Lectured last week at the University of Missouri’s School of Journalism. In the photojournalism department, the students all had that traditional mix of energy, enthusiasm, angst, and doubt so typical of that time in your life when you have just picked up a camera and are looking at it, wondering where it will lead you. The usual mix of questions are ever present: Who do I work for? Can I make a living? Will I ever be any good at this? Will my pictures have impact?
Nowadays, that traditional line of questioning is accompanied by another significant set of queries. What is the future of all this? Will I shoot video or stills? Can I get a job where somebody pays me more than a nickel for my photos? Will there be any newspapers left in a few years? Should I also go to business school? How many pixels do I need? What the hell is going on and how am I going to fit in? When I left school a traditional path for many J school grads was small paper to slightly bigger paper to mid-size daily to a big metro. It was a process. It had potential structure and pace.
Now, graduating into this field is like blasting into hyper space. The destination’s uncertain, and the road is a blur.
The raft of questions I fielded last week brought me back to a letter I received some years ago.
Dear Joe,
We met a few years back, I was, I guess, a runt high school kid with a camera. now, I guess I’m a lost science major, have no idea what I want to do with myself, and everyone just tells me to do what I like. I can’t justify transferring to what I regard as the large year round summer camp of arts school, but have no idea what to do with myself, now or in ten years. I know this is a little weird getting an email from someone who you might not even remember meeting years ago who, at 19 is going through a midlife crisis, but I appreciate any thoughts anyone might have other than the “follow your dreams” which doesn’t fit with my New York cynicism. I guess I was wondering, as I was told to wonder, and ask everyone I know (or “kinda sorta” know) who does something interesting for a living, how they wound up doing what they were doing? Anyway, it’s a heavy question with a ton of run on sentences.
Would really appreciate any input you may have on the matter……thanks….
Hey….
Of course I remember you. I am sorry for not getting back sooner, but this last two months have vanished with road work, and I did not want to just dash you off something superficial. Follow your dreams is not a bad thing to do, but I am well aware of the practical limitations of such a plan. The world gets more and more restrictive in terms of a free wheeling approach to life, and despite all the press given to those who strike it rich and play their own tune doing it, there are the much more prevalent stories of most of the rest of us who grapple day to day with exactly the same issues you are facing. A science major in the Ivy League is a pretty strenuous thing to do, I imagine. Art school would be a different atmosphere altogether. I don’t know what might be possible in terms of combining them, or finishing a degree (very important!) and then trying your hand at some art education.
The fact that you put your camera to your eye instead of running on 9/11 indicates something restless and perhaps unusual in your makeup, and as someone familiar with being regarded as unusual, I can tell you it is definitely a two edged sword. The things you struggle with now you will struggle with your entire life. It is the essence of a creative soul, really, without being pompous and overblown about it.
Being lost isn’t the worst thing in the world, either, especially at 19. I hadn’t even discovered photography at 19, but nothing in particular concerned me about my aimlessness. Probably a lack of depth on my part, no doubt, but then it did leave me with room to move and the ability to imagine myself in different contexts. I do know that when I finally engaged in photography, it was like a black hole, an irresistible force that pulled me, my time, my energy and, without exaggeration, my every waking (and sleeping) moment. I had never known such a resonant thing.
I do know I went abroad, and became the lab manager for the Syracuse London photo program and took 9 graduate credits. I left my lab duties in the hands of a fellow student (and my princely weekly pay check of 5 English pounds) and went to the east most tip of England, a place called Lowestoft. There I talked my way onto a fishing trawler (November in the North Sea, lovely indeed) and went off to to do a 2 week jaunt, with hope of making a photo essay along the lines of what I had seen my heroes like Gene Smith do. I remember the smell of tea late at night, and lurching through 40′ waves sitting in the wheelhouse, and the utter blackness of sea around, and thinking, yes, this and the like is what I am cut out to do.
I’ve been fortunate in that I have been able to act on and make a living out of some largely irresponsible urges. I have had a bit of a comic book of a life, I am still drawing the panels. I sense something like a change of scenery may be a good thing for you, if you can afford the time and effort to launch yourself in a different direction and in a different environment.
Don’t know if your science professors possess the capacity to excite and inspire, but I was blessed with a very good and inspirational photo professor who helped me at least realize something larger was always possible. Have you thought of chucking it for a while and going abroad, and trying your hand at some art education? Or trying your hand at anything that comes along? Or trying your hand at essentially nothing? I’m not suggesting something totally out of bounds or dangerous, but the search for something that propels you, draws you, and simply becomes that which you cannot help but do is in itself a worthwhile endeavor. And if and when the discovery of said treasure occur– eureka! I still love photography, and enjoy the simple act of being a photographer more now than when I first picked up my dad’s camera.
One thing my dad did tell me, and it has echoed in my ears for a long time. He was the quintessential corporate man, a salesman, and in his later years, he became disgusted with the ways of his world, and told me on numerous occasions, “hang out your own shingle.” Which is what I have done, and been happy to have done. The jalopy called McNally Photography has transmission trouble, a couple of flat tires, and not all the cylinders fire, but it still moves, and I drive it where I want to go. There is a great deal of value and satisfaction in that, as I look back. I’m still standing, and lots of others fell away or played it safe or never tried. The simultaneously wonderful and daunting thing is that there is so much still to do, so much ground to cover, and my best work is still out there, somewhere. I am still on safari here, the great picture hunt, as someone once called it.
I don’t know if any of this makes sense. You are just beginning to write your pages, and the thing to remember about this early rough draft is that it hardly matters what you do exactly, as long as you continue to become something close to what you might imagine you want or need to become. Being a bit slow and never prone to academic excellence and achievement, I really have had no choice over the years but to embrace Einstein’s thought. “Imagination is better than knowledge.”
Stay well. Call anytime. Joe
Yankees won. Cool. I’ve been a Yankee fan before I even knew anything about NY. We lived in Cleveland when I was a kid, and my dad would only bring me to the ballpark when those damn Yankees were playing. He brought me down to the third base seats and Casey Stengel was standing in the coaches box. My dad yelled, “Hey Case!” Stengel was standing there, thumbs hooked in his belt, and gave me a wink and a quick wave. Been a Yankee fan ever since, though, like Yogi, I did have a hard time liking anybody in pinstripes back when The Boss was in full cry.
Corny, right? But hey, it was the 50’s. In Cleveland.
Big sports stuff in NY last weekend. The Iggles handed the Giants their heads and other parts of their anatomy, and the NYC Marathon was won for the first time in a long time by somebody whose address isn’t the Rift Valley. I spent 3 weeks in this astonishingly beautiful place for the National Geographic when I was doing a story for them on the limits of the human body. (Though now that Usain Bolt is running, we should re-define those limits. That guy’s amazing.)
The sheer beauty of these athletes was breathtaking. While running, their upper bodies remained virtually motionless, while their legs, seemingly unattached and thus unburdened by the weight of a torso, would pinwheel endlessly through the countryside. Mesmerizing.
I lived at one of the camps up there for a bit, and would get up for pre-dawn workouts with literally dozens and dozens of runners. It would be so dark in this tiny Kenyan village, virtually bereft of electricity, with only the pale pre-glow sky to see by, that the runners would simply be moving, stretching ghosts, barely discernible.
I stood out there with them in the clutter of the street, watching them get ready, using broken walls and gates to push and pull against, warming their muscles in the chill, windmilling their arms amidst the standing pools of water, and the occasional gaggle of scurrying chickens. Naturally, I was out of place, being the only white guy, and the only one out there who had any body fat. So I would attempt conversation, as one does when one is the lone photog in an alien environment, desperately trying to fit in, make a bridge, seek even the remotest shred of acceptance.
They were invariably polite and congenial. I remember one conversation that went roughly like this.
“Hi, yeah, I’m shooting this story, runners are part of it. Do you run professionally? Do you compete?”
“Oh, yes, I do.”
“Great. Do you compete just in Kenya, or do you run in international events?”
“Oh, yes, I run internationally.”
“Cool. What’s your event?”
“Oh, I run the half marathon mostly.”
“Great, that’s really great. Do you do okay with that? Is it a good event for you?’
“Yes, not too bad. I set the world record for the half marathon last year in Amsterdam.”
“Oh, yeah, well that’s really good, you know, uh, great. Don’t mind me, I’m just, you know, a complete ass, you know, uh, yeah. Like, uh, you see that cow turd over there in the street? Yeah, well, that’s my cousin….”
In the shadows of this downtrodden village in Kenya, amidst the garbage, the mud and the wandering cows, there were probably about 4 or 5 world record holders at various distances. What a wonderful and surprising world.
You know, I have an amazing wife. She is so wonderfully patient, sweet and kind. She weathered the storm this week of one of those modern rituals of maintenance….the dreaded colonoscopy. Hey, it’s a good thing…..afterwards.
Of course I complained. Understandable, right? I wanted to cancel, but I got the eyebrow. The word “reschedule” was barely out of my mouth when Annie’s left eyebrow hit her hairline with the speed of a bottle rocket.
So I went and got all the stuff. Then of course, I misread the directions. Oops! According to this protocol, at certain times, I was supposed to take 2 Gas-x pills, and then 4 of the Dulcosomething or others. (Could they give these things more attractive names?)
Anyway, I got it transposed, and I took 4 Gas-x pills, which is the limit of what you are supposed to ingest in an entire 24 hour period. Seeing as I’m a bit of a dirigible anyway, Annie got very concerned. Actually, she rolled her eyes first, then got concerned.
She insisted on calling the pharmacist, even though I told her it would be okay. I didn’t make the call easier for her by inflating my cheeks and popping my eyes like a giant blowfish every time she looked over at me. She was doing the right thing of course, just being safe. It would be embarrassing to have a death certificate that read, “Overdose of Gas-x.”
I was halfway surprised the pharmacist didn’t tell her to immediately drop the phone and grab a clothesline and tie it to my ankle, lest I bumble out the porch door like an out of control Macy’s Thanksgiving Day float. If I had, she woulda needed to call the police, and before you know it, they would’ve been diverting valuable resources like choppers and stuff to search for me.
“Chopper One, I got him. He just cleared the power lines up here on I-84. He’s gaining altitude. And I think he’s gotten a little bigger. There’s some wind up here (ouch!) and he may be headed for the approach patterns at LaGuardia. Request instructions.”
Oh well, I made it through. Got wheeled into the exam room, half blotto, and evidently the crew had been informed of my pressurized mistake, cause they were all wearing flak jackets, just in case.
More tk….
Hot Shoe Diaries was the number one reader’s pick for the arts and photography category on Amazon for 2009.
Pretty cool. I’ve gotten some wonderful feedback from folks who really enjoyed the book and I thank everyone for the kind words that have been sent my way. Very appreciative of the support, and thanks for letting Amazon know about it!
It’s been an interesting week. There was the good news about the book, and then Lynn, my studio manager for 18 years, was going back and forth with a major multi-national who had a check for us, but had the wrong address listed. It batted around the GPO in NYC for a bit, and was returned, so thankfully, they called and got it all adjusted properly and re-sent it. (As far as Lynn’s longevity with me is concerned, rest assured I am extremely appreciative. I just called Rome, and tried to put her name on the list for beatification as a saint. They asked, well, has she performed any miracles? I said, “Are you kidding me? We’re still in business!” The line went dead. Maybe I shoulda emailed?)
We anxiously awaited the check. This could be it! What a great week! First the Amazon rating, and now, a check! The one that puts us over the top! No more worries! Livin’ large. Next trip to LA, book me the Walter Iooss memorial suite at Shutters on the Beach!
It showed up, and frankly, it was disappointing.
Eighty two cents? Jeez. Undaunted, I went into a convenience store and walked up to the very nice lady at the counter and asked if there was anything in the store I could buy for .82 cents.
She looked at me hard, and didn’t even have to say, “Are ya stupid, or just plain crazy?”
I assured her I was not, and that I knew it was a little weird, but my budget limit was eighty two cents.
She tried to be helpful, but was having a hard time thinking of stuff. I suggested a box of Tic Tacs but no way. Tic Tacs are like, around $1.55 most places, except Kennedy Airport, where they are $17.26. The little boxes generally have 36 individual tic tacs, which makes them about 4.3 cents per, so I could have converted my check into 19 of those minty little guys, but they don’t sell them individually.
Newspaper? Not even close. Refrigerator magnet? I got the look again. I got outta the store, lest I discovered hassling the clerk early in the morning might lead me to discover eighty two cents could possibly purchase a big noise and a used shotgun shell.
But hey, things are okay. I just got notification from Delta that I’m in the million miler club. Million miles, just on Delta. Sheesh. Evidence, perhaps, of a life gone wrong? Dunno. But it worked out this morning. On a non-refundable coach class ticket, I got an upgrade to first! Way cool. I was thinking on it, you know, anticipating the delights of the first class cabin. Eggs Benedict? A Mimosa? Pigs in a blanket? A foot rub? An exclusive first ever in the air viewing of “This Is It”?
Not quite.
Breakfast. Oh, well. More tk….
In New York City leading a National Geographic Expeditions Workshop. Doing alright so far. Haven’t lost anybody yet. Nice group of folks. Hope they’re not disappointed that I’m not, you know, Nick Nichols, or somebody like that who’s got a lot of great Indiana Jones type photo stories. “I stood there in front of the enraged water buffalo, with the only thing between me and his massive horns was my Nikon DS4000XL Red Sonja series camera with the 12 to 3000mm over under combo zoom with the bore sighted grenade launcher. I had one round left…” I make up stuff like that, but nobody in the class believes me.
I think it’s going okay, even though I was pretty mean the other day and told everybody they had to go into a shop in Chinatown and get a portrait of an owner. Lots of ‘em got yelled at. Heh, heh, heh. Welcome to the intensely human experience of being a photog and trying to work it out ad hoc. Sometimes, you win, sometimes you lose, and sometimes you get yelled at, or worse.
Shot the above in two pics and then dropped ‘em into PhotoShop. Oh, yeah. Am I smokin’ on post or what? You see, the DLWS gang–Moose Peterson, Laurie Excell and Kevin Dobler–think I’m not listening when they’re up there teaching. That may be because of the guttural, snoring noises I make from the back of the room and the large drool stain on my t-shirt that inevitably results whenever the room goes dark. But I do absorb certain things. It’s kinda osmotic. You can’t hang with Scott Kelby and Moose and Matt Klowskowski and all and not pick a few things up.
I mean, I joking here. This is embarrassingly basic. I dropped these two guys into photomerge and sat there at the computer, staring at it like it was a slot machine. I did use the string of pix to talk to the class about exposure though.
Shot both frames ISO 200, hand held, aperture priority. But, I had to change up my EV compensation in between shots, because the brighter, sunset section of sky would push my shutter speed higher and I would lose the glow of the city. It’s a small thing, but significant for the file. The matrix meter reacts to the brightness of the sky, and if I let the camera fly on it’s own, the city for that portion of the pano would have been a touch darker. So in between frames I adjusted EV, and ended up actually with the same shutter speed across the two pix, which makes sense, cause the city at that point is a constant source of light, requiring the same exposure. It’s the sky that is constantly changing, if only slightly.
Here’s a screen shot of both in Aperture….
Feeling stupidly giddy about this, cause I don’t do this type of thing very often. Running the pano below, cause the horizontal constraints of the blog make for not really being able to see long, skinny pictures. Pushed both pix as jpegs into PS, and did a couple basic curves to brighten certain areas, and then used the Nik darken/lighten center move. Like that option, cause it harks back for me to newspaper work in the 70’s. There was a National Press Photographer’s Association “style” back then that really pushed us to burn the heck out of the corners of the print, and of course ferrocyanide (bleach) the eyes to bring them out.
Back down on the street, it was business as usual. Shoot and move, shoot and move. Visited the Apple store on 5th, and shot a pretty typical up looking view of the spiral staircase there.
Liked the graphics of it, until of course an Apple employee stepped up and told me I couldn’t shoot up at the stairs cause somebody might be wearing a skirt. Now in Manhattan the array of people who could be potentially wearing a skirt is widely varied, so I could understand their concern. But really–all you see are the bottoms of shoes. Do I look that desperate? The guy who complained to me musta had the nuns.
So, cause I was acting like a pervert in the Apple store, I had to go to St. Pat’s. I like St. Pat’s. Lit candles in there for the birth of both my children. They’ve got little sanctuaries, alcoves, devotional areas–I don’t know what you call them–all around the sides of the church, and three of them are devoted to saints I am fond of. I’m a pretty irreverent sort, but I do have favorites. On the left is St. Jude, patron saint of lost causes. I embrace him for obvious reasons. Then there’s St. Michael the Archangel. I took Michael as a middle name cause I thought he was cool. He was like the Chuck Norris of angels, cause he kicked butt and took names. And then there’s St. Anthony, who looks after you when you lose stuff. (Very important guy for me to know.)
And for the first time ever, I saw the guy who takes care of the candles. Never think about it, right? But there has to be somebody who does it. Very nice man.
More tk….
As I always say, what could go wrong? 5 hours of live lighting in front of 950 people. Thankfully they were very gracious, easy going people, who were an enormous source of support and good will all day long. Very cool.
Day started with Drew, Will and I on the loading docks at 6am getting a boatload of gear up into the Wash. DC Convention Center. Ah, the glamorous life of a shooter. At that point, it’s just a matter of racing the clock to get ready for the doors opening at 9. Both Drew and Will worked incredibly hard, going full blast with only 3 hours sleep.
We started simple. Basic TTL strategies, using umbrellas, Tri-grip reflectors, diffusers, you name it. The guys are very tolerant of me, cause, while there is a general plan or outline to the day, I often riff a bit here and there, and try stuff just for the heck of it. We were blessed with two terrific, talented people in front of the lens, Jen and Tory, who worked with us. Tory didn’t even hold it against me that I called him Corey a good deal of the day.
Simple umbrella and a fill board for Jen.
Then a single Tri-grip diffuser for Tory.
Which became two Tri-grips, with Drew and Will hand holding both, along with the flashes.
Tory has one of those faces that really work well with all manner of light, and most folks reacted well to the idea of doing moody, simple light, TTL, really quickly. The two pics above took about 3 or 4 minutes to do, even with me burbling incoherently into the microphone.
Then Tory went the exec route.
This was an interesting set, in that I got myself into the woods using 4 flashes, all of which needed different power settings, but only had 3 groups to put them in to set those power ratings. Something hadda give. Luckily, I was able to play with positioning of the lights, and eliminate the 4th flash when the low flash directly in front of Tory put enough catch light in his eyes. It was a good place to be, though, cause it was good information for everybody in the room. We were on the doorstep of either making TTL work, or sending the flashes a message to all go manual, then ratio one of them down, power wise, with the time honored method of neutral density gels, or just forgetting about wireless hoo hah and going with a radio/manual power solution. Everything we tried was valid, and it was fun for the audience to kind of participate and work this out.
Then Tory got into athletic duds, and we tried another iteration of rim light with gels, and a Honl grid light for the face. Never really finished this photo, but it was going in a good direction. Will is just off camera to the right, hand holding the gridded speedlight.
For the last hour, we bring out the Rangers, just to show how strategies might vary between big lights and small lights. Went with an overhead beauty dish for Jen, with a small softbox underneath of her, for a pretty straightfoward beauty light look. Popped an SB900 into her hair for good measure, again taking a look at ways to mix different types of flashes. Will employed the wind machine, aka the eyeball dryer. I couldn’t resist dropping in a little glamour glow on this in post. The post stuff is really seductive, I tell ya, even for a goober like me who doesn’t know how to use it. I mean, I’m capable in a meager way of doing basic darkroom stuff, but I look at PhotoShop and filters and stuff like I’m a twelve year old holding a rocket launcher. “Wonder what this button does? Holy shit! I just blew a hole through my photograph!” Personal opinion? There are some filters and sliders and moves out there now that should be labeled, “Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here.”
Then at the very end, we put a Ranger Elinchrom with a long throw reflector at the back of the auditorium, along with an SB900. Just threw light at the stage. Any guesses which this one is?
Then of course, at the end, we asked for some audience participation to be Jen’s entourage/bodyguards. Da guys were a hoot.
Lotta fun. Hectic day. Each setup transpires in minutes, and we go non-stop. Many thanks to everybody in the audience, Will, Drew, Jen, Tory, and the Kelby gang, who really know how to pull this stuff together. More tk….
