September 2:
Back to "Civilization"
Luck struck again.
I avoided an expensive 13-hour bus ride back to Boulder when an old
friend of Senor Brett showed up in town for the night; he and his lady
were on their way to Denver. I decided to catch a ride and save
myself a dozen Greyhound bathroom breaks.
I took
photos of the couple's dogs as a present.
As we left Glorious Farmington,
I began to think what people in small towns were missing. During
a roadside rest stop in a remote highway, a man in a F350 truck stopped
to help and answered my question.
As he drove away, he raised
his arms and said, "This is my home, I wouldn't trade it for anything."
Looking back at the serenity of those mountains I see them country folk
have so much more than us city slickers.
September 4: Another Day in the Life of Boulder
I couldn't wait to participate
in "A Day In the Life of Boulder" again. It seems that
every year the Boulder Weekly hosts this event, I end up with
a portfolio shot.
Unfortunately several errands
led to a late 3 p.m. kickoff and a cold sweat as I tried to catch up
with other photographers who had a seven-hour advantage.
I decided to concentrate
on Eben G. Fine Park because it offered a change from the predominately
college-type Boulder crowd. Its small walls hold all sorts:
Hispanics, Vietnamese, African Americans, Arabs, hippies, alcoholics,
wing nuts, jugglers, kids,
I wanted a different shot of people inner tubing down the creek.
I found this shot after scaling a particularly long branch that was
WAAAYYY above the creek. I'm glad I caught myself from falling:
the water conceals the large rock slabs waiting to complicate the medical
history of the careless photographer. I shot this in color but
prefer the black and white version.
As I was leaving, I spotted
three guys and a women hanging around a Jeep drinking cheap beer.
I approached them as I was headed to my car.
"Do you want to take a picture
of her?" a big guy with tattoos asks me.
Before I could react, she
ripped off her robe(a la Demi Moore in Striptease) to reveal a thong
bikini. She brought the goods right to my doorstep and started
to do a little dance. I felt guilty not having a couple of dollar
bills or at the very least, an IOU I could stuff in her panties.
This "loan officer"(as
she claimed) had the dance down pat, although this dream-come-true made
me a little sick.
I hung around and got some
really crazy shots that showed the strangest of Eben G. Fine's clientele.
I've reserved the most racy Page-Three-Type shots for my PRIVATE archives,
but a SASE and a $10 check might convince me to "spread the wealth."
It was time to leave and
find a place to wash my mouth out. I wandered down to the Pearl
St. Mall right before sunset. I wish I had used chrome because
negative film just doesn't capture what I saw that evening.
This
beautiful, beautiful woman was, unfortunately, waiting for her husband.
Strangers
share a burrito outside the convenience store after the bars closed.
A woman
takes five as she waits for her friend to get off the phone.
I now approach assignments with an attitude
that what I am capturing is historical and that, goshdarnit, I'm going
try to get the best photo that represents what happened on this day
in the life of Boulder.
September 11: Diversifying My Portfolio
1998 was a year when my
portfolio didn't really get any bigger. No matter what I did,
no matter how much I shot, it seemed my stuff was getting, ahem, stale.
I was getting more frustrated
not being able to see in a fresh way, until sports turned me from a
tired photographer to one reinvested in my future.
I always thought I could
never shoot sports, but after browsing through "I'm OK, You're
OK" I decided "I couldn't do XXXX well, until today."
would be a better mantra.
Sports has really rounded me out as
a photojournalist. Just as playing a piano requires full development
of each finger, so does mastering the individual skills that round out
a photojournalist(sports, spot news, portraits, features, photo stories
etc.). It's now easier for me to react to moments that occur faster
than the eye can see but slow enough for experience to capture.
I found out improvement
is the key to life and the only way to improve is to master things you
haven't done before. Stock market types call this "Diversifying
your portfolio." Editors use the word "versatile."
So I decided to shoot every
frigging game I could get my hands on, even though I was armed with
a 70-200/2.8 and a teleconverter. I didn't care how if the action
was too far away for my lens combo, as long as I could see whether I
got the peak action on a small speck of the negative.
I've learned several things
from shooting bartball:
- Don't stand near
the linemen. I have half a portfolio shot sitting in the circular
file because the rest is filled with the outline of a linesman.
- I learned how to follow
the ball during a pass by practicing on kids playing Frisbee in the
park.
- My high school softball
coach gave me a useful pointer which is easier said than done:
watch the ball. I found out the best way to do this was to put
down the camera and watch the action develop. By really watching,
I am now able to better see the moment without having to rely on the
motordrive to capture the action.
If I ever teach a Photojournalism
course, I will force my students to shoot sports to improve their timing,
their composition and their reaction to fleeting moments.
A Photojournalism I student
frustrated with her first sports assignment said she wanted the "immediate
satisfaction" of a portfolio shot. I told her to be patient;
it's all a process of development and that she should relax, keep shooting
and stop trying to have a baby in two months.
September 12: The Lord(of sports) is my shepherd....
Hallelujah for sports stadium
strobes and Thank Barney for Cliff Grassmick, one of the best sports
shooters I know.
Cliff has been shooting
sports since Starsky and Hutch nylon T-shirts were popular and his impeccable
timing and quick eye make it hard to resist 4 a.m. trips to the newspaper
stand after a sporting event.
Cliff has the timing of
kills, spikes and blocks down to a tee when it comes to volleyball so
I decided to use his strobes as a makeshift metronome to get my timing
up to spec.
I spent the evening trying
to synchronize my timing; the ultimate goal being to not see Mr. 400/2.8's
lights go off during the mirror blackout phase.
Careful analysis revealed
I was shooting too early. Thanks Cliffy, you got a purty eye.
The
man and his tool.
September 16: Rotting Away
Turned 25.
September 18: The Light at the end of the Carpal Tunnel
I woke up this morning and
my wrists hurt like hell. A friend diagnosed the symptoms as early
signs of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome caused by bad ergonomics and overuse
of the keyboard(thanks to YITL). Shooting a bartball game on a
300/2.8 without a monopod didn't help either.
I will now have to take
a few weeks off and use my analog diary.
September 21: The "Seven Year Itch"
I have new confidence that
I can be successful like many of my idols in photography. I've
passed the photographic equivalent of the "Seven Year Itch"
a point where you either stray or stay.
I now know that by chiseling
away at my craft I can one day feel the adrenaline when the starting
gun goes off at the 2008 Olympics 100 meter race and I compete against
a hundred others to get the shot. I have struck the '98 motto
"I wish" from my vocabulary and replaced it with the '99 model
"I will."
I look forward to being
a photographer in the same league as the Associated Press' Eric Draper
who has the knack to get "the shot" at major events.
I saw him on TV photographing the Chinese takeover of Hong Kong in 1997.
He's shot the World Cup, Mark McGwire's 62nd, the Winter Olympics, the
Pope in Cuba, the World Series.
I checked out Elliot Erwitt,
whose collection of photos shows an incredible eye that sees humorous
juxtapositions in ordinary life. He truly embodied the phrase
"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
I now see in a more complex
way and consider shots I may have shunned before. I am not afraid
to experiment with different styles, like my heroes Miles Davis and
Picas. I have emptied my mind, as Bruce Lee advised, and hope
my style will soon be "formless, shapeless...like water."
September 23: The Washington Post
I saw the incredible POY-winning
photos of the Washington Post photographers on their website.
Michael Williamson and Carol Guzy show how they can make something out
of even the most forgettable assignments.
September 25: A Set of Dead Batteries Saved The Day
I was halfway through a
night high school bartball game when the lithiums in my flash started
to die. I was getting a flash recycle time of about three seconds
after a four-shot burst and was ready to switch to a virgin set of batteries
when something struck me: I was shooting too much. I wasn't
waiting for the moment. Like a reporter who tries to jot down
everything a subject says instead of waiting for the juicy quote.
I decided to shoot in one
to two frame bursts, an M.O. that's preparing me for the day when I
use overhead strobes.
September 26: Digital Storytelling Moment
The AP's Ed Andrieski was
one of the first people who dipped into the digital pool. I remember
the first time he arrived at basketball game armed with an N90s on steroids.
Ed's experience on a couple of thousand "digital rolls" allows
him to turn ASA 1600 shots from sows to silk purses with his own brand
of digital magic.
It was interesting to see
what a digital shooter thought of film.
I was at a University of
Colorado night bartball game when I spotted a roll of 400 ASA film someone
had carelessly dropped on the Astro-Turf(TM). As I contemplated
adding this fine roll to my collection, Ed walked by and spotted the
solitary roll. He looked/sneered at it for a second, and with
a swift, determined kick, sent the poor roll flying to the gutter.
I hope one day, digital
gets to the point where I too can kick my last box of Super HG II 1600
:) into the same gutter.
