What is a camera obscura? I did not find out till too long ago myself. If you do not know, just go Google it if you want more answer than this: if you black out a room and allow light in through a small hole, you will have a live, color, (upside down and backwards,) movie of life outside displayed inside your room. It is like a giant eyeball or like you are inside your camera.
This week, due to changes in the fire code, I have had to remove the wooden staircase from my coffee house and replace it with something non-flammable in order to obtain my fire permit. So, I have had several visits to this little metal-working store front to order a metal staircase to be made, though “store” is a little misleading. This place is more like a man-made cave connected to the street.
Travel Photographer Rick Sammon wrote why he thinks we are so drawn to sunsets and sunrises. His meaning is our draw as humans, but being a photographer, he especially means why we are drawn visually as photographers. He proposes, with affirmation from a RIT professor of fine art, we experience an exhilaration from millions of years ago, passed down through nature to us, meaning the exhilaration of the hunt (which would be at sunrise or sunset, just ask the hunters among us) naturally draws us to the sunrise and sunset time of day.
Fascinating. I will have to respectfully disagree. Not that I am the authority, but it seems to me the reason is staring us in the face. It may sound overly simplified, but do we not like sunsets and sunrises because they are beautiful?
I have finally moved back to Lilliput, as my Dad would say (well, I guess as Jonathan Swift would say). My family and I made it back to the little county of Sanjiang, tucked at the juncture of China’s Guangxi, Guizhou, and Hunan Provinces. It is not much, but having been mobile for two years (we left just before the birth of our oldest), it is nice to settle back in.
Some kind of photographic lightbulb has clicked on in my head; somehow this place just feels right. So much of my experience in China has been in the countryside in these parts, and my archive reflects that. For the past two years, I have been shooting big cities, different countries, portraits for friends, and just about everything but that main interest.
The other day, a friend of mine was showing the photos from his daughter’s wedding. Initially, I was only in the same room and enjoying some conversation with someone else, but then I started to realize how incredible the photos really were. I asked who had taken them, because the wedding was out here in Asia and (believe me) a little out of the way to find a nice wedding photographer. Unknowingly, I had asked the photographer, herself.
Assuming, from the quality of the photos, she was an experienced photographer, I actually asked how she used her flash to balance the light so beautifully. After a brief exchange, which I still have a hard time processing, I found out she had used a regular, old point-and-shoot camera! How could it be?
There are photos that capture a moment. Some of those capture very important moments. And some of those become icons of history. This photo is taken moments before one of the most famous and recognized photographs of the 20th century.
I heard a snippet of this quote yesterday from photographer Duane Michals, and liked it so much, I found it online and will share it here.
“The best part of us is not what we see, it’s what we feel. We are what we see, we are not what we look at. We are not our eyeballs, we’re our mind. People believe their eyeballs, and they’re totally wrong. … That’s why I consider most photographs extremely boring–just like Muzak: inoffensive, charming, another waterfall, another sunset. This time, colors have been added to protect the innocent. It’s just boring. But that whole arena of one’s experience–grief, loneliness–how do you photograph lust? I mean, how do you deal with these things? This is what you are, not what you see. It’s all sitting up here. I could do all my work sitting in my room. I don’t have to go anywhere.”
It is called the Cactus. Why so, I have no idea. They are about $40 for a pair, and once you have them, you attach a radio transmitter to your flash hot shoe and the receiving to your flash. Place the flash anywhere you want and you have wireless radio flash triggering.
Of course, you could just buy the unnamed, expensive radio triggers, and they really are worth the $400 or so if you need super reliability and other kinda groovy features, but those kind of folks will not read this anyway! I had given up on my pair of Cactus triggers. I had debated giving them away and just sticking with optical triggering (using the light of a flash to set off another flash wirelessly), but everything changed the past couple days. Here is what happened.
After the past three or four days, I feel like I did sitting in the school principal’s office, waiting for the imminent whipping. It is in those times that you would do anything to avoid what is coming, and it is not so much the physical beating as much as it is the emotional tension of having to look your bad decision in the face.
My current humbling experience all started a few days ago with a wonderful meal and talk with a photographer friend of mine. It was not him, but just watching some of the videos he has produced recently really reminded me what a two-bit punk hack I am. It was not the technique, but how he captured the power of the story.
Then today, I shot a very “ok” family portrait session. That is “ok”, as in, I do not want to say more of what I really think. The harsh sunlight made things tough, not only for lighting, but for the quickly wilting subjects. Excuses aside, though, I really want to know what happened. How do I improve? What can I learn here?