am feeling particularly feisty I then get into the necessity of combining writing with their photography as the best way to sell their images. This bit of good news is exactly what they don’t want to hear. They are photographers not writers, they insist, if they wanted to write they would be in a How to be a Professional Writer program. When I ask them why they don’t want to write or think they can’t write they don’t have any good answers. Most are just intimidated and they don’t want to try or learn to be better because they……well they just don’t. Then I hit them with the biggest bomb in my bag o’ bombs – If they are not willing to try and fail they will never be ready to try and succeed. Telling a group of aspiring professionals that it is vital that they expose themselves to failure is just about the last bit of good news they are willing to take. All this surprises me in a way but I guess it shouldn’t. People want to know the outcome of everything they do these days. They want to be able to look into the future and see how everything is going to turn out. They are willing to take the first step if they can clearly see the path in front of them and where it is leading but if the path is obscure or even undefined most people today don’t want to take that first step into the future, even if the future may be, with a bit of work and perseverance, wonderful. This is when I take a break and give any one who wishes a chance to bolt as quickly as they can. Which brings me back to the beginning conversation. “It is a metaphor for moving forward but not really knowing what is ahead.” “What is?” “Snorkeling up a muddy river.”
Lessons From a Fridge
Skimming the cream, skimming the cream, photographers are always skimming the cream. But are they happiest photographing only cliches at the peak times of year? Cream is wonderful stuff but too much of it will kill you. It will rot your creativity as well. While it is true that a cliché is someone else’s best seller there are many pictures to be made once the cream has been skimmed. Speaking of cream, let’s talk about refrigerators. Not yours. I am reasonably sure that your fridge remains pretty much the same day to day, week to week, month to month. It is full of lots of good things to eat on every shelf. I am guessing that you have milk and juice on the doors, vegetables in the crisper, meats down below, more mustards than you can shake a frank at and lots of various kinds of dairy, bread and sauces to last several weeks of meals. I am also guessing that that you have shelves full of all the necessary ingredients to make wonderful meals. You have sugar and flour, lots of spices, dried stuff in boxes and wet stuff in jars tucked away here and there in your kitchen. You may not have a gourmet set-up but there is enough there for any reasonable cook to whip something up pretty quickly without a trip to the grocery store. Don’t get me wrong. There is nothing wrong with this. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You have outfitted your kitchen to satisfy any number of culinary choices. This is how it should be. It is good to open the refrigerator door and see all kinds of goodies to eat. This essay is not about your refrigerator but instead it is about my refrigerator. (You thought I was going to write ‘my photography’, didn’t you?) You see, there was a time, not so long ago when my fridge looked a lot like your fridge. My shelves were packed with all kinds of stuff. I could reach in just about anywhere and be delighted with whatever I found. There were all kinds of leftovers, fresh fruits and vegetables, multiple kinds of cheeses and exotic stuff I didn’t even recognize. Who knew that garlic didn’t only come in spice containers and that chicken broth didn’t always start out as a dry cube? These halcyon days though, I must sadly admit, are gone now. My refrigerator is mostly empty. Oh, there is an occasional yogurt milling around inside and I saw some juice make a brief appearance the other day but the vegetable and meat bins are empty and there are no plastic containers full of wonderful delights to be enjoyed again and again. Entire shelves are empty. It is quite frankly a very sad sight. It is a bare bones fridge- stocked by a guy who seldom cooks (is thawing considered cooking?) and usually can’t be bothered to do any serious grocery shopping. The reason for this prince to pauper change? Well, in October we were blessed to have stay with us our great friend Maida who not only was helping me promote my two books on Vermont but she was also spending lots of time in our kitchen. Maida loves to cook, she loves to make things from scratch and she has to have all the right ingredients. Who knew chicken potpie wasn’t born frozen in a box or that soups didn’t hatch from a can? It was a magical time to be at my house and I miss my full refrigerator now that Maida has returned to the Land of Ahnold. What has this got to do with photography you might ask? Well Maida was at my house during the time of fall color in Vermont. On those days you could go anywhere and point your camera anyplace and find wonderful things to photograph. Like my brimful refrigerator and pantry there were great things everywhere. With all the gourmet photo ingredients within easy reach every picture was a delicious composition. But alas, Maida is gone, the last of the leftovers are gone and everything fun to eat and snack on has long ago been consumed and enjoyed. The leaves are down now as well, the branches, like my pantry (who knew I had a pantry?), are bare and compositions no longer magically appear fully formed in my camera. Does this mean that I go elsewhere to eat and take pictures? Of course not! With a bit of imagination I can actually feed myself pretty well. I am not going to sit down and feast on a full pork tenderloin dinner (who knew that pigs had tender loins?) with homemade apple pie (she made the crust from scratch as well) for desert but I can find all kinds of things to keep my stomach happy. Same with my photography. Everybody always thinks that once the leaves fall photography is pretty much done for the year. You can go down to the Gulf Coast in the winter to shoot egrets, herons and pelicans but most people don’t think about photographing at home until spring arrives and the world start to bloom and sprout again. I am here to tell you that there are plenty of compositions to make even when nature’s cupboard seems bare. It actually isn’t bare at all, there is just a completely different, albeit less flashy, set of ingredients to use. It just requires of bit of looking. Most people look at the November countryside and see what is not there- no bright colors, no gaudy landscapes, no clear blue skies. I look at the November landscapes and see new opportunities. I see a carpet of fallen leaves on the forest floor now richly brown and caressing still green ferns. I see bare backlit trees looking like glowing skeletons and ice rimming the edges of ponds and streams. First ice turns the watery edges of ordinary ponds into delicate borders of abstract arabesques. November is also the time
The Joys of Delusion
As I write this I am sitting in my favorite leather chair in my favorite living room in my favorite house in my favorite state of slight inebriation. While all that is certainly more fascinating to me then it is to you I am also at this very moment watching the TV program American Idol. (Gasp!) Now what is a fine cultured sophisticated person like myself doing watching this swill? Because in my heart of hearts I am a pig who relishes wallowing in society’s slop. There I said it. Live with it. What I find most astonishing about this program is the fact that most of the participants have no idea what they actually sound like when they sing. It is almost universal that some horrendous singer who is way off key and very off rhythm and who is always very sincere and genuine is also completely unaware of their talent level. When I sang (in another life I actually once shared a microphone on stage with Pete Seeger but I will save that scary story for another time) I knew on my very best nights my voice was usually more on key than off key but it was a tenuous balance. I could hear my weak voice and my tonal struggles and I knew to play my instruments louder when the balance tipped. I mean you can only squeeze a cat for so long before you have to crank up the radio. But these kids on American Idol apparently have no idea how bad they sound. What, has someone disconnected their ears? And you know these wannabes have recorded themselves so they have had the chance to actually listen to themselves when they are not wailing. Yet still, when asked how they did after just waking the dead, they all respond “I did great! I can’t believe I didn’t get picked!” This is then followed by the expected tears and histrionics and finally the much appreciated shot of them walking out the door. What does this possibly have to do with photography? Well the same thing happens in my workshops during critiques. Time after time I am shown a picture and it is described to me in no uncertain terms that it is close to criminal that this picture has not graced the cover of every magazine in the world. Alternatively, I will show a picture of mine and a participant will say, ”I have a picture almost exactly like that.” When I eventually see my picture’s ‘twin’ it is never even close to my picture (not being close is my polite way of saying the ‘twin’ is dreadful). I have even gone so far as to put the two images together to allow a direct comparison and still the glaring differences are not recognized. I am not talking about small differences. I am talking about early morning light versus noon light or a full frame portrait versus a speck portrait. Yet still, when presented with the differences, most still respond “I did great. I can’t believe I didn’t get published.” This is then followed by the expected tears and histrionics and finally the much appreciated view of them walking out the door. What is going on? Here are the possibilities: a) maybe my picture is actually as bad as their picture but I don’t see it. b) maybe their picture is as good as mine but I refuse to see it or c) their picture really is as bad as I thought but they have so much emotion and ego tied up with the image it completely clouds their judgment. I am going to have to discount a & b above as intriguing as they might be because I get independent confirmation from my co-teachers that the ‘twins’ really are as bad as I think. So that leaves excessive emotion and ego involvement as the answer. What an amazing organ the brain is to be able to shade reality so effectively. So what? you ask. Glad you did. One way to look at this phenomenon is that unless you are able to critically evaluate your work you will never be able to improve as a photographer. If you think your work is already good and you don’t hear helpful suggestions there is very little chance of you ever getting any better. You are living a photography life of delusion that when tested it can only lead to disappointment. Don’t think that I am above this. I remember being with Art Wolfe on South Georgia Island photographing hordes of king penguins. After we got back to the boat I regaled him with this one scene I had found and thoroughly shot and how magnificent it was and how it would surely lead to vast riches. I remember that he very kindly replied that he had once shot a similar scene and had never been able to do much with it. He was right; I haven’t been able to do much with it despite my best efforts. I was so thrilled to being on South Georgia Island in the company on thousands of king penguins that my emotions had clouded my self-evaluative abilities. I think this phenomenon applies to anything you shoot for the first time that you much anticipate. You get so involved in the moment that it is impossible to truly evaluate how good the situation is. And the effect lingers with the image because every time you see that picture the same flood of emotions overwhelms you and again clouds your judgment. Then it is only a matter of time before we get the tears, histrionics and walking out the door. On the other hand, who cares if someone is blissfully ignorant? I have wallowed in blissful ignorance almost my entire life and happily so. Delusion is not just a river in England. Delusion can be a good thing, just ask any crazed Republican. If the photographer is happy, even thrilled, who am I to