I was browsing through the local Barnes and Noble store last week when I came across Joyce Tenneson‘s book Shells: Nature’s Exquisite Creations
Press Pause Play: Cary Wolinsky Interview
On my regular trawl looking for interviews of photographers talking about the creative process, the future of photography etc. I found an interview with Cary Wolinsky, a 30 year veteran of National Geographic and one of the founders of the Center for Digital Imaging Arts from the Press Pause Play Project. Check the interview out below. I’d be interested in your thoughts and comments about Cary’s view of where things are headed for today’s photographers.
Friday Inspiration: Julius Shulman
The relationship between creator and publicist is something that struck me as a little weird when it was first spelled out that there may be a real need for this dynamic – how will anyone know what you’re done if you don’t tell them or can’t communicate with them effectively?
I was thinking about this again recently in the context of architects and the photographers that photograph the resulting buildings. A good architectural photographer is able to understand the buildings design and show it in a way that reinforces the design. Perhaps the most famous of architecture photographers is Julius Shulman. While I didn’t know who Shulman was until recently I did recognize some of his photographs and particularly the one shown above, “Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect.” One of the distinct features of Shulman’s work was that he often included people in his photographs, something that was unusual at the time and still isn’t terribly commonplace. Check out the videos of Shulman discussing his work below. A full version of the documentary ‘Visual Acoustics‘ is available on NetFlix or you can buy a copy here.
My 5 Keys to A Great Workshop Experience
My recent experience at Art Wolfe’s Olympic Peninsula Workshop, while not bad per se, led me to reflect on what my ideal workshop would look like. My goals for any workshop are to have fun, make friends, learn something and if I get some photographs that I like so much the better. With that in mind here’s what i came up with.
I prefer relatively small groups
The reason for this is two fold. I want to get to know the people that I’m with for the duration of the workshop. Some of these folks often know more about the technical aspects of photography, or the software than the instructor does. Handy to know these people.
I want to get to know the instructor and allow the instructor to know me.
I feel like this can only be a good thing when it comes to learning and overcoming challenges that I’m dealing with.
Daily critiques of new work
While it can be painful, I find that daily critique of the images that the group has created is a powerful tool to improve the standard of the work that the whole group does. Which leads to the next point.
I want to feel safe enough to step outside of my comfort zoneOne of the things that workshops afford us is the opportunity to try things and quite likely fail spectacularly. I’m not likely to do this or at least share the results of my experiments if I don’t feel safe.
I don’t want to be rushed
Workshops are a funny vehicle for learning. Often you are sprinted from one location to the next without an opportunity to return and put what you’ve learned into practice. I completely understand the ‘photo tour’ aspect of many workshops and this is great if you intend on returning to select locations on your own to fully work through the photo possibilities that it offers. Otherwise I prefer at least similar locations that would allow me to refine my thinking about how to approach particular subjects.
What would help make the ideal workshop experience for you? Leave your suggestions in the comments section.
Art Wolfe's Olympic Peninsula Workshop Comments
Or I just flew in from Seattle and boy are my arms tired.
I recently attended Art Wolfe’s Olympic Peninsula workshop. What an amazing place the Olympic Peninsula and the Olympic National Park is – Rain forest, Mountains and the ocean. What more could you ask for? It was quite an experience.
I was expecting a relatively intimate workshop (I had been under the impression that it would be 12 people) that would give us all a lot of time with Art and Libby and Jay. It turned out to be a much bigger group, ~30 participants and 4 or 5 additional instructors/assistants. Not that is a bad thing, the staff were all pretty attentive both in the classroom and in the field, although I found it difficult to keep track of peoples names, whether they were with our group or not and whether they were a participant or instructor. We didn’t spend too much time in the classroom because the weather was ‘perfect’ for photography, it was overcast the first day, overcast and rainy the second, but then cleared so that we got broken cloud cover for a sunset at Second beach. Very cool the way the weather worked out perfectly.
One of the reasons that I took the workshop was to get a better sense of photographing in forests and there was no shortage of opportunity to photograph in the forest. Our first stop was Marymere falls and then on to the Sol Duc. Being in dense old growth forest I was overwhelmed by the clutter and so it wasn’t until I was in the Hoh Rainforest the following day that I actually started seeing potential shots. But then however I was battling a couple of technical challenges that I hadn’t expected – it was raining, hello rainforest – which meant that I had to clean off the front element frequently otherwise my shots would be obliterated because of raindrops. The second issue that I was frankly surprised by was fogging. I was using a polarizer to take the sheen off the green and found that the front element would fog under the polarizer and so I had that to contend with too. Most if not all of the shots of the forest I ended up with are marred by one or other of these issues.
While I may not have any photographs from the forest that I liked, I did begin to ‘see’ potential photographs which was a significant step forward for me. I’m looking forward to going back for more!
Friday Inspiration: Sarah Moon
Sarah Moon’s name came up in conversation this week as a photographer to take a deeper look at. At the time the name was unfamiliar and it wasn’t until I saw the video below that I realized that I had been down this road before. All too often it takes couple of times to internalize and connect the name and the work. Sarah Moon lives and works in Paris, and is one of the great icons of fashion photography. While her work falls under the umbrella of fashion it’s not the slick, glossy, over produced fashion work that immediately comes to m mind. Instead, much of her work is black and white (I haven’t been able to find much of her work in color at all) that has an ethereal quality to it. Captivating. I don’t know the original source of the video below but I do hope that this is narrated by Sarah Moon herself. It gives a real insight into the mind of the photographer as they go through the process of finding the image.
Friday Inspiration: Jay Goodrich
I’m in the Pacific Northwest this week to attend a workshop with Art Wolfe. It was through researching potential workshops with Art that I came across Jay’s work and have been following his blog for a couple of years now. His outdoor work, covers a wide spread of nature, landscape and adventure photography but he also builds on his architecture training to make some stunning photographs of buildings. Goes to show that the more you know your subject the better the photographs will be.
It’s hard to know the person behind photographs when your interaction has been purely electronic stalking but Jay’s about page reinforces the notion that I had of a pretty mellow, if not passionate and intense guy. Do all those fit together I think so. Get a sense for yourself in the interview with Jie from an episode of ‘Framed‘ last year.
Friday Inspiration: Pete McBride
Pete McBride is an award winning photographer whose commercial and editorial work has taken him to 60 countries. His most powerful work, for me at least, started with a simple question ‘How long would it take the water in the local creek to reach the sea?’. That simple question led him on a 3 year, 1500 mile quest to document the colorado river from source to sea resulting in the book The Colorado River: Flowing Through Conflict
Watch Chasing Water below:
Who's Blocking and Tackling for You?
The last few weeks have been more hectic than usual for a number of reasons, not least of which being getting reading for the exhibition at the RMSP gallery. I basically had a list of things that needed to get done and worked my way down the list until I was done. If I’d wanted to do anything evenly vaguely creative in that time I couldn’t have because I didn’t have the space I need to think. I find that I need some breathing room to have and to develop new ideas, that if I’m flat out busy I just don’t have. How to get that space can require a shift in thinking and attitude. For me whenever I’m feeling that I’ve lost balance and perspective I rely on David Allen’s Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
to get back in control. Typically this involves taking an inventory of all that I have going on, all the projects that I have underway and the associated ‘next actions’. More often than not once I’ve done that I realize that I have more going on than any sane person would commit to and begin saying ‘No’ to any new things that show up until I’m back in a place where I have some time to catch my breath. That’s where I am now, enjoying a break until my next adventure. I’d be interested in how you get back under control and in a place where you can create.
Gone in 90 Seconds
With thanks to the guys at RMSP for pulling it all together, one of the things we did during the opening of ‘Going Coastal‘ was to prepare a timelapse video of the first hour or so of the opening at the RMSP Gallery. I had a fun evening buzzing around talking to people about the photographs as you can see in the video below.