David duChemin's Blog, page 31

Space for Wonder

The other day a friend and I threw our cameras into the Jeep and drove deep into British Columbia’s Squamish River and Elaho River valleys. Temperatures were unusually low for around here and there was an invigorating chill in the air. So busy from the launch of the new Craft & Vision website, I’d forgotten to come up for air, forgotten to get beyond the city and be in the wild places I know my spirit needs to breathe its deepest. I hadn’t really taken the Jeep anywhere since I put an axe into my leg in the Yukon 3 months ago.

We drove along the Squamish River, choked with dead, now frozen, salmon, their life-cycle complete and their flesh being reclaimed to nature by hundreds of bald eagles, and eventually into a valley so thick with hoar frost you could almost have measured the crystals in inches. We wandered the riverside for hours over the two days we spent there, my friend Daniel and I. Feeling a little beat-up from the last few weeks, my creative process felt strange and unfamiliar, like listening to a song you once knew on the radio while you drive, and trying to keep the beat on the steering wheel with your fingers and realizing the rhythms are just all off. So I gave up. And I walked. Pointed my camera at a few things less because I wanted to and more because I felt I should. Sat down on the cold ground and realized I was looking so hard I wasn’t seeing. Not remotely receptive, nor perceptive.

There’s a power to giving up. To stopping. At least there is for me. It puts me in the place where I stop listening to all the voices, stop squinting my eyes in an effort to see something, anything, to point my cameras at. It opens me just hear and see – which should come from listening and looking, but so often doesn’t, because I tend to look in the wrong direction, listen to the wrong voices. These are lessons I teach so often and have to relearn myself so many times it’s becoming embarrassing. Learning to use a camera is easy compared to learning just to be human.

Sitting on the river bank looking at ice crystals, suddenly not giving a damn that I forgot my macro lens at home, I finally started to smell the earth around me, see the ice gathered on the underside of a fern, notice the crystals formed on moss, feel the bite of the cold on my fingers. I don’t go out to these places to make beauty, but to find it, even to be found by it. If on some occasions I create some poor reflection of that beauty in my own work, then there’s a chance I can extend that moment to others. Sometimes it happens with a camera in-hand, and other times the camera just gets us to the place we need to be. But the gift of photography is that we learn to see. We notice. Moments slow down. We make space for wonder.

SEVEN+ AND A NEW C&V WEBSITE

SEVEN+ IS NOW AVAILABLE

When I launched SEVEN, my limited edition book, earlier this year, we offered a special edition that included an expanded digital edition. 200 pages long, SEVEN+ was a chance for people who purchased the uber-edition to look at the work on a bus, a plane, anywhere you weren’t going to take a 4lb book that cost over a hundred bucks. Now we’re releasing it to a wider audience for those who just don’t have a hundred bucks but would like to enjoy, and learn from, my best work over the last 7 years. We’re not going to hard-sell this, but we’re releasing it today and those of you that have been asking me for it can now get it.

SEVEN+ is $10, but on sale for $8 this week only. No need for a coupon code but this is the last time (Seriously. I really mean it this time, and don’t “Awww, but Dad…” me). From now on the discounts will be available exclusively through THE CONTACT SHEET – which you should get because it’s got a great monthly giveaway, exclusive discounts, as well as featured resources and inspiration. Sign up for THE CONTACT SHEET at the top of the new website where it says GET EXCLUSIVE DEALS, or follow this link.

Follow this link for more information, and to get your virtual hands on a copy of SEVEN+

NEW C&V Website

Four years ago I launched Craft & Vision. Then it took on this crazy life of its own and we’ve been playing catch-up ever since. Today we’re officially launching the new website and it’s going to make a huge difference in the way you experience Craft & Vision. It’s easier to look at, and easier to navigate. The site now creates bundles which will give you more chances to save on relevant products. We’ll have Gift Cards – finally! And we finally have user accounts so you can track your purchases, re-download them if necessary, and get better support from us. Like anything technology-related there might be a bump or two in the transition,and we’ll handle those as professionally, and humanly, as possible if they arise. I’d love it if you took the new site for a spin. Whole different place, same address – CraftAndVision.com

New Podcast: ABOUT THE IMAGE

One of the new features is a mostly-weekly, and completely free, podcast called About The Image – a chance for me to talk image design, with you, using photographs from our readers. Check out the first 3 episodes of About The Image on the new site. They’re already there and waiting for you. More as the days roll on. And if you’d like to submit an image, there’s information on the podcast about that too.

FOR THE LOVE OF THE PHOTOGRAPH

When we started all this we had a long sit-down where we asked ourselves what the voice of C&V is. Why do we do this? And then we stared at our belly buttons for a while before my team turned a video camera on me. The resulting manifesto might resonate with you. We hope it does. Or you can just pause it randomly and freeze my face into weird positions, like I do. You can find that video and downloadable wallpapers with both the manifesto and About The Image themes on the new site as well.

*When a website changes things around the way we have, strange forces are afoot. If you click the links above and get our old site, try clearing your cache, doing a forced refresh of the browser, or even waiting an hour and trying again. It’s dark arts, people, so try turning in circles, lighting candles and singing “What does the fox say?” a couple times. That also might help

On Luck & Trenches

There’s a terrific recording of an excerpt from an interview with photographer Robert Capa (1913-1954) making the rounds right now. In it he describes the making of one of his most iconic photographs (above) and the role of luck in its creation. Capa says he raised the camera as the soldiers were climbing out of the trench to storm the enemy machine guns, and he made this one photograph without even looking in the viewfinder. He sent his films off to be developed and when he left the war, 3 months later, he found he’d become a famous photographer. In the end his interviewer says “there’s one condition you’ve got to create yourself, Bob, in order to get a lucky picture like that: you’ve got to spend a lot of time in trenches.”

There’s so much that lies outside our control – the light, the moment, the circumstances – and anyone that’s been doing this for long will tell you that at least once they’ve shown work to someone whose best comment was, “lucky shot.” It’s true. Luck. Good fortune. Some of our best work is done in collaboration with serendipity. Thank the gods for those times when the stars aligned. But a photograph made because the luck kicked in, is not the same as a photograph made only because of luck. I have yet to see one of those.

Some of the most compelling photographs were “lucky shots” that would never have been made without a photographer who put in his time in the trenches. Luck may be the context for a great photograph, but it’s rarely, if ever, made by a photographer who hasn’t put in the time, learned her craft, or made thousands of less-than-lucky shots in order to pave the way for the one. God help the photographer who relies on luck without honing the skill – and time – required to seize the moment when she shows up.

There’s been controversy over the first image, and Capa’s name can’t come up without someone charging the image of the Spanish soldier was set-up. Nothing I can say will add to that conversation, which in the light of Capa’s body of work, seems mostly irrelevant. You want to be lucky? You’ve got to show up, over and over again. If you’re not familiar with Capa’s life and work, he’s a fascinating man – look him up.

C&V Black Friday

Once a year, while there’s truly unconscionable insanity going on in shopping malls across this continent, Craft & Vision holds a Black Friday sale. It’s one of two chances we take to offer killer deals on our products, and it only lasts 24 hours, and it’s happening this Friday, November 29. Every product in the C&V store will be 50% off, except our magazine, PHOTOGRAPH. That’s something like 80 great chances to improve your photography, all for half of what most people already consider really great prices.

My limited edition book, SEVEN, will also be on sale, though not quite for 50% off. It’ll be on sale for what it cost me to make it: $60, plus shipping and handling. From the beginning we’ve been very conscious of how much it costs to ship this, and this sale will allow some of you to purchase the book – a beautiful Christmas present, if I do say so (and I do) – that couldn’t do so before. Same with our video series, The Created Image: for one day only, it’s half price. And The Visual Toolbox – half price. It’s all half price (except PHOTOGRAPH) and would make a great present, on a spiffy little USB drive or SD card, for your favourite photographer.

Friday, November 29th. Half price. One day only. Only at CraftAndVision.com. No codes or coupons, just fill the cart.

Studying Masters

In my Created Image video, one of the things I strongly advocate is studying the masters. I think finding those masters, the ones with whom you truly resonate, and finding them yourself, is part of the fun. I’m always hesitant to tell people to study this person or this person, because the list of photographers I myself don’t know, photographers we’d learn so much from studying, is so much longer than the one I’ve got in my mind. But if your question is who are the photographers whose work is on my own shelves, from whom I’ve learned so much, and to whom – dead or alive – I still return to learn from, that’s a question I feel good about answering.

Here, right now, are the photographers who grace my shelves, whose work is still readily available, for the most part on Amazon.com. I learn more, at this stage of my journey, from the work in these books than I do from any how-to manual I might find. But even younger photographers, photographers who still need the how-to books, should be studying these or others like them.

In no particular order, here’s what’s on my shelf right now:

Sebastiao Salgado – Genesis, Workers, and AfricaVivian Maier – Street Photographer

Elliott Erwitt – Personal Best (also look up Paris, and New York)

Andreas Feininger – That’s Photography

Yousuf Karsh, Portraits

Gregory Heisler – 50 Portraits

Michael Kenna – Images of the Seventh Day, and A Twenty Year Retrospective.

Steve McCurry – The Unguarded Moment, Looking East, and In the Shadow of Mountains

Galen Rowell – A Retrospective (but you should also look at The Inner Game of Outdoor Photography if you’re into landscapes)

Arnold Newman, Arnold Newman, A Masterclass, and anything else with his name on it.

Robert Frank – The Americans

Fred Herzog, PhotographsAndrew Zuckerman, Wisdom, Bird, Creature.

Others you should know – Robert Capa, Robert Doisneau, Walker Evans, Lewis Hine, Gordon Parks, Irving Penn, W. Eugene Smith, Edward Weston, Garry Winogrand, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Eliot Porter, Philip Hyde. Oh, and Saul Leiter.

Also look at Magnum Contact Sheets – it’s amazing.

Start with a Google search, find the ones you resonate with, and go from there. But remember that this list is so partial and incomplete that it’s embarassing. It misses so many, and it favours the ones I love while neglecting others I still have much to learn from, including entire genres. But this list should give you a start if you’re looking for one.

Got one that should be on this list? Leave it in the comments below.

 

 

 

November Desktop Wallpaper

Desktop Wallpaper from Hokkaido, Japan, last winter. Enjoy!

I’ve just got back from a nice road trip – one that took me for the first time in almost two years over the US border. Let’s just say I’ve had some unnecessary issues stemming from a decision to live nomadically with no fixed address a couple years ago. Anyways, there’s some hope that’s behind me now. I flew down to Arizona, sans cameras, and had a great time with family, my girl, and a long drive up the coast.

Lots going on around here. A complete overhaul of the Craft & Vision site, including the new video podcast, will be coming in the next month. I’m aiming to make it a weekly thing, and it’ll be completely free. If you’d like to submit your images to me for consideration on this podcast, there’s more info here.

I don’t want to start any rumours, but so-called Black Friday is coming on November 29, and I’ve heard we might be repeating the annual blow-out sale at Craft & Vision. One day only. Big deals. Now would be a great time to buy something for your favourite photographer. Here’s my idea: go to Amazon.com and get a great deal on a high-capacity SD card. Buy a stack of great resources from Craft & Vision during the sale. Download those products straight to the SD card. Put the card back into the packaging, and wrap it. Then write a nice card and let them know the gift is not ONLY the great SD card, of which we can all use more, but if they plug it into their computer first, there’s a bunch of awesomeness on there! Or use a USB drive if your favourite photographer’s most likely just to jam the card into a camera, format it, and start shooting. Not all photographers read. On a budget? Buy the SD card and put our 3 free eBooks on there. Won’t cost you a thing.

We just published Issue 5 of PHOTOGRAPH and if I don’t say so myself, this is one of our best issues. More information on Issue 5 here.

I’ve got 6 weeks at home and then it’s Ethiopia, Kenya (my mother’s first safari!), and Zanzibar (SCUBA lessons and a chance to play with my camera in the water for 2 weeks!). After that I come home for more foot surgery and I’m sitting around recovering for a couple months, so I’ve set aside time to read, write, record some podcasts, and work on a macro abstract project I’ve been excited to play with.

Sorry for the newsy post. I guess I felt the need to explain my busy-ness and absence. Enjoy the wallpaper.

PHOTOGRAPH, Issue 5

Buy Issue 5 for $8

Subscribe and Save

The newest issue of PHOTOGRAPH—a digital quarterly magazine for creative photographers—is now available! If you’ve never seen it, this is a gorgeous, ad-free, magazine full of great photographs and articles from exceptional photographers who understand that this is not only a technical pursuit, but an artistic one as well. They write as much from the heart as they do from their expertise. If you have seen it, you know how much it means to us to create something beautiful and this issue is no different. I think Issue 5 is the best issue we’ve put out yet and it’s been killing me to wait to put it into your hands. But here it is.

Issue 5 includes four portfolios and Q+As—this time from Anja Buehrer, David Jackson, Marcin Sobas, and some of my own recent work. I’m also excited to announce our new columnists: Bruce Percy and Adam Blasberg.

Buy Issue 5 for $8

Subscribe and Save

I really believe the best way to learn photography is to study exceptional photographs, and to listen to voices that not only know the craft, but also practice the art of photography. I hope PHOTOGRAPH inspires you the way it continues to inspire me.

If you already subscribe to PHOTOGRAPH you’ll be getting an email with the download link – please be sure to check your spam folders and junk boxes before you send a panicky note asking where it is. It’ll be there. And if it’s not, we’ll make sure we get it you. We put too much work into this thing to not have you enjoying it.  Thanks again for all the support.

New Podcast Coming

A couple years ago I did a podcast with Peachpit called Within The Frame. I did 20 episodes and still get weekly requests to do more. Until now I just didn’t feel the love I want to have for a project in order to sit down and do it. Now I have the love, and the time. So we’re launching a free video podcast called About The Image and it’ll be on the new Craft & Vision website when that launches next month.

But to create it, and get it off the ground with some momentum, I’m hoping you’ll be a part of it now.

The podcast is very much like the old Within The Frame podcast. Each week (roughly) I’ll feature a photograph and talk about it – the composition, technique, emotional and visual pull, as well as comments about post-processing. Not so much a critique as a discussion intended to provoke thought and learning.

If you’d like your photograph considered for the podcast, please submit it by email, but first, please make sure you send it to spec or we just can’t use it. Here’s the goods:

Horizontal images are best. I’m not saying we won’t use a great vertical photograph, but the horizontal images just fit this medium better. Size: 3000 pixels on the long side, sRGB, saved as a JPG around 80% quality so it’s good but not gigantic. Keeping the EXIF data in the file will be most helpful. Please don’t watermark it. We will use this image for the video podcast only and once it is used we will delete it. I promise. No rights grabbing here, just a chance to show some photographs from the people in this community and to talk about them.

Please include your full name in the image file name. Example: david-duchemin-1.jpg would be great. Otherwise we just lose track of them. Cool?

Please don’t send more than 2. Pretty please? But the 2 you send? Send them here: submissions@craftandvision.com

Thanks for being part of this. We’ll keep you posted about when the first one, which is a discussion of one of my own images and the sequence that got me there, is released.

*No restrictions about what kind of images – a photograph is a photograph. If I feel it’s worth talking about in a way that I can make educational, it’s fair game. If it’s inappropriate for this audience for some reason I’ll just refrain from using it.

Lightroom 5 Unmasked

The day Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5 came out, we released an eBook by Piet Van den Eynde called Lightroom 5: Up to Speed – it was a glance – though a thorough one – at what was new in Lightroom 5. Today we’re releasing Lightroom 5 Unmasked, A Complete Guide to Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5. We don’t use the word “complete” lightly, but in this case, it fits. The eBook massive! Piet covers it all, every module and feature with his usual excellence and clarity.

Piet’s the guy I go to to brush up on Lightroom. I first met him in Ladakh, India. Ironically, he had come there to photograph with, and learn from, me, but in our spare time the things I picked up from him about Lightroom were amazing. And that was after I’d written my own best-selling book about Lightroom. Dude knows his stuff. This is his second complete guide to Lightroom and his first remains one of Craft & Vision’s all-time best-sellers. It’s 13 chapters, covering everything from an introduction to Lightroom and non-destructive editing to full discussions of the Library and catalogs, to every tool in the Develop, Map, Book, Slideshow, Print, and Web Modules. Piet also includes 69 cases – smaller topics that often get overlooked. A 356-page PDF, it’s searchable and printable, and you can put it on as many devices as you need or want to.

If you want to learn Lightroom 5 or think you already know it, Piet will teach you a tonne of great stuff. Lightroom 5 Unmasked is a killer value. And for the next week it’s only $17 instead of $20 (discount codes are at the bottom of this post).

Hey, while we’re talking about discounts, this is the last time the discount codes will be so public. From now on these discount codes, along with featured deals, resources, and giveaways (this month it’s a Gura Gear 26L Bataflae bag, worth over $400) will be available only through THE CONTACT SHEET, Craft & Vision’s newsletter. If you already get our product emails, just sit tight, you’ll be getting The Contact Sheet from now on. If you’re not getting our newsletter, but want to,  just sign up here.

Use the promotional discount code UNMASKED3 when you check out and pay only $17 OR use the code UNMASKED20 to get 20% off when you buy 5+ Craft & Vision products. Codes expire at 11:59 PM (PST) November 4, 2013.

Thoughts on Done

I sat earlier this week around the coffee table in my loft with three very close friends, all of them thinkers and artists and several margaritas into the evening. We talked, as photographers and storytellers do, about our art and the art of others, and the struggle we all love enough that we keep doing it. One of the things our conversation settled on was the idea of Done.

We love done (and so we should). Our egos thrive on done (enjoy that feeling). You can brag about done and show others what you’ve done. Accolades, if they come, come when you’re done. Getting done is not easy, but being done sure is. There’s no risk in being done, or close to it. It’s why post-production can be a little too addictive if we’re not careful. It’s polishing what’s done, and there’s no risk there. I can polish all day long, labouring over an open Photoshop window under the delusion that I’m doing my work. And in a small way, I am. But usually I’m just putting off the real work, which is shipping this thing, putting it to rest, and beginning again. Starting the next thing.

Seth Godin says real artists ship. They get the work out there. But they don’t sit around once they’ve shipped. Steven Pressfield, in the War of Art, talks about finishing a novel and telling a friend, “I don’t know what to do now that I’m done.” His friend says, “Start the next one. Tomorrow. Don’t wait.” Finish. Enjoy being done. Then begin something new. Probably the one you’re most afraid of.

Stay moving. It’s too easy to get cozy, resting on what we’ve done. It’s easy to polish. And it’s way too easy to put out a Box-set and a Best of rather than stepping into the unknown and the uncertainty of the What If…? that necessarily accompanies the creative life.

One of my favourite authors, Chaim Potok, begins one of his novels (In the Beginning) with this line: All beginnings are hard…especially a beginning that you make for yourself. That’s the hardest beginning of all.”

But what if we fell in love with the beginnings and the heady rush of discovery? What if we were as hungry for the exploration and seeing the birth of that new work, whatever it is, as we are for the end of the creative process? Would we make work that took more courage? Would we make make more mistakes and thereby open the door to more eureka moments?

Done has its own challenges. There’s something to be said for perseverance. It’s as easy to get distracted from our current work by the thrill of something new, as it is to be polish our work so often that we never ship it. But Michelangelo was a chronic starter who left a vast body of unfinished work, and while the argument can be made that it’s a shame he never finished, I wonder if we’d be impoverished of his true masterpieces by his completion of the others. We can only create so much. Sometimes you have to abandon good to begin – and complete – great.

Whatever that new project is. Begin. Don’t wait until you’ve got it all figured out – that’s what beginning is for. Just start. Now. Genius is overrated. So is inspiration. Inertia kills the muse.