National Geographic Photographer Ed Kashi Shares His Experience of 30 Years in Global Photography

 
Photographer Ed Kashi
Image Source:
http://events.nationalgeographic.com/events/speakers/2012/04/17/changing-face-marseille/
 
On Tuesday, April 17, I once again took advantage of living reasonably close to the National Geographic headquarters in Washington, DC, and attended a talk by photographer Ed Kashi. The topic of the talk was his recent Nat Geo project, on the life of Muslims in Marseille, France. Ed also shared a lot of insight from his years of experience on long-term assignments overseas and away from his family.
 
 
(Click Here) to go to the National Geographic Live description of the event.
 
 
Marseille is the oldest city in France. Approximately 20% of the one million inhabitants are Muslim. The government there is very secular, which may be part of the reason that the city integrates so many cultures so effectively. Other cultures with major populations in Marseille include Jewish, Tunisian, and Roma.
 
 
Ed shared the difficulties he encountered on this assignment, even though he's used to working in less-developed places, like North Africa. In Marseille, his first "handler," which is a local contact to help you work in a foreign place, was a nightmare. Ed said that your handler basically has to be a magician - someone who's comfortable escorting you to the Prime Minister's residence, or getting you into the poorest person's home. After an altercation with his first handler, Ed found a perfect substitute, and the project took root.
 
 
Ed now regularly makes a multimedia piece to accompany his still photography projects. At this talk, he showed two - Eye Contact and Photojournalisms.
 
 
Eye Contact is a collection of images that were edited out, throughout his career, because someone in the frame was looking at the camera. While his normal style is to achieve scenes where he is basically "invisible," those with eye contact made for a very interesting set of images.
 
 
Photojournalisms is a more personal piece, and is based on journal entries that Ed writes to his wife and family while he is away for his work. It is a very heartfelt documentary, and shows the tradeoffs that a traveling photographer makes in pursuit of his or her work.
 
 
(Click Here) to go to Ed's website.
 
 
I thoroughly enjoyed Ed's work and commentary. He spent a lot of time answering questions from the crowd, and didn't shy away from any subject.
 
 
I must say, after attending two of these events, that National Geographic photographers really do concede a lot of their personal lives for their work. Ed was clearly sad about the amount of his children's childhood he missed on assignment. Ed now only takes on shorter trips, and is very focused on his family.
 
 
In the first event I attended, by Jodi Cobb, she related some level of regret for the sacrifices she made in her personal life, as well.
 
 
(Click Here) to see my review of the Jodi Cobb event.
 
 
It is great to have the opportunity to listen to the world's best photographers on a regular weekday evening. It takes me about an hour to get into the city, but the trip is always worth it.
 
 
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On Culling Your Images - by Guest Contributor Lara White on digitall-photography-school.com

 

 

Image Source:
http://digital-photography-school.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/dessert-table-closeup.jpg
 
Guest Contributor Lara White wrote a nice piece on digital-photography-school.com about the merits of not only editing and evaluating your images, but actually selecting the best and deleting the rest.


(Click Here) to read the original article on digital-photography-school.com


Lara suggests that we should "be ruthless" in deciding which images to keep, and which to throw away. She makes several points regarding why this is a good practice, including that making decisions makes us learn what's right and wrong with each image, that it allows our truly great shots to stand out without being surrounded by average ones, and that over time it teaches us which perspectives and compositions work.


I found Lara's examples - a ho-hum shot of a dessert table, and a smashing closeup of a single dessert (image above) useful. I think it reinforces the idea that simple is better, and reminds me of one of my own faults - trying to tell the whole story in one picture. Sometimes that's just not effective, or even possible.


There is one other benefit to ruthlessly deleting everything but our best work, and that is storage space (and associated access time). Not only do hard drives fill up fast, it takes a finite amount of effort to find those best shots again, when they're surrounded by marginal ones in the directory. Yes, Lightroom's flags and selection tools make this easier, but it can never be easier than not having the clutter there in the first place.


The only downside I can see is that we may inadvertently delete images that will become important to us later. I think that's pretty rare.


Something good to consider when thinking about your workflow.


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Tyson Robichaud Writes About Creativity and Inspiration

 

Image Source: http://tysonrobichaudphotography.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/

avoid-the-void/#comment-1495

(Click Here) to read a recent entry on Tyson Robichaud's blog, regarding how to get out of creative ruts. I find his thoughts interesting. His approach is to grab a subject, anything interesting enough to spend some time with, and explore variations on perspective, lighting, etc.

I have a couple of other techniques I use. One is to go to a new place, without any real idea what I'm going to shoot there. This can be very hit-or-miss. In fact, you may come home more frustrated than when you left.

Another approach for me is to grab a camera, lens, or system that I haven't used in a long time. My recent post of some Rolleiflex images was a result of exactly that exercise.

Finally, I have written about the book Contemplative Photography, Seeing the World with Fresh Eyes, by Karr and Wood. I find their series of exercises very refreshing.

(Click Here) to see my post about the book and methods. By the way, I don't know the authors, or have any other connection with the book (other than I'll get a little support if you happen to order it through Amazon's link below).

Anyone else have useful ideas for breaking the creative logjam? Comments appreciated!

DMC-365.blogspot.com

 

 

 

 

Digital Photography Now Reports Panasonic's Efforts to Make Wireless Connections for Lumix Cameras

Image Source: http://dpnow.com/8569.html

Digital Photography Now has published a report on Panasonic's plan to provide simple wireless connection between Lumix cameras and Viera televisions, and to cloud-based storage.

(Click Here) to see the whole report on Digital Photography Now.

Personally, I would love to have real-time automatic wireless upload of my images to the web, cloud, and my PC. Connecting to the TV means a lot less to me. If real-time is not feasible, I would be happy with automatic batch uploading of my files while my camera sits in the bag, after I get home from a shoot. But, and please listen Panasonic, I want to be able to turn it off quicky, so that my device won't be "busy" if I wantto shoot an image real quickly.

The other thing that worries me a little is that it appears that Panasonic will make their cell phone (which I don't think is available in the USA at this time) a critical piece in the wireless system. That would be a serious drawback here in the USA, even if the phones were available. It would also be market-size-limiting, given the extremely strong cell phone competition here (do you really want to depend on Americans giving up their iPhones?), and our desire to mix and match suppliers at will.

All that said, I am up for improved connectivity!

DMC-365.blogspot.com

 

 

Author John Quarstein Presents on Civil War Battle of the Ironclads - USS Monitor vs. CSS Virginia

Author and Historian John V. Quarstein, by Reed A. George

Panasonic DMC-G3, Pana-Leica 25mm f1.4 Summilux

iso400, f2.5, 1/40 sec

by the way, the eyepatch is temporary...

As you may know, I have an interest in the US Civil War, and have undertaken a project to photograph my interpretations of the 150th anniversary. In that pursuit, I decided to attend my first "Loudoun County Civil War Roundtable" meeting on March 13, 2012, at the Thomas Balch Library in Leesburg, Virginia.

Our speaker was John V. Quarstein, who talked about the battle of the ironclad ships, the USS Monitor and CSS Virginia (formerly known as the Merrimack), in Hampton Roads, Virginia, in early March of 1862.

This guy knows his stuff. Presenting completely from memory, remembering every important character and their personal history, every gun type involved, and plenty of fun side notes, John speaks with extreme energy and emphasis. He effectively engages a room, even when talking about history on a Tuesday night.

There is way too much information to me to even give a modest account of it here. However, there were some interesting themes and notes. Most importantly, this period in maritime warfare saw the transition from sails to steam power, first with the paddlewheel, which was too easy to disable with cannon fire, then the screw propeller, which allowed all of the powertrain to be kept underwater. It also saw the change from smooth bore cannon to "shell guns," firing explosive shells that wreaked havoc on wooden boats like nothing before.

The CSS Virginia, on which John has written a book, started out as the Merrimack. After being burned and sunk at Norfolk (then called "Gosport Navy Yard"), it was resurrected, outfitted with 790 tons of iron shieldeing and all new guns, and a ram. The ram was used to sink the Union ship "Cumberland." The Virginia sunk multiple wooden ships in its first day of battle, operating under a flag that read "Sink Before Surrender." And sink it almost did. But, it was magnificently successful against the wooden fleet. After that first day, the Flag of Congress from one of its targets was hand-delivered to Confederate President Jefferson Davis.

The Monitor, the Union's own 171 foot ironclad, engaged the Virginia in heated battle for several hours the following day. Both ships were seriously damaged, and both claimed victory at the end of the day. While both sides suffered damage, the Virginia continued in its service, protecting both Norfolk and Richmond from attack by water by patrolling and controlling the mouth of the James River, and seriously slowing Union Major General McClellan's "Peninsula Campaign."

Well, I'm sold. I bought the book, got it signed, and joined the roundtable. I am certain this group will provide useful information and engaging talks to keep me going on my Civil War Sesquicentenial project.

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Click below to buy John's book on Amazon (and support this blog, all in one fell swoop):

 

 

Adobe Releases Photoshop Touch For The iPad

Adobe Releases Photoshop Touch for the iPad!

Image Source: http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop-touch.html

I love the way my photographs look on the backlit screen of my iPad 2. Now that I have the ability to transfer images using the iPad Camera Connect Kit, there are only two things missing: 1) sufficient storage to treat the iPad as my backup device, and 2) software to edit images on the go.

Click below for a link to the Apple iPad Camera Connect Kit:

Now, Adobe has announced an iPad app called Photoshop Touch, potentially solving one of my two issues. The app reportedly provides a lot of Photoshop-like functionality, and interfaces with the touchscreen interface well.

 

(Click Here) for the Adobe page about the new app.

 

It is available on the App Store for $9.99. I will be downloading this in the next day or so, and will report on how it works for me.

 

Further Note - after reading a little further, I'm not so sure this is going to help me all that much. The adobe site says that image size is limited to 1600 pixels on a side. That's only 2.5 Megapixels, folks! Really? I'm sure that's enough to look good on the iPad screen, but means that the resulting files won't be big enough for other uses. Well, I may still give it a try...

 

DMC-365.blogspot.com

 

 

My Presentation on Contemplative Photography

On Monday, February 20, I gave a presentation to the Reston Photographic Society (RPS) in Reston, Virginia, about an interesting photography book and process. The book is entitled Contemplative Photography, Seeing the World With Fresh Eyes, by Andy Karr and Michael Wood.

Click below to see the book on Amazon:

Texture, By Reed A. George

Panasonic Lumix DMC-G1, Pana-Leica 45mm Macro-Elmarit f2.8

iso400, f2.8, 1/13 sec

 

The contemplative photography approach is very different than conventional photography. Instead of focusing on subject matter, contemplative photography emphasizes the process. Instead of trying to make pretty or otherwise pleasing pictures, it aims to allow the photographer to share their vision and feelings at the time the image is captured. The book breaks the image making process into three steps:

 

1) "Flash of Perception"

2) "Visual Discernment"

3) "Forming the Equivalent"

 

There are several challenging exercises in the book. I worked through all of them, and assembled some of my results into my presentation for the group.

 

(Click Here) to link to my presentation (in pdf format).

 

I found the book to be very interesting, and the exercises to be both unconventional and difficult. However, I do feel that the process helped me to further develop as a photographer. I also now use some of the exercises to help get me into the picture taking groove when I go to a new location.

 

Give the book a try. You may just find some new ways to look at your photography.

 

DMC-365.blogspot.com