Crossroads Early On

From an early age, like all children, I loved to draw and paint. The image shown here is of a hand study I made when I was six years old, copied from some other sketches. At the time I couldn't even spell my last name correctly and if you've never tried it, hands are hard to draw. Nevertheless, I carried on, dreaming of becoming an artist, doing well in high school and early college classes with inspired and caring teachers and professors.

Then along came a college class where I worked in acrylics. The professor was never there, turning things over to his teaching assistants, who did nothing. Uninspired, I admit I didn't produce my best work. My semester grade was a "C." For the first and last time in my life, I protested my grade, going to the professor's office. I still remember the bluish diffused light from his north facing window (seeing and remembering light seems to be a curse/blessing of artists) as he said, "You have no talent."

Crushed, I abandoned my fledgling art career, turning to more pragmatic courses that would ensure a career. Artists didn't make any money anyway, I reasoned. For a short time after graduation I taught elementary school, then decided to see the world. I found myself in Japan and other photogenic locales. I had been fearful of photography because of my math phobia, but finally bought a little automated Olympus point and shoot. I began applying all those years of art lessons and was bewitched. I embraced my new hobby with a passion, bought a proper Nikon SLR camera and a couple of lenses. With my new gear I ended up in Alaska, set up a darkroom business and there, blessed with the amazing soft light found in northern latitudes, I seriously learned the craft.

I've done well for myself, making a living at what I do. For 20 years I taught photography at a local community college. Often I draw inspiration from wonderful teachers I encountered early in life. Never have I told someone he/she has no talent. That is a judgment call no teacher can make. I've also learned that we can learn from adversity, as I did from the lackadaisical professor. Today, I thank him.

Although I haven't picked up a paintbrush in all these years, I've found joy in the many digital painting techniques that are available. My Wacom tablet/pen have become my artistic tools of choice. I've also learned to mix mediums, learning from the talented Dianne Poinski who creates magic with her black and white photos and pastels.

Half Dome Peekaboo

One of the great icons of the American West proved maddeningly elusive on a partly cloudy winter evening in the Yosemite Valley. Timing is everything when it comes to landscape light. Although on this visit I was in Yosemite for several days, the great Half Dome was either basking in glaring full sunshine or playing hide and seek with clouds. However, I think this image has some merit, for a full-on photo of Half Dome is a California cliché. It's sort of like photographing a deer; everyone knows what a deer looks like, so perhaps the better photo is one that contains some mystery, a departure from the literal image of "deer." So it is with Half Dome.

Whale Encounters

On the national TV news a few days ago there was a brief clip about a tour boat in Hawaii. In the video shown to millions, humpback whales seemed to show curiosity about the humans, apparently even bumping the sides of the boat. Afterwards I thought, why in the heck were they featuring this on the news? These kinds of up-close encounters are common on my Alaska trips. Each year the Maui whales come north to Alaskan coastal waters to feed. They are here by the hundreds. By law our boat isn't supposed to get closer than 100 yards, but fortunately the whales haven't read the rule books. They swim under the boat, and babies in particular are genuinely curious. Sometimes the huge mammals are so close that the steam from their spouts reaches us. A few summers ago we had one 45-foot-giant breach literally ten feet away. Our large lenses couldn't focus closely enough. Fortunately, we've never had a whale bump the boat; their sonar seems to be quite effective in this regard.

On land, we also have up-close encounters with bears. At the beautifully designed viewing platform and blind at Anan Creek (south of Wrangell in Southeast Alaska), we are close enough to touch them, although the rangers stationed here frown on such an activity, as even a stray claw from a well-intentioned bruin could cause major damage to human flesh. However, being in such close proximity allows intimate access to the bears' daily lives, whether it's a cub bawling for its mama, or an old boar showing its salmon fishing prowess.

With or without camera, experiencing these spectacles of nature is something that stays with you forever. After 13 years of such experiences, I have come to expect them. But newsworthy? No. But neither is a baby's first smile or the first daffodil of spring something to broadcast to millions. Bears, whales, babies or flowers: all part of the miraculous fabric of life.

A Challenging Portrait

Often, people ask me how I began my photography career. The early part was pretty simple. I was visiting Japan and picked up a Nikon camera and a couple of lenses. I then moved to Alaska and bought a darkroom setup at a garage sale, bought a little book on how to mix the chemicals, operate the enlarger and so on; I then called myself a photographer.

I found work running the darkrooms for several Alaska photographers, stumbled into some publishing opportunities (there wasn't much competition in those days) and ended up working for a publisher of Alaska regional travel guidebooks. In this way I wrote my first book, a travel guide to Prince William Sound, a vast and convoluted embayment east of Anchorage. While sailing in the region, I had heard of an interesting, very shy hermit working as a caretaker at an old herring rendering plant that had been made into a lodge of sorts. The lodge was on remote and rugged Knight Island, far from any road. The hermit, George Flemming, would run and hide at the approach of a boat. I had seen a fuzzy photo of him, sort of like a fuzzy snapshot of an elusive sasquatch, and knew I wanted to photograph him.

We visited with the owner of the lodge, and she gave me permission to enter his vacant quarters. I left an apple on the table. In the Alaskan bush, apples and any other fresh produce are practically worth their weight in gold, and after some time, George, who had been raised to be polite by his Aleut mother and fur trapper Caucasian father, came to say hello. A friendship was born. For several days we just talked, and then I asked to photograph his sole wintertime companion, Toodles the Poodle. After that I took hundreds of photos of him and he could never figure out why I was interested in him.

One day I took this photo of him at the oars of his boat. George had never ridden in an automobile, but he could handle himself on the water, even though he was nearly blind. The photo was widely published in magazines, calendars and more.

As time went on, I did what I could to take care of George. Finally, a friend offered his bushplane to fly him to Anchorage, where the whizzing autos and compressed population were almost overwhelming. George had never been to a doctor or dentist in his life, so we had his eyesight checked. Unfortunately, the doctors said there was nothing they could do. The same went for his teeth. I made sure he had time to browse the tools in Sears, an unheard of luxury for a caretaker and handyman who lived far from any town. He also received the first professional haircut of his life.

After his few days in the city, I bundled him back aboard the plane to his island retreat. It was the last time I saw George. I moved from Alaska. The lodge burned, victim to a chimney fire. George then moved to Cordova, a fishing village of 2,000, and he lived his last years there, dying in the early 1980s when he was about 82. In recent years some of his nieces and nephews (George never married or had children) have contacted me and I have shared photos of their amazing relative.

How Much Is Too Much?

There's been a lot of discussion lately about the ethics of photo manipulation. Tom Till, the noted Southwest photographer, brought this up recently in a piece he wrote for Outdoor Photographer magazine. He found that he had drifted along the seductive path of saturation: if something looks good with bright colors, just make the colors brighter. After comments from several friends, he resolved to tone down some of his images. Even more recently a photographer won a prestigious international photo contest, only to have the honor stripped from him because of over manipulation. He claimed he didn't read the rules closely enough.

A few years ago I stepped inside a photo gallery in the prestigious little artsy town of Carmel, once home to such greats as Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. Even today, the town teems with some of the great photographers in the country. In this case, as I stepped into the busy gallery, the colors of the giant enlargements virtually screamed over saturation. The colors were practically migraine-causing. For this photographer, however, the technique worked and he was making a lot of money. 

The over manipulation road is an easy one. Learn a few basic Photoshop (or Elements) tricks and you're on your way. I've seen it happen over and over with my students. Many of them become enamored of HDR (high dynamic range), another potential photo villain. At this point it's time for some careful diplomatic conversation with these students, and I urge restraint. But am I right?

Who's to say? I've said before on this blog that one must follow one's heart, and this doesn't always correspond with the reality of what the scene really was. In the midst of a red rock sunset in southern Utah, the colors can be truly overwhelming. Is it right or wrong to saturate, to express what your heart feels here? I've darkened stormy skies to accentuate the weather, "popped up" the colors of fall leaves and committed other processing sins. The attached photo is an example. It was taken in the gold stamp mill in the ghost town of Bodie. I've done this image (and many variations thereof, as I've been here often over the years with my photo workshops) as a black and white. This version, however, "speaks" to me. I applied mild HDR processing and presto, the beautiful colors of the wood resonated. The reality of the actual scene is a near-monochrome. Bodie is a town of incredible wood textures, and these stout timbers are a good example of that.

I think manipulation should be restrained, unless it's blatantly departing from reality, and then it becomes art or whatever you want to call it. The viewer instantly knows that you've done a lot of manipulation.

Slowing Down

I've been fortunate to visit many of the most beautiful places in the world. Most of the time these are "hurry up" moments: gawk at the site, maybe take a snapshot. Sometimes I am more fortunate: I can linger at a special spot, savoring its uniqueness, its spirit. As a photographer, how do I capture that?

I think some of that happens by slowing down, really thinking about what is here. This photo is a case in point. The subject is a humble little place, Fern Springs, in one of the greatest of nature's spectacles on earth, the Yosemite Valley. My friends and I had passed it by a couple of times, in search of bigger subjects like El Capitan or Half Dome. Finally, we stopped, and the magic permeated all of us.

There is some method involved here. I studied the little spring from many angles, finding new wonders each time I took a step. Sometimes it's good to just leave the camera in its bag for a while. Anyway, the more we lingered here, the more great images we saw. Each angle revealed different lighting, a different assemblage of leaves, and of course, different compositions. A bit of post processing in Photoshop brought out what was in my heart.

Of all the photos in the Yosemite Valley I made that autumn day, the series of images from the spring are among my favorites.

Better Technology, Less Thinking?

I was sorting and culling today through old correspondence with publishers. A generation ago, getting images to a magazine was a ponderous process. First, one had to label slides, then create a separate typed (yes, with a typewriter) list of each slide, together with its file number. I then wrote a cover letter,  created a delivery memo, together with a self addressed stamped envelope for the editor to sign and return. I'd then trot this entire carefully wrapped package to the post office, send it off certified mail and in a week or so the editor would receive the images. Occasionally, on a tight deadline, I'd overnight a package at great expense. The process paid off and I published widely.

No wonder the competition was so much less then. All this sort of thing was a giant headache. Today, of course, in the digital world, it's totally different. I create an online portfolio in a matter of minutes, send the link to an editor, he/she selects a few (hopefully), and I upload a high res image via email, YouSendIt, DropBox or some other service. I've also placed over 1200 high res images on an art website, Imagekind.com and make regular sales there. Just last week on that site I sold a photo of Ansel Adams that I first made in 1980 at his home in Carmel. He was kind of enough to change positions to afford me better light. (Originally he had been silhouetted against the window.) The original was shot with Kodak Plus X film and I scanned the image recently, restoring it in Photoshop. Now Kodak, disinclined to keep up with the digital revolution, is defunct. Keeping up with new imaging software, plugins and so on is practically a fulltime job and expensive besides. Now I am playing with iPhone technology and marveling yet again at how the photography world has changed.

But is it all good? A lot of thought went into those old cover letters. I would write a first draft, reflect on things for a while, then revise, revise, scribbling my corrections on the revision. Today it is too easy to shoot an email to someone (or worse, to whole groups), or splash something onto Twitter or Facebook. Sometimes we don't think of the ramifications of what we say, and occasionally our written missteps can prove awkward.

No, we don't need to go back to the old days. But we do need to think. Critical thinking and analysis seem to be going the way of Plus X film.