Flying Time By
Midnight in mid-channel, mid-coast in Maine and I am adrift between two tides. One carries my small boat away as I pull to shore against its tidal tug. The other also washes through the starry darkness but I cannot pull against it. And so, thus caught in the middle, with raised oars I drift…… listening. From above “Churrs,” “cheeps,” “tinks” and “seets” rain down upon me, the notes of dark birds slipping through the night. In my boat as the water gently holds me to the coast I am carried away to places I cannot row by this current unseen and unfelt. There is a river of wings heading south overhead. A river of heartbeats pumping strong all around. It is the flow of migration. It is the passage of place. The Atlantic Coast ecoregion extends from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of more than 6,000 miles. To the north the landscape is fresh and clean and still recovering from its addiction with glacial ice. Once buried under more than a mile of ice the maritime coast of Maine and Canada is literally rising from the sea as it rebounds from the weight of its recent icy burden. Now a topography of rocky headlands and granite ledges dressed in spruce caps and skirts of green seaweed, the northern Atlantic Coast quickly gives way to the spruce-fir and hardwood forests that press against it. Only the small beaches tucked along the rocky coast like forgotten hammocks slung between rock walls are reminders of the softer southern coast. Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket and Long Island are depositional endpoints to the advance of the most recent glacial ice. Beyond these islands the coast turns south as soils thicken, headlands diminish and beaches, like long sandy ribbons, decorate the coast. From New Jersey south, barrier island beaches wrap the coast and cradle the breadth of the Gulf of Mexico and attract hordes of sand-crazed people. Yet despite the chaos of humanity and beyond the reach of dune-front bungalows these beaches, hunted by harriers and danced upon by sanderlings teasing the run of waves, are sandy slivers of wild land. Also included within this ecoregion is the Piedmont of the Gulf and the Southern Atlantic states. This coastal upland includes all the area between the dunes and the edge of the southern Appalachians, a stout crescent of estuaries, meandering rivers and rolling hills that narrows once past the Chesapeake to a sinuous tail in New England. Once heavily forested, the Piedmont is now mostly a crazy quilt of agriculture held together by looping stitches of hardwood hedgerows and coarse patches of pine woodlots. What ties together this most ecologically varied ecoregion is the pulse of migration that annually swings north and then south along the broad reach of the Atlantic. Caught between the mountains and the shore the ecoregion is a natural corridor to animals passing with the seasons. In fact, there is never a time when the passage of animal nations is stayed along this path. Somewhere, some kind of animal is on the move. And in someplaces, at certain times, some will be going north while others are going south. A calendar of bird migration for the mid-Atlantic Coast is a chaotic amalgam of arrivals and departures. In January the earliest kestrels and red-tailed hawks arrive from the south, usually males first, to stake out breeding territories. Pintails, the first of the northbound waterfowl, arrive in late January followed by swans, loons and cormorants in early March. Bluebirds appear at this time as well, encouraging the reluctant spring north with their song. Early spring is temperamental at best, deadly at worst. If winter is long many early migrants will perish, caught by late storms when their reserves are low. But if winter passes benignly to spring, the earliest migrants will get the best breeding territories and their families will prosper. Such is the push and pull of lives cast to the wind. In April and May, the river of wings overflows and birds flood the coast. First to return are the blackbirds. Then sparrows, hawks, gulls, terns, herons, swallows, thrushes, warblers, seabirds and sandpipers drop out of the sky to rest and feed before again moving north. If over water a storm front collides with this passage of birds the fallout to first land is impressive. Enter a coastal Texas oak motte on a clearing April morning and songbirds, exhausted and hungry will adorn every branch. In two weeks they will be on home territory far to the north but now, for a little while, they will rest and feed among palms and live oak leaves. Summer is the season of overlap, when opposite migratory currents collide and the eager and idle are often indistinguishable. In the third week of July adult red knots and sanderlings, having finished nesting on the Arctic tundra, are returning to coastal mudflats where semidedicated semipalmated sandpipers and tardy ruddy turnstones are still heading to the Arctic. Juvenile knots and semipalms, left on the tundra to forage on their own, find these mudflats in September when the adults are already on their wintering grounds. By Fall, the migratory floodtide returns, now running even higher with the addition of birds born of the year. Fleeing cold weather and diminishing food supply there is a deliberateness to their southward push that is not present in the spring. It is a deliberateness to find high quality food and to store energy for the journey to come. Many birds make dangerous, long distance flights to get to their winter homes in South America. These are usually just the adults who are experienced migrants and in peak physical condition. Juveniles are inexperienced food collectors and are thus thinner than adults. More often than not they do not try to carry the treacherous water hazard but instead fly the longer, but safer land route. Guided by the stars and
Personal Resolution
What is Your Resolution? I don’t mean to be a curmudgeon (that is not entirely true) but what is it these days with this unholy quest for ever-higher resolution? It wasn’t too long ago when we were pretty happy about a 2000 ppi scanner, that is until the 4000 ppi scanners came out. But at least we were really happy with the 4000 scanners. With 4000 pixels per inch we could make big prints that looked great. Why would we ever want or need more? We didn’t until the 5000 ppi and the 8000 ppi scanners were introduced. Suddenly the 4000 ppi scanners we once loved were no good. After all, if 4000 ppi is good isn’t 5000 ppi better? This lust for more is not restricted to scanners, unfortunately, it has spread to everything and to all aspects of photography. If a 6 mega pixel camera is better than a 3 meg. camera isn’t an 8 meg. camera better than a 6? And if 8 meg. is really good than 12 or 16megs must really, really be good. Photographers are about as sensible as hound in heat. And let’s not even bring up 6 frames per second motor drives vs. 8 or 12fps or 11 auto focus points vs. 51. Here’s an idea: lets put so many auto focus points in our viewfinders that we spend all our time selecting points and in the process missing the shot. It will be like a Gameboy with a lens. Who cares about actually taking a picture? So as I understand this, the cameras and scanners (and printers, and memory cards, etc.) that we were so happy with a year ago (a day ago?) must actually have been inadequate and we just didn’t know it. It follows then that the gear we have now is also inadequate but we don’t want to think about it. Either we are all idiots or we are all ignorant. Take your pick. Here is what has happened: We have all been seduced into thinking that more megabytes and higher resolution are better and that somehow (apparently magically and without effort) if you have more and higher you are a better photographer. It doesn’t matter how the equipment is used, if you can get more pixels, dots and bytes you will be a better photographer. Spend your money, improve your photography. This is a wonderful world in which we live. But here is the question: You know what the resolution is of all your equipment but what is your resolution? What is the resolution of your technique, your craftsmanship? Can you get 4000 ppi out of your photography? Can you get 2000? If you have sloppy technique and awful craftsmanship no matter what the resolution of your digital gear is your pictures will be terrible. Let me repeat that. If your technique is sloppy and low res your pictures will be sloppy and awful. The resolution of your technique is far more important than the resolution of any of your equipment. Nothing contributes more to the outcome of your image. The problem is that you can’t buy technique (although coming to one of my workshops would certainly help!). Better technique can only be learned through practice and dedication. For you digital folks out there who don’t believe anything unless there are numbers involved, if your technique has a resolution of 1000 ppi it doesn’t matter what the resolutions of your gear are your images will have a resolution of 1000ppi. You all will recognize this as the much said but little appreciated: garbage in, garbage out. It doesn’t matter how much the garbage cost or how fine its resolution, it is still garbage. So what are the most common reasons for low personal resolution? 1. You spend $5000 for a camera and $50 for a tripod. You know you should use a tripod but you really don’t want to so you go out and buy the next to cheapest tripod you can find (you don’t want to be accused of being really cheap). Then you put your expensive camera on it. I see this every workshop I teach. For some reason photographers have a really hard time spending more than $100 for a tripod. They will spend $5000 for a camera they really don’t need but they won’t spend $400 for a sturdy tripod they do need. Go figure. Many of today’s cameras and lenses are getting bigger and heavier with every new model. This means you must have a very sturdy tripod to hold these new cameras. The ball of your ball head must be at least golf ball size. Cue ball size is even better (the bigger the ball the more surface area there is to grip on to, the steadier it is). If it is a particularly big camera or lens than your ball should be tennis ball size. Don’t bother arguing with me, you now I am right. Go out and get a good tripod and a good tripod head. Your pictures will thank you. 2. You rely on VR or IS technology when you shouldn’t. Image stabilization technology is never as sharp as using a tripod. Never. The only time you should use image stabilizing/vibration reduction technology is when it is not possible to use your tripod. Laziness, fatigue or my personal favorite, elaborate rationalization are not reasons to leave your tripod in your car. And no, you can’t shoot a sunrise or sunset handheld, at least not a good one. If you do manage to get your shutter speed high enough to justify hand holding chances are your depth of field is insufficient, the ISO is so high that there is grain every where, or the light is hideously contrasty. Even if you get a sharp picture hand holding your compositions will always suffer because you won’t be able to carefully consider all the important compositional elements of your picture. You’ll get a nice, sharp mediocre picture. Oh, joy!
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.”