Blog | LomiMonk Photography

May

2012

It’s not for me to know…

“It’s not for me to know; it’s for me to find out (discover).” This thought is what came to me as I browsed through some William Albert Allard images on the National Geographic site online. Allard, a 50 year contributor to the Geographic, is known for his incredible use of color as a compositional tool as well as his intimate stories in light other photographers wouldn’t choose to use.

What struck me as I looked at his images is how close he gets to his subjects. I’m not talking about positional distance, although he does that too. I mean how intimate the images become. It is as if he captures that essence of a moment that shows the subjects in all their three dimensional human depth. It is as if he manages to make an image from inside the subject’s defenses, from beyond the mask.

And even more, what Allard manages to capture in these images is not only the subject, but a piece of himself. And in doing so he captures a piece of me. Repeatedly I’ve found myself looking at an image thinking, “I know that feeling!” There is a piece of me in those images, and I imagine there is a piece of Allard, and of you too. That is good photography!

So why do I share all this? Well, I try to be better and better at photographing. I’m trying to learn what makes a good image and I’m trying to learn how to do it myself. A friend of mine suggested not too subtly that I not collect my own work but rather collect the good works of others. He suggested this mostly to spur along my artistic efforts, I know. And he has succeeded. So, I’ve been perusing the works of others including Allard, Steve McCurry, Larry Towell, Martin Parr, Yousuf Karsh and others. and I keep asking myself, “how did/do they do that?”

That question is not about the technical aspect of an image; I can figure that part out. It’s about the access; it’s about the edit; it’s about the moment; it’s about the intimacy; it’s about recognizing what matters out of all the uncontrollable chaos that exists in the world swirling around us all the time. And I realize, it is not for me to know by looking at others’ work; it is for me to discover – in the world, in front of my camera, in my images. These photographers managed to capture the images they did because they went seeking that intimacy. They let themselves become known and they let themselves discover others.

They got close, really close, and found that reflection of themselves in others and made an image of that. So, the question then arises, is how do I find that reflection of myself in my subjects, in the world? And show it?

Apr

2012

Life is what happens…

Part of the thrill of working on long term photographic projects is the fun they create. I’m not talking about getting that amazing once-in-a-lifetime-oh-my-gawd-you-have-got-to-see-this! shot. Rather I’m talking about the situations these projects draw us into, quite by accident.

I liken this to the adventure along the way that a backpacking trip might create. Or much the same with a road trip; that feeling of not quite meandering aimlessly along backcountry roads, but the adventure that happens if you give yourself enough time to pay attention to your surroundings as you head toward your destination.

This very thing has happened to me on numerous occasions as I work on my varying projects. I’ve discovered a fun local band called “Los Garapatas” (“The Ticks”) while shooting a Matanza (a traditional Hispanic pig roast), I’ve stumbled across polo players in the mountains of SouthWestern New Mexico, I’m been on a mountain top at dawn, I’ve eaten pie in Pie Town, and I’ve spent an enjoyable day watching a high school baseball double header this past weekend between two teams vying for the district championships. Good stuff! A perfectly enjoyable day. And my camera took me there.

What have you discovered as you chased that once-in-a-lifetime shot? What have you enjoyed that you would have enjoyed without the camera, but it was the camera that took you there? After all, life is what happens to us while we’re busy making other plans (or making pictures.)

Apr

2012

Do What You Can

The problem with being a creative is not always the lack of ideas; the problem with being a creative is sometimes too many ideas. Ted Orland, in Art and Fear, a book he co-wrote with David Bayles, mentions that often times the problem is better identified as a lack of creative discipline regarding the ideas. We get overrun by them and they can get it the way of actually creating and completing projects.

The other day I complained to my wife that I hadn’t had enough time to go out and photograph what I wanted. Her reply was not what I expected. Nor was it what I wanted to hear, “yeah, but you’re getting better at shooting what you CAN shoot…!!”

Ouch, but true!

What she meant was I was getting better at photographing our kids and our family life. She’s right. If I keep at something, keep studying, keep applying myself, learn new techniques and ways of seeing or interpreting, the images get better – mostly because I get better as a photographer and editor. And that means something.

All of us are limited by our life situation. We like to think we are free, and we like to yearn for more freedom. But we are as free as we are and lots can be done with that. The challenge often is not necessarily to strive for greater freedom, for greater access, for more time, for more gear, for more, for more…; rather the challenge is to focus on what is possible. To dream what is possible where others might not see it.

There is a story I heard years ago about a woman in India who was revered as a meditation teacher. Early in her life she had married and her husband forbade her to practice formal meditation. She acquiesced. But still she somehow practiced. When asked much later in her life about how she managed to develop such strong meditative practices and such great inner peace without formal practice she answered, as many meditation teachers will, with a question: “what is meditation?”

Her students dutifully responded, “the practice of paying attention in this moment and this moment only.”

She then continued, “and so, when I stirred the rice, I stirred the rice; When I swept the floor I swept the floor; and when I ate, I ate.”

She did what she could with what she had, and she perfected her practice.

What can you do in this moment, in this situation, to practice photography despite your situation? What can you do without changing anything externally, but rather turning your attention to what you CAN do. Can you focus there? (Pun not intended.)

I can’t always photograph what I want to photograph, but I sure can photograph what is available to me. And can you guess which option will actually result in an image – perhaps even a good one?

Apr

2012

Holding Back to Move Forward: Deepening the Practice

I’ve been working on a project lately which I don’t think I’ve spoken about. It began early last summer and at first I didn’t think much of it. I did a couple of days shooting and culled through about 800 images looking for the story I thought I had shot. I was moved to do so by a post that Dan Milnor (aka Smogranch) had posted about making “picture packages.” I thought I might try to force myself to edit rigorously in order to make a small package of images, 6 to 8 of them, around a common theme. I thought this a good exercise; it would improve my visual storytelling a bit.

Oh boy!

As it turns out, as I was going through the edit, printing out images, sorting through them in piles (“in, out, in, in, out, out, out, out, out….” that sort of thing), I began to notice a theme. I was being drawn to images that depicted a an alternate aspect to what I thought I had shot. “Uh-oh!” I said to myself, “there is another story in here.” A story I had not noticed initially.

Perhaps I had something and I worked it up into what I thought was a decent grouping and then I sought some feedback. I sent it over to Ray Ketcham, who mentors a bunch of good folks, and asked for his feedback. The feedback was good. Ray thought I was on to something, but it needed a bit more; more hook, more buy in, more depth. So I need some more images to complete the story. The trouble is what I photographed is seasonal, and the season had ended.

So, I sit with these images. They live on my refrigerator. I move them around sometimes but mostly they just sit there, staring at me, calling me, taunting me. This has gone on for for a long time. So long in fact that during a Skype call with Ray not too long ago he queried me as to my progress on the project. “Errr…..it’s sitting there staring at me, Ray, driving me a bit crazy!” was my response, I think. Something like that. Or maybe that is what I thought while my response was something closer to, “I know, I know…” followed by some excuses for the hurdles keeping me from completing the project; something about wanting the processing to be consistent in the images.

And then Ray pushed me into the deep end of visual storytelling and documentary photography. “Don’t worry about the processing right now, just go out and make the pictures. You process them later, after you’ve got them.”

Well don’t that just fly in the face of this “post as you go” internet world!

And don’t that just deepen the process of working on a project! I’m finding myself working, shooting, shooting, shooting. Gathering the data, the images, and then gathering more. The edit comes later. Of course now I realize that this makes absolute sense, but it was that one comment from Ray that has encouraged me to hold back on the releasing of images on certain subjects as I work through the process of capturing all the images I need. It has lead to a slow down on this blog: a deepening, a a slowing, holding in order to move forward and develop this skill, this story, this art.

So I apologize for not posting as much, but I hope it will be well worth it in the long run… I may have to start posting some minor images, pictures of stuff from here and there just to keep a flow on this blog. But then again, what is the purpose of that?! Do I want my work to be images of this and that (believe me, I’ve got plenty!) or do I want my work to deepen? What do you want?

Mar

2012

Forget Mugshots: 10 Steps to Better Portraits EBook

The good folks at Craft & Vision have held true to their promise to release 1 quality ebook per month by releasing today yet another title by David duChemin, Forget Mugshots: 10 Steps to Better Portraits. It is available through the Craft & Vision online store for a mere $5 and readable through any of your favorite PDF e-reading devices.

In this ebook, David instructs and reminds us of the fundamentals of portrait photography; those simple yet easily overlooked basics when engaging in photographing another human being in a mindful way. Filled with beautiful portraits taken on his many travels as a world and humanitarian photographer, the book also contains sidebar “Creative Exercises” to help the reader work through the steps and come to a deeper understanding of the steps.

This book is an easy and lovely read and one that will stay on your electronic bookshelf as a solid reference and reminder of how to do portraits well for years to come. You will be reminded, among other things, to play with the light, understand the smile, relate to your subject, watch the eyes, and be mindful of your background-good stuff for all of us to remember from time to time.

While at the Craft & Vision store, why not check out their other wonderful titles including the one you can get for free:

Special Offer on PDFs
For the first five days only, if you use the promotional code MUGSHOTS4 when you checkout, you can have the PDF version of Forget Mugshots: 10 Steps to Better Portraits for only $4 OR you can use the code MUGSHOTS20 to get 20% off when you buy 5+ PDF eBooks from the Craft & Vision collection. These codes expire at 11:59pm (PST) March 17, 2012.

Mar

2012

Form and Shape

I’ve been reading a book lately, “The Mind’s Eye” by Oliver Sacks, where the author, psychiatrist, and neuroscientist explores the effects of damage to the brain on vision. Initially I had thought the book would be about challenges for people who had lost their vision, either completely (blindness) or partially (legal blindness). As a counselor I was interested in learning more about how people adapt to such drastic life changes. However, as I read I discovered Sacks was exploring something altogether different, and I was intrigued with its implications for photography.

Early in the book Sacks meets, befriends, and studies a woman who has suffered a non-debilitating stroke in the visual area of the brain at the back of the head. Not only was the stroke not debilitating in the way we are accustomed to recognizing stroke victims, it actually went unnoticed to the victim-at least initially.

What was damaged in this woman was an area of the brain that processes visual stimuli-the area of the brain that makes sense of what we see. In effect, she began to have difficulty recognizing common objects for what they were. She could “see” them just fine; that is, there was nothing wrong with her eyes. It was just that her brain was not able to make sense of the visual input; the software got confused, as it were. This was most notable with sheet music (she was an accomplished pianist) as well as the written word. She was suddenly unable to read! (Oddly, the ability to write was unaffected-that skill is controlled by an altogether different area of the brain). Eventually this inability to recognize symbols and objects spread to simple, common, things like a banana or a bottle of mineral water.

Imagine seeing the shape and form of a banana but not being to recognize it as such.

So this got me thinking; after all, this photography passion of mine (and yours, yes?) lies in a visual medium. What would our photography be like without the ability to recognize common objects as such? Some of my friends already play in this area of visual space; they are quite good at photographing space, shape, form, shadow, contrast. They can be drawn to it.

I find I have a hard time with this. Sure, I can photograph some lines and shadow, but they usually surround, are infused, and represent actual, recognizable things. Abstracts are much more difficult for me. I tend to be drawn to people, place, story, to humanity, to my human interaction with the world around. It’s really quite narcissistic when you think about it-as I see it, my world around me develops its meaning (at least for me) from my interaction with it. What would happen if I lost my ability to recognize shape and form as “things” or “people” and began instead to just see them as shape and form? And what meaning would I make from simple shape and form? How would that affect my photography. How would it affect yours?

Many times I share with my family an image of something I like and the question that arises almost immediately is “what is it?” We want to make meaning of things and knowing what something is helps us to discover what that meaning is. It’s not a bad thing, but it can be limiting for an artist and photographer.

Lately, as I’ve been mulling these thoughts in my head, I’ve taken to playing with an old Pentax K1000 film camera. It is a fully manual camera and lots of fun. Having to shoot manual has suddenly freed me to play with focus. You see, autofocus and our generally conceived idea that pictures of things need to be sharp almost forces us to shoot things in sharp focus-bokeh not withstanding, but still there is an area of the image (the selective focus area) that is sharp. The K1000 has helped me to see that playing with focus can help remove the idea of the “thing/person” I am photographing and pay more attention to shape and form. It is a lot of fun and leading to a whole other way of seeing images in the world, and hopefully allowing me to stretch as a photographer.

The image above was intentionally shot out of focus. I don’t know if it works for others, but it works for me. Of course, I’m biased because I know what is in the image. The image at the top was an accident and caught me by surprise when I imported it into Lightroom. At first I was going to delete it but as I looked at it I started to see the possibilities and in the end I love it for being so representational of the melee of Snow Geese I was photographing that day. It is one of the images that gives the feel of the place for me.

What about you? Do you ascribe to the sense that images are best when sharp, focused, clear in visual representation and intent. Or do you like to play with representational shapes, lines, form, blur, out of focus?

Mar

2012

Bosque del Apache, Part 2

In my previous post I showed a quick series about the Geese and Sand Hill cranes at Bosque del Apache, a National Wildlife Refuge about an hour south of Albuquerque, New Mexico. It’s a photographer magnet.

We had found a field full of birds, out of which came the images in the previous post, but soon they decided to move on to their nighttime location.

We decided jump ahead of the birds to go to an area known as “The Flight Deck.”

The “Flight Deck” is an observation station placed in the flooded fields at a favorite resting spot for the birds. Word has it that thousand of birds usually spend the night here…as well as several zealous photographers. This time the birds landed at a neighboring field without a deck. They tend to do that if there are predators nearby. So all that was left was a gaggle of photographers with impossibly large lenses, the water, and the sunset.

Feb

2012

Bosque del Apache, Part 1

Not far from Albuquerque, where I live, is a National Wildlife Refuge with a name that harkens back to another time and another people: Bosque del Apache. Each year thousands upon thousands of Sandhill Cranes and Canadian Snow Geese, as well as numerous Bald Eagles, make this land their winter home. It is a special place in this enchanted land that attracts wildlife and amateur photographers from around the world. Curiously, a majority of New Mexicans never visit.

The first sign we were coming close (other than the new welcome station and rustic pay station) was actually a sound-a distant call of a goose high overhead, similar to a foghorn but shorter in duration. Soon enough, a squadron of Snow Geese emerge out of the late afternoon sun, high enough to touch the clouds.

Sign of the birds exists underfoot as well as millions upon millions of footprints crisscross themselves over every inch of land that allows their imprint.

Before long the squadron leads us to a landing strip-a farmer’s field. Word has it the farmers in the area support the winter migration by providing food for the birds.

But this is just an intermediary stop; a last stop to catch a breath before heading to their nighttime lodgings and the geese arrive and depart seemingly of one mind in a cacophony of sound. (click on the play button bellow to get a sense of the continual sound that occurs with these birds. For a full experience, let the audio play as you view the following images. Feel free to click on the images for a Lightbox-type viewing experience.)

Snow Geese Cacophony by Brian Miller

As the sun dips the birds begin their last flight of the day and head toward their sleeping grounds…

Jan

2012

Forward and Backward

The other day I mentioned my wild idea to plunge headlong into a photographic project depicting my current home, the State of New Mexico. You can read about it here if interested. Some of the feedback I received was that people are pretty excited to see some or all of the work I’m doing here, even using it for research into their own photographic journeys (yikes!)

So I thought it might be fun to look back at some images that seem to fit the project that I took before the idea even crystallized in my being. So, just for fun, here are a few:

Jan

2012

Close to Home And The Birth Of A Project

Recently I posted a review of my goals from 2011 and found that I had ticked off most of them. Great. I got to feel a momentary sense of pride of accomplishment. But something was lacking a bit. At first I couldn’t recognize what it was but eventually, as I thought about it more, I came to realize that my checklist of accomplished goals for the last year failed to tell the fuller story of my photographic year. You see, I accomplished more than just my checklist. I learned a lot by surprise along the way.

Yes, I was focused on my goals, but not so much that I failed to pay attention to other opportunities which presented themselves along the way. Not only did my skills as a photographer grow, but my focus, intention, and attention all grew as well.

You see, for a long time my focus in photography was what is “out there”, outside of me and outside of my community. I wanted to photograph what was exotic, foreign, new, distant. My focus was on distant lands, distant ideas. But then I read Close to Home by Stuart Sipahigil (listed here on the Craft & Vision website.)

Close to Home has become a highly regarded and highly quoted book in the past year. In it Stuart turns his attention to a challenge many-if not most-amateur photographers have: making compelling images out of their “ordinary lives”-close to home. People loved it! From what I understand it is one of the bestselling titles from Craft and Vision this past year, and rightly so.

But Stuart’s book influenced me in a slightly different way. I wasn’t just looking for a way to make compelling images close to home, I was looking for a direction for my photography as a whole. I was searching for meaning in my photography. I was becoming less content making singular images of pretty stuff. I was wanting my photography to mean something more-if not to others, then to myself. And as I sat and thought about what I wanted to do with my photography I realized I was limited by my current life situation.

My young family and job prevent me from traveling to distant lands (Mexico, Vietnam, Thailand, Peru) to photograph exotic people in exotic locales. I am pretty firmly planted in New Mexico-a land I’ve inhabited for 16 years and feel pretty familiar with. But then, as I thought more about what Stuart was encouraging in his book I started to ask myself what I could photograph-what I would be excited to photograph-near home? And suddenly I realized, “holy cow, I live in NEW MEXICO!!!” This land is filled with the exotic, the new, the interesting, the fascinating, the joyful, the sorrowful, the pain, the hardship, the beauty, the sky, the sun, the mountains, the dust, the tumbleweeds, the cacti, the outdoors, the drugs, the mix of cultures…..well, you get it, right? This land is fascinating and enchanting and filled with wondrous stories of people and cultures and art and music and life!

And out of this was born the idea of my Tierra Encantada Project as well as my direction, purpose, meaning, and excitement-to try to tell the story of New Mexico as I know it. To try to show you, the viewer and reader, what this land is like and about. To try to point you toward why this is an enchanting place.

So, if you haven’t read Stuart’s book, Close to Home, do so! If you have read it, make a point to read it again. It is not a long book, but its depth is palpable. And I have heard from a small bird that he is working on another book due out possibly this Spring; I can’t wait!

Note: Those of you involved in the photography scene may be aware that my new friend and Blurb photographer at large Daniel Milnor (aka Smogranch) is also working on a very similar project. His work is absolutely fantastic and if you haven’t seen it go follow his tumblr blog where he is being completely transparent about the project’s process and progress for the sake of his subjects-people who would not otherwise see the results of their portraits. Also check out this video of him at work here in NM. He and I met recently and shared ideas on our projects. It is great fun to watch how he approaches the same subjects and what he comes away with. At first I was concerned I would be repeating what he’s already doing, but he comes from outside the state and sees things in a much different way than I do. That combined with his mega years of experience, his photography education, his outgoing nature, and the fact that he tends to shoot with a Leica means his work is going to look wayyyyyy different from mine. Can you tell I’m a fan? Still, I hesitated when he began to make his project public until I realized I could not deny the push inside that drives me to work on this project.

All of these images were made after meeting with Daniel in Santa Fe with my manual film camera, a Pentax K1000. All except the second-that was shot in my driveway. Talk about close to home!