David duChemin's Blog, page 9

Is It Good?

By now there’s a good chance you’ve heard about the 4 young men from High On Life, a British Columbian clothing company, that have been wheeling their way around the USA in a bright blue bus, and, as it turns out, reeking some havoc on the National Parks in the name of self-promotion and fun. Their latest escapade, and the one for which the internet is calling them out, and for which it looks like forgiveness from the masses is a long way out, was a willful departure from the path at the prismatic springs in Yellowstone, and into some very delicate ecosystems. This departure happened in the face of several well-placed signs warning in no uncertain terms of the havoc this kind of stupidity can cause. All for what? Some soon-forgotten video like the one they made as they drove across flooded salt-flats and leaving tracks that would out-last the videos by a long-shot? Or the selfies they took as they rappelled over the edges of arches, an activity very clearly contra-indicated by signs? And now Federal charges are pending. And sponsors are dropping out. And they’re a cautionary tale on my blog. That itself is a bad sign.

These young men obviously wanted to do some good. For their brand, certainly. And for others who might long for a little excitement in their lives. That impact is largely gone now. Their brand will be lucky to survive. They have lost their integrity and their audience, but I suspect they lost their way some time ago if they’re this willing to overlook the impact of their foolishness. I could give a sh*t about their brand, but the ignorant destruction of beautiful things gets my ire up.

As photographers I suspect most of us ask, “Is it good?” about our work? And by this we mean is it technically good. Or does it connect to our audience? Or does it succeed in expressing my vision. All good questions, forgive the obvious pun. But I think we can do better. I think we can ask, “is it good?” in a larger sense. Does it do good?

The news is full lately of photographers doing stupid things. A barn at a heritage site in Florida recently burned to the ground because a photographer with more pyromania than taste, or sense, apparently, thought it was a good place to spin flaming steel wool. That spinning fire shot was interesting (maybe) when we’d never seen it before. Now that the novelty has worn off it’s clearly nothing more than a cheap parlour trick. There is no shortage in this world of true beauty, and of stories that need telling. If the best we can do is selfies with spinning fire, we’ve jumped a tired shark and should probably consider a purer form of narcissism and self-absorption. Wanking, for example. It’s still free and, done right, hurts no one.

We can do better. We can create images that create new understanding, that open our eyes to beauty, that stir in us the desire for change and ignite in us the motivation to act on that desire. Photography as a storytelling medium can be so much more than trite, novel, or mere eye-candy. Eye-candy, as a metaphor is a terrible one. Even real candy is crap for anyone that eats it more than very occasionally. And that’s what we’re doing more and more – devoid of substance and anything the human mind and soul can take nourishment from, we’re pumping out saccharine images. We’re trading impact for likes and it’s a foolish trade that will hurt us all in the eyes of a public that values photography less and less every day.

I still believe there are no rules in art, and in writing this I am not saying others ought to do this or that. Public opinion and local law enforcement has a way of judging the most egregious of those offences as we’ve seen recently. What I am saying is that we have an opportunity with this medium to communicate messages – and to do so in a way that does no harm – that speak directly to our humanity, and that do good. And I think those of us that choose the long game, and prefer impact over the fickle appetites of audience, will create something better than a very temporary social media following – we’ll create legacy. Long term that’s a better trade in truest sense of the word. And a more human one. A good one.

In short, “look at me” as an ethos or a modus operandi usually does more than simply backfires. It harms others. It nourishes no one. It leaves more than just footprints, it leaves the sucking trail of egos wielding their craft more for themselves than for others, and we are all poorer for it, having lost the respect of audiences that require that respect if they are to listen to our stories, and feel the weight of the beauty we see.

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F/ The Rules

Several years ago, we were enjoying a lively dinner in Oaxaca, Mexico during the Day of the Dead festivals, a small group of us together on a workshop, when the table across from us got up, all of them photographers, all of them hung heavily with gear. They fumbled with their stuff, excited to get out to make photographs in the falling dark and growing crowds, when I heard one woman say, quite adamantly, to another, “Now, remember, your F should be 5!”

Blink.

My F?

5?

My lens doesn’t even have a 5.

There may well have been a context for this advice that none of the rest of us heard, but it has since become a bit of a mantra to me.

Photographers are very keen on prescriptive advice, formulae, and recipes. At the beginning, as we learn, they might not even be that harmful. But they sure do stand in the way of getting to something better: understanding. Understanding tends to put us into a place where we can flex our creativity. Understanding helps us problem-solve and trouble shoot. It’s understanding that allows us to “know the rules then break them,” though I still contend there are no rules. Formulae and recipes have a nasty way of confining us, pushing our expression into a narrow template, encouraging homogeny and mediocrity. They can be helpful, for a time, but they must be transcended.

It’s why I die a little inside when a student asks, “what lens should I use?” I know what they mean. I know it’s meant well. But far, far more important to our work than using the “right” lens is the ability to choose, to play, to experiment, to fail, and to learn. My answer is meant gently, and with respect: you tell me. But consider striking the word “should” from your vocabulary.

Art is about possibility more than about propriety. It’s about creativity, not conformity. “Rules,” as my friend, colleague, and hero, Freeman Patterson has said, “do not give a damn about your creativity. It is not how we make our photographs that is important, but that we make them.” Indeed.

F/ the rules. It has always been, and will always be the ones that break the rules, ignore them, or deny them outright, and find a new way, an authentic way, of doing things, that will make interesting art, tell great stories, live amazing lives, and change the world. We do this, not for the sheer defiance of it, but in celebration of the human spirit that has always longed to exceed its bounds, to “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say,” as King Lear’s Edgar so poignantly reminds us. We do it because rules, at least in art, have always been so heartbreakingly unable to express the best of what we are, and the fullness of the things we long to say.

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Try It In Black & White

Episode 45 of Vision Is Better encourages you to look at your work, even if you have no intention of printing it this way, in Black & White. We can learn a lot about the strengths, and the weaknesses, of our work when we look at it critically without the seductive pull of colour. (RSS and email viewers, I’m sorry but there’s just no way to include the videos, you’ll have to click through to watch these in your browser. )

I didn’t post Episode 44 – Photography a la Mode (or, I Have to Go P) – to the blog, but you can see that here on the YouTube channel.

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Death Valley Migration

Nikon D3s. 1.0s @ f/4.5. ISO 200. 24mm (24mm Tilt-Shift) – Readers of this article on RSS or email can view the image here.

 It’s not easy getting to the Racetrack Playa in California’s Death Valley. I arrived after a couple bone-jarring hours in my Land Rover Defender, just in time to do some scouting, set up camp, and grab some dinner before grabbing my tripod and heading out to wait for twilight. During the day, the playa is a rough place to be, let alone try to make photographs. The heat and reflected light make it tough to do anything but look for shelter. But as the sun falls the evening cools and you could spend hours here, which is what I did, moving my tripod back and forth, playing with angles and lenses, before finally settling on my 24mm tilt-shift, and sitting down at my tripod to wait for the light.

The rocks here move. No one seems to agree on why. But there’s a conceptual contrast here that I love; the movement of things that aren’t meant to move. While I scouted I was looking for something that had the implications of story. I wanted a great rock without much else in the background, and one with a long visible trail. As if that wasn’t enough, I wanted to westward to give myself the best shot at the fading light, which to the east was already to dark and lacking the gradient and softer tones. I finally found my rock, and the mountains in the background gave me the sense of story that I wanted, a place for the rock to come from. This is a photograph about leaving. To be fair, the playa is in a valley and mostly surrounded by mountains and rock, but when you’re trying to make that story into a photograph that also works compositionally, not all mountains are created equally.

The playa can be a solitary place, and it’s one of the things I loved most about my brief time there, so it surprised me when, after a couple hours of scouting and getting ready for the light at this exact spot, to see another photographer walking around. He walked here and there and eventually looped around and out of sight. I’d forgotten about him until I felt something on my shoulder, and turned to find his camera rested, I’m not making this up, on my shoulder. He exposed a frame, looked at the image and said, “That might be the best photograph of the day.” No kidding.

Of course there’s so much more to a photograph than being in the right place, though that helps too. Then I chose the tilt-shift lens which many landscape photographers use to maximize depth of field, to accomplish the opposite, keeping my plane of focus as shallow as I could with a wide aperture. To keep my exposure long and my aperture wide I used two neutral density filters – a graduated 3-stop neutral density and a full 3-stop ND. The longer exposure makes the blues bluer and gives moving cloud a little softness. I also pulled out my flashlight, a small halogen light over which I taped some warming gel and light-painted the rock. The final frame, though little else was done in post-production, was a composite of two nearly identical frames, one in which the rock was painted with light, the other without the added light. The camera being on a sturdy Gitzo tripod, the two frames matched up perfectly and allowed me to paint out any overspill from the flashlight. Whether my intent works for others or not, I’m often unsure, but I was trying to do a couple things with the light. The first was to give some colour contrast (yellow vs. Blue) which brings added depth to the image, separating foreground and background. The other was more related to the story, my hope being that the light would give the rock a further sense of animation. I’m aware that not everyone would opt to introduce this contrivance, but I believe art gives us all the freedom to be as literal or as symbolic and interpretive as we desire. In the end it was this more symbolic representation of the scene that captured my experience out there on that desert evening.

This article originally appeared in PhotoLife magazine, in my regular column, Without the Frame.

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The Power of Failure

I wrote this just before what I’ve come to call “The Italian Incident” 5 years ago, just after writing a different article, Choose Your Risk, which you can read here. It remains true, if not truer now than ever to me.

After beginning the discussion on risk, my brain started churning through some of the responses and push-back left in the comments and I think the discussion isn’t even close to over just yet.

The first thing that needs qualification is that my point is not that we ought to engage in risk for the sake of risk. My point is that we’ve one short life and while we’ll all look differently at what it means to fully live that life with no regrets, it is often the fear of risk that stands in the way. Overcoming that fear gets us to a place where we can more intentionally engage life, become the people we long to be. Just getting over fear for the sake of risking without examining the results of those risks is, to my mind, pointless.

The second thing I think that needs to be picked apart is the “what about my stupid job?” mentality, which I think has been so beat into us we can no longer see it for what it is. We’ve been conditioned (in a non-paranoid, no-conspiracy-theory kind of way) into leaving school, getting a job, working until retirement, and being a productive bee in the hive. it doesn’t have to be this way. People make a living in thousands of unlikely ways and it’s truly unlikely for most of us that we’ll end up dead on the side of the road while people pass by, shake their heads, and mumble, sotto voce, “see, he shouldn’t have quit his job.” Once above the survival line – and I’d argue we need much, much, less to be happy than we think – it’s important to remember that we work to live, we do not live to work. When work gets in the way of you living your life – then that work no longer serves you and it’s time to change.

Clear your debt as fast as you can. Live on less. Pull your kids from one of their over-priced after-school activities and let them read a library book. Give the car back to the dealer and get one you can actually afford. Save some money. And don’t, whatever you do, wait until “the time is right” before you make the changes your soul is hard longing for. I know, it’s not practical. Practical is safe. Practical is boring. Practical isn’t working for you now, not if all this talk of living life to the fullest resonates with you,  and it isn’t going to work for you in the future.  I don’t know that Gandhi, Moses, Jesus, Einstein, Ben Franklin, Louis Pasteur, Albert Schweitzer, or any of the thousands of unknown adventurers, inventors, poets, or general misfits, ever saw much use for practicalities. They lived with the same realities we do. It is they about whom we tell stories.

So all this was floating in my mind and I began to think about possible first-steps for the fearful ones that long for something more. I think that first step might be failure; the very thing we seem to fear. In the years leading up to my bankruptcy I was terrified; i’d seen the writing on the wall and it was truly frightening. I thought I’d lose it all. I thought I’d never recover. I had fear after fear. And then I walked into my trustee’s office, signed away my debt under a heaviness of shame and guilt – and failure. And to my shock I survived. Not only did I survive, I thrived. I learned lessons I’d never have learned. And I learned that falling down hurt less than I expected. It hurt, of course it did, but not even remotely did the brief hurt outweigh the good that came of the risk.

There’s deep strength in failure. It’s a gift to fall down and get up. Coddle a child and don’t let him eat a little dirt or lick the occasional frog and that child never develops the kind of immune system that keeps him strong. It’s the same with our character. Failure builds immunity, gives us strength, makes us familiar with the actual possibilities that come from risk and robs our fears of the power that comes from the unknown. The more you fail, and learn from those lessons, the less frightening future failures appear.

As with risk, failure for failure’s sake isn’t the point. It’s a waypoint, a portal through which we pass. To return to the idea of living a good story, think back to your favorite stories: the good ones require the protagonist to risk. The epic ones, the ones that really move us, require the protagonist to risk it all. They don’t do so for the sake of the risk itself: they do so because the price of not doing so is too high. Without risking it the village will certainly be destroyed, or the love of their life will certainly be lost. Risk is not the point. Nor is failure.

The stakes are so high. We won’t get to the end and get a do-over. This is not a trial run. What we do here matters. Being fully ourselves, fully alive, and fully engaged with the world around us requires we wake up and shake the sleep from our eyes. I sat with a cancer survivor recently, someone who’d fought for her life to overcome odds and now lives cancer-free but in a job that by her own admission is killing her soul. it was a thrill to see the light come on in her eyes as she realized it didn’t have to be this way. My God, if you can live through the fight of your life and beat cancer, why would you not fight tooth-and-nail to live the days you’d snatched from the dragon’s jaws with every ounce of energy and passion and make it worth the fight? (Update: That woman is now my wife. We’ve been together since the day we met, in Italy, a week before I fell of the wall.)

These are just the thoughts of a self-confessed idealist. You are welcome to dismiss them and go back to the cubicle from whence you came. You probably have some very good reasons to suggest that I’m full of crap, and probably crap from unicorns and fairies. My only push-back is that I’ve seen people living profoundly impractical lives as missionaries and bush-doctors and artists and adventurers and I think, without exception, they’d agree: the risk of doing nothing and playing it safe and never falling on your face is a risk they could never live with. If failure gets them there faster, then it’s not so much to be avoided as embraced.

The original article, with some of the backstory on The Italian Incident is here.

The image at the top of this blog article is me dancing in the rain in Cambodia, 5 months after the accident that nearly killed me. It’s one of my favorite photographs. Thanks to Eve Hannah for the memory.

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Receptive & Observant

 There’s something magic about the light in Italy, even at it’s highest and hottest it seems beautiful and the shadows it creates seem to have a life of their own, like Peter Pan’s shadow, which is what I thought about when I made this, but I’m getting ahead of myself. I was in Italy again for a workshop of sorts, bringing clients to some of my favourite places in the world and introducing them to the magic. This particular town holds more magic than most for me, it was here a couple years previous that I fell in love, not only with the place but with the woman who now shares my life. We’d wandered these same streets together, our vision of the place a little distracted at the time, but now heightened for those memories, and seeing wonder around every corner. I tell you that because it plays into my frame of mind at the time, and frame of mind is everything.

We talk so often about having a photographer’s eye, which is, of course, total nonsense. We see with the mind. We experience, and perceive, and interpret what our eyes see. It’s why two photographers standing side by side will often create two wildly different photographs. Their eyes see the same thing, but their minds, do wildly different things with the input. It is not our eye that gets inspired, or distracted, but our mind. Speaking of distraction, I had been photographing here for a couple hours, stopping now and then for a glass of wine and some olives, allowing the world to pass me by, raising my camera to my eye now and then, when I saw some of my students walk past. I kept quiet, waved my hand, they kept walking, didn’t see me. I made a note to remind them that the job of the photographer is not to make photographs, but to observe. And then I got up and walked around the corner, and saw this great scene – an open door, a blue bike, a fantastic shaft of light. As I was watching a kid ran down the steps and I noticed the shadow, pulled the camera to my eye and completely missed the moment. It happens. But when I find a great stage I will often wait a very long time for the right characters to grace it. And so I waited, photographing kids, mothers, couples holding hands, sometimes with my camera, sometimes with just my eyes.

At a point my wandering students, the ones I’d made a note to remind about being observant, came and stood with me. I explained what I liked about this scene, and what I was hoping for. The open door, the blue bike, the shaft of light into which I was hoping a moment would come. “I love the tree sticking out of the wall,” said one. Tree sticking out of the wall? What was she going on about? And then I saw it. Right in front of me. A tree. Sticking out of the wall I’d been staring at for fifteen or twenty minutes. I decided now was not the time for a lecture about how to be observant. Perhaps I’m more of a “do as I say, not as I do” teacher, anyways.

For all the talking I do about being present and observant, being receptive, I’m as easily distracted as the next person. And more so when I’m looking for something in particular. Looking can get in the way of seeing. I’m not suggesting there’s no place for the looking, I think there is. But I think we need to do the one without sabotaging the other. That’s the struggle. When we look so hard for one thing, our expectations and hopes for what will be can blind us to what is.

My students walked on, clearly impressed by how observant I could be, and I remained. Waiting. A little more receptive than I’d been minutes ago. I slowed down, took a few deep breaths, let my eyes relax. And then he walked around the corner, hopping down the stairs, playing with his shadow, his blue shirt and the blue bike a perfect visual rhyme. Patience is as much a skill as the ability to focus or expose. Sometimes the hardest part is showing up with open eyes and open minds, and waiting for the moment to reveal herself.

This article originally appeared in PhotoLife magazine, in my column, Without the Frame. Email subscribers can see the image here, with apologies for my blog not playing nicely.

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Vision Is Better, Episode 43

I’ve just posted the latest episode of Vision Is Better (email subscribers can watch that episode on YouTube here).

I write a lot of books and do a lot of teaching, and there is no end of the books and tutorials and tips and tricks out there. And NONE of them will teach you to take this next step. Want to become a better photographer? At a certain point you need to abandon the shoulds and the ought-tos and the shortcuts and the manuals and go out there and fail. That is the only way any of us really learn. Want to “shoot like a pro?” Pay your dues. Get out there. There are things you can learn yourself that I can never teach. Pick up the camera and go make photographs. I’ll be here when you get back.

If you missed episode 42, Getting Started in Humanitarian (or any other) Photography, you can find it on YouTube here.

Come To Kenya With Me

I’d love to see you come to Kenya on safari with me. So this week we’re offering two chances to do just that. The first will cost you nothing at all. Just head over to Craft & Vision and download Safari: A Monograph completely free. I created this ebook after my first safari as a way to pay for an addition to an elementary school; it’s filled with images from my first safari and thoughts about my process, the gear, etc. I hope you enjoy it. It’s free for a week, then it goes back to $5.

And if a virtual trip isn’t going to cut it for you, my January 2017 Maasai Mara safari just got $1000 cheaper due to an unexpected scheduling change, and there are limited spots available. If the idea of bumping around the savannah in the early mornings in a Land Cruiser, photographing lions and elephants in gorgeous light, spending free time having a glass of wine with me and talking photography, then going to bed in your luxury camp while listening to the frogs and the lions – if that idea quickens your pulse and sparks your imagination, I’d love to see you send in an application. You can find more information and apply on the dedicated safari page.

 

This safari is the last chance to travel with me now until September 2017, every other workshop is completely sold out. If you want in, now’s the chance!

Get your free copy of SAFARI. ~  Get more information on the Maasai Mara 2017 Safari.

“Exploring the Maasai Mara with David was truly a life-altering experience, an overused term that I don’t use lightly. David is generous with his time, knowledge and camaraderie which adds a ton of icing on an already beautiful cake.”

~ Alan Lawrence, Maasai Mara Alumni 2016

“Going on a trip with David, one learns very quickly that David is passionate.  But he’s not passionate about “his” photography, or even “your” photography.  He is passionate about your being able to get the photo that you makes you passionate.  And this was most amazing to me.  I know how to push the button.  But he challenged me, asking what is my story, what is my vision and what is my reason for taking this photograph.  Then David wants to help you take the  photograph that makes you most passionate about your own work.  This was an amazing experience that I will treasure for the rest of my life.”
~Bruce Lewandoski, Maasai Mara Alumni 2016

 

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Collaborations & Connections

Old Delhi, India, is one of my favourite places to wander with a camera. It’s a sensually overwhelming place, busy with people and motorcycles, the honking of horns and calls to prayer, the air rich with the too-fragrant smells of thousands of humans, chai stalls, and spice markets. It’s alive and vital and, for the most part, incredibly welcoming to the person led by their curiosity.

I found this blacksmith in the back alleys, sitting in a dark shop banging out his wage beside a small hot forge. I don’t find encounters like this come naturally to me. Most of the time I have to fake it, put on a smile, take a deep breath and brace myself for rejection when I bring my camera up in that universally understood gesture that says, May I make your photograph? In fact I know very few people for whom this kind of thing comes easily. But curiosity drives us, so does the idea of getting past the awkwardness and into that place where we meet someone so different from ourselves.

The photograph, much as we love it, is a beautiful by-product, not the end in itself. In fact, when the photograph is the point it often sabotages the process and ensures we don’t make the very photograph we were hoping for. Instead, it’s the non-photographic skills that make an image like this: respect, curiosity, patience, kindness, and an ability to get by without any language more common than gesture and laughter.

I bent low to get eye level with this man, using my very little Hindi to greet him. My name is David. I am from Canada. Everything after that was English he didn’t understand, but it allowed me to convey things in my voice, and, I think, put us both more at ease. Many will tolerate a photographer, but in my experience the best portraits are not made under this kind of mood. You want more than toleration; you want collaboration and you know very quickly whether someone will collaborate with you or not. You read their body language, wait for a smile or the side-to-side head wobble unique to the Indian sub-continent. This man, initially apprehensive, smiled briefly, dipped his chin and went back to his business, and I started mine.

You can have all the clever technique in the world, and the best camera and lens, but without the collaboration of your subject, you won’t make a portrait. The power of a portrait is in some revelation of the subject. It’s in the way we show our common humanity. In this case his unflinching eye contact, and his self-protective body language, show something we’ve all felt. I tell this to students and I think they’re genuinely disappointed because there’s no secret formula for this stuff.

Pay attention to body language. Watch for the light. Look at the details that support the environmental portrait. Use a lens that compliments what you’re trying to say and do with the image. Pay attention to the background. Use your depth of field to isolate. All good advice, but none of it worth anything if they don’t move past all that as fast as they can and make a connection. In my case part of that connection – and here’s my secret if there is one – is to be vulnerable and human myself, the opposite of what all this intimidating gear communicates to our subjects.

I helped the light in this scene with a small battery-powered LED panel (very much like this one), with a warm gel on the front to match the warm light from the forge. I placed it to camera right, close enough to the forge that I worried it might melt. And I fumbled and muttered as I often do, the light falling over repeatedly, the tension breaking with laughter. Do that and you’ll never lack a connection.

A good portrait is many things. It might be sharp and well exposed and draw your eye to the right places. But above all it must be human. To do that you need to connect. There is no other way.

This article originally appeared in PhotoLife magazine, in my column, Without the Frame.

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Vision Is Better, Episodes 39 & 40

I’m just back from an intense weekend in the Toronto area, giving two days of lectures (man, can this guy talk if you let him!) at the Art Gallery of Burlington. Met some wonderful people and had a blast. This week I’m studying for courses – Emergency First Response, Emergency Oxygen Provider, and PADI Rescue Diver – it’s going to be a long one! But at the end I’ll be one certification away from my PADI Dive Master, which is exciting. Anyways, in the last 4 days I released Vision Is Better Episodes 39 and 40 – join me as I talk about bags and SD cards and the single best thing I think you can do as a traveling photographer (or any kind of photographer for that matter!)

I hope embedding these here is helpful to you. I’d still be thrilled if you’d subscribe to this channel on You Tube and if you’d interact with me – either here on the blog or there on the Craft & Vision channel. I want this to be a relevant show for you and the best way I can do that is to hear from you – got questions? Let me know!

I didn’t create this video series as a replacement for the blog, and I know there’ve been more video posts recently, it’s just a busy time. Thanks for your patience! Have a great week. Go make something that stirs your paint.