American PHOTO - November December 2010

how to warp time in a still image p. 66

EDITOR’s CHOICE 2010

12 TOOls THE

THAT CHANGE THE RulEs

p. 38

an a.p. campaign

rescuing america’s trees p. 54

working with ngos:

journalism or pr? p. 76

NOVEMBER/DECEMBER $4.99

TINY GIANT The Sony NEX-5 Photographed by Jon Whittle

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on thE CovEr: This issue features three different covers depicting three Editor’s Choice cameras: the Leica M9, the Nikon D7000 and the Sony NEX-5. BELow, CLoCkwisE: The Leica M9, one of the year’s most notable imaging products; a photo by Bob Hower of the ecologically threatened park system in Louisville, Kentucky; a Chris Farber image of Darfur refugees in Chad; a slit-scan study of Tai Chi motions by artist Jay Mark Johnson.

NOvEMBER | DECEMBER 2010

Features 38

Editor’s ChoiCE 2010

The year’s top game-changing imaging tools By jonathan Barkey

54

trunk show

The tales of grand, endangered trees as told through the lenses of noted photographers By russell hart

66

timE warp

The art of altering perception using slit-scan photography techniques By laurence chen

76

advoCaCy in afriCa

Chris Farber’s efforts to illuminate the suffering of Sudan’s genocide refugees By aimee Baldridge

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: © JON WHITTLE; © QUADRANT/BOB HOWER; © CHRIS FARBER; © JAY MARK JOHNSON

38

54 76

66 suBscriptions: American Photo (ISSN 1046-8986) (USPS 526-930) is published bimonthly (Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/June, July/Aug, Sept/Oct, Nov/Dec) by Bonnier Corporation, 2 Park Ave., New York, NY 10016. Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY 10001 and at additional mailing offices. Authorized periodicals postage by the Post Office Department, Ottawa, Canada, and for payment in cash. postmaster: Send address changes to American Photo, P.O. Box 420235, Palm Coast, FL 32142-0235; 386-246-0408; www.popphoto.com/ap/cs. If the postal services alert us that your magazine is undeliverable, we have no further obligation unless we receive a corrected address within one year. One-year subscription rate (six issues) for U.S. and possessions, $15; Canada (includes 5 percent GST) and foreign, $29; cash orders only, payable in U.S. currency. Two years: U.S., $30; Canada and foreign, $53. Three years: U.S., $45; Canada and foreign, $76. Publications Mail Agreement Number: 40052054. Canadian Registration Number: 126018209RT0001. Return undeliverable Canadian addresses to: Pitney Bowes, P.O. Box 25542, London, ON N6C 6B2, Canada.

NOv/DEC 2010 | amEriCanphotomag.Com 3

CONTENTS

16

DEPARTMENTS 11

ONE TO WATCH

Art Objects Up-and-coming photographer Lucas Zarebinski homes in on the details

11

BY FRANKLIN MELENDEZ

16

SHOW PLACES

Shooting Towards Bethlehem The InVision festival brings first-rate photography to a former steel town BY AMY BEDIK

22

UNDER COVER

Ten Years After New and notable fall photo books BY JUDITH GELMAN MYERS

29

WORK IN PROGRESS

Lost & Found Troy Paiva brings the ghost towns of the West back to eerie life BY JACK CRAGER

SKILLS

Every Picture Moves a Story FirstLight workshops delve into the craft of multimedia photojournalism BY AIMEE BALDRIDGE

100 PARTING SHOT

Engulfed Viewing the Gulf oil-spill disaster the hard way—under the surface

FROM TOP: A spotted owl photographed by Michael “Nick” Nichols, one of the InVision festival headliners; a still-life image by Lucas Zarebinski; Phaidon’s new photography volume, Decade.

FROM TOP: © MICHAEL NICHOLS/NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC SOCIETY; © LUCAS ZAREBINSKI

86

masters of photography Always in search of “what is happening at the edges,” William Albert Allard’s work reveals beauty, mystery, and stunning reality. Part photographic retrospective and part compelling memoir, this book paints a full picture—through images and narrative—of one of color photography’s most celebrated pioneers.

“I want an image to have

the harmony and economy of a well-crafted paragraph, the grace and sense of balance found within the geometry of a fine painting. I want my pictures to have intimacy...

“

— WILLIAM ALBERT ALL ARD

Showcasing the elements that define beauty in a photograph, acclaimed photographer Annie Griffiths presents more than 200 stunning images from the National Geographic collection.

Aerial photographer Robert Haas captures powerful imagery of Arctic lands, focusing his lens on landforms, wildlife, and the footprint of man.

Remarkable photographs and rare personal interviews reveal the inside stories of official White House photographers, with a foreword by Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza of the Obama administration.

AVAILABLE WHEREVER BOOKS ARE SOLD nationalgeographic.com/books

EDITORIAL DIRECTOR MARK JANNOT CREATIVE DIRECTOR Sam Syed EXECUTIVE EDITOR Russell Hart MANAGING EDITOR Jill C. Shomer ART DIRECTOR Matthew Cokeley PHOTO EDITOR Chelsea Stickel EDITORIAL PRODUCTION MANAGER Felicia Pardo COPY EDITORS Lisa Kearns, Meg M. Ryan DESIGNER Ivylise Simones FACT CHECKER Rebecca Geiger ONLINE EDITOR Stan Horaczek CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Jonathan Barkey, Amy Bedik, Greg Ceo, Jack Crager, Miranda Crowell, Joe Gioia, Vicki Goldberg, Michel Leroy, Judith Gelman Myers, Lindsay Sakraida, Liza Schoenfein PHOTO DIRECTOR Larry Nighswander BONNIER’S TECHNOLOGY GROUP VP, PUBLISHING GREGG R. HANO

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FOCUS

art objects Photographer Lucas Zarebinski has a knack for transforming the mundane into the sublime | By Franklin Melendez

© LUCAS ZAREBINSKI (2)

Lucas Zarebinski is a man of few words; his images do most of the talking. In a few short years, the Polish-born photographer has built a commercial practice in New York City based on his stilllife images—but don’t expect to find any sleepy arrangements of fruit in his portfolio. Under his exacting lens, commonplace objects are converted into dynamic, high-octane compositions: a laptop rendered sleek and glossy, like the fender on a NASCAR racer; a stack of Popsicles lit to resemble modernist sculpture; a BLT sandwich transformed to look like an enameled Jeff Koons creation. Such studio craft has made the 32-year-old a hot commodity with an ever-growing list of glossies and ad clients—no small feat for any young photographer, but all the rarer for one who seems to have stumbled onto his calling. “When I was 17, I dated this girl who took pictures, so I started taking pictures as well,” Zarebinski says. “I always wanted to be an artist, but I couldn’t draw or paint; I just had an eye. The camera provided the perfect tool—all I needed was a vision.” After discovering his knack behind the lens, the then 20-year-old Zarebinski packed his bags and headed from Bielsko-Biala, Poland, to Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, to study photography and fine art, parking cars at night and working on his English with his roommates. From the beginning, Zarebinski was drawn to the detailed richness of largeformat imagery, and he tirelessly lugged around a 4x5 camera to capture his subjects. However, portraiture—not still life—was his initial impulse. “I kept Whether he’s shooting close-ups or large-scale scenes, Zarebinski approaches his subjects with a sculptor’s care, and his most trusted tool is lighting: “I only use studio lighting,” he says. “It makes a big difference in terms of sharpness and control. You can direct your artificial light with incredible precision to maximize its direction and angle.”

SHOW PLACES 16 | UNDER COVER 22 | WORK IN PROGRESS 29

shooting people, even though everyone kept telling me not to. I finally just listened,” he says matter-of-factly. “I also realized I’m not that good at making people comfortable. With still life, the image is always there—it’s just what you make of it, how you control it. You can be in the studio for hours, unrestricted.” Zarebinski attributes his sleek graphic approach to his stints as a digital technician and retoucher while he was assisting in Los Angeles. “I still do all my retouching myself, but 12 americanphotomag.com | NOv/dEC 2010

close-up LUCAS ZAREBINSKI

Lives in: Brooklyn, New York studied at: Oakland Community College, concentrating in photography and fine arts. “But I learned most of the trade while assisting other photographers hands-on,” he says. awards: Multiple “Lucie” International Photography Awards (2004, 2005, 2006); named to PdN’s “30 2009” emerging photographers list. Favorite gear: His trusted all-purpose cameras: the Canon EOS 5d Mark II, which he also uses to shoot video; and a Hasselblad H1 with a Leaf digital back. “And a good assistant,” he adds.

TO P TO B OT TO M : © L U C A S Z A R E B I N S K I ; © S H A R O N S U H

In his commercial still-life images, Zarebinski strives for pared-down elegance: “I shoot in the simplest way possible,” he says. “It’s just the object up close, and I try to bring out its qualities.”

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Church of Christ, Haiti, November 19, 2009 © Peter Pereira/4 SEE

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I don’t use any tricks,” he notes. “All you need is great angles, lit in strategic ways and topped off with expert treatment in Photoshop—that’s the secret.” Technical demands aside, there might be a romantic lurking beneath all the hard geometry. Alongside his commercial work, Zarebinski has been developing 14 americanphotomag.com | nov/dec 2010

an ongoing series of winter landscapes, “Trees” (go to lucaszarebinski.com). These poetic images, which capture the subtle fluctuations of the seasons in delicate twilight, provide Zarebinski a quiet sojourn away from the hard candy of consumer goods and reflect his exacting technique with a radically different

vision. His landscapes have appeared in several exhibitions and garnered numerous awards. But when asked to explain his motivation, Zarebinski’s answer is typically succinct: “It’s a completely different process. I just drive around and wait for the place to find me. If you stumble onto it at the right time of the day, it’s magical.” AP

© LUcAS ZAReBInSKI

In Photoshop, Zarebinski’s postprocessing includes fine-tuning color balance and saturation, as well as spot retouching with a healing brush or a clone stamp to remove imperfections. “There is no gold shot,” he says, “just a lot of practice.”

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FOCUS | SHOW pLAcES

SHOOTING TOWARDS BETHLEHEM

© M I C H A E L N I C H O L S / N AT I O N A L G E O G R A P H I C S O C I E T Y

Once the capital of American steel, this burgeoning art community shows its grit with a photography festival to compete with the big cities | By Amy Bedik

The Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania may not have the same exotic ring as Arles, France, or Madrid, Spain, but like those locales it will soon host an annual photo festival. The InVision Photo Festival, produced by the group ArtsQuest—the same outfit that successfully stages the 300-plus-act Musikfest there each summer—is designed to showcase acclaimed photographers, spotlight emerging artists and enlighten photo enthusiasts. It will debut this year from November 5 through 7. Organizer Janice Lipzin, director of 16 americanphotomag.com | nOv/dec 2010

Above: Michael “nick” nichols shot this northern spotted owl swooping toward a researcher’s lure in a young redwood forest in 2008. A headliner at the Invision Photo Festival in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, nichols was a founder of its inspiration and model, the Look3 festival in charlottesville, virginia.

visual arts and education at the huge Banana Factory arts complex, where all the events will take place, has set the bar high with her lineup for the festival’s premiere. “I want an event where people can see photography from the same top professionals who take part in the big festivals around the world,” she says. “But I also want it to be affordable and very accessible to the public.”

The “little town” of Bethlehem has become something of an artists’ colony since its steel industry collapsed in the early 1980s. Lipzin hopes its proximity to major cultural centers—it’s only an hour and a half west of New York City and just north of Philadelphia—will help InVision draw urban art patrons to the event. She also points out that in contrast to major photo-fest fees, which can run into the

year-old photography event staged in the National Geographic photographer’s hometown of Charlottesville, Virginia. In addition to consulting with Nichols, Lipzin has made him one of the InVision festival’s headliners. The globetrotting documentarian (he was given

Top: ”cheryl Salt James, Salt ‘n’ Pepa, August 2001,” by Larry Fink, a headliner at Invision. Bottom: ellen Kooi’s “Out of Sight,” at Paris Photo.

the moniker “the Indiana Jones of photography” by Paris Match) is set to present a slide talk on November 6.

Other COOl PhOtO FeStivalS • FotoWeek dC 2010 (Nov. 6–13) Held in the nation’s capital, this gathering features contemporary work, workshops and an international awards competition. fotoweekdc.org • PhotoNOLA in New Orleans (dec. 2–11:) celebrating the work in and around the Big easy, this festival also presents artists from throughout the United States. photonola.org

18 americanphotomag.com | nOv/dec 2010

• Paris Photo (Nov. 18–21) Here you can view exhibitions of talent from around the globe ranging from emerging photographers to renowned artists, with a special spotlight on images from central europe. parisphoto.fr •  Lens Culture FotoFest Paris (Nov. 15–16) Portfolio reviews and meetings of photographers and photo experts. fotofest-paris.com

F R O M TO P : © L A R R Y F I n K ; © e L L e n KO O I / c O U R T e S Y e d I T I O n S F I L I G R A n e S , PA R I S

hundreds of dollars, ticket prices for InVision’s events range from just $25 for a lecture to $75 for a portfolio review. And several events are free to the public. Lipzin’s main inspiration and model for InVision is Michael “Nick” Nichols’s smashing Look3 festival, the three-

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FOCUS | SHOW PLACES

Visit artsquest.org and bananafactory.org for details about the InVision Photo Festival and other ArtsQuest events. 20 americanphotomag.com | NOv/DEC 2010

highway to high art

The Whitney presents Lee Friedlander’s great American road trip | By JAck crAger The cross-country photographic journey is a time-honored American ritual. The use of the car as a photo-framing device also has precedent, such as the dashboard shot that David Michael Kennedy famously supplied for the cover of Bruce Springsteen’s Nebraska album. But in the hands of the self-willed and visually adventurous Lee Friedlander, the idea of “America By Car” takes on a distinctive twist. Friedlander’s exhibition by that name focuses on images shot during a 10-year period, starting around 1995, though his photographic road trip is reportedly still ongoing. Images from the project first breathed new life into the septuagenarian artist’s oeuvre as a 2008 exhibit at the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco. Now this eccentric collection is traveling and expanding: The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City presents “America By Car” in its Sondra Gilman and Howard & Jean Lipman galleries through November 28, with nearly 200 photographs culled from the larger

collection in the eponymous volume printed by D.A.P. / Fraenkel in 2010. With the alternating wit and melancholy that marked Friedlander’s earlier social landscapes, these images add the roadtrip motif through the frame of a rental car. Friedlander—who has frequently included his own shadow as a solitary narrative device in his images—now freely injects his own reflection through side mirrors. Other car parts, like windshields, side windows and steering wheels, bump up against the roadside idiosyncrasies of blue-highway America, with its wacky signs, roadside bars, churches, monuments, motels and suspension bridges. The artist’s square-format black and white further imbues the scenes with nostalgia. It’s enough to make you wonder whether a bygone America we once thought we knew is still out there—and want to hit the road to find out. Above: Lee Friedlander’s “Texas, 2006,” from the “America By Car” exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art

© L E E F R I E D L A N D E R /C O U R T E S Y T H E W H I T N E Y M U S E U M O F A M E R I C A N A R T

Opening the festival the day before is the much-admired fine-art photographer Larry Fink. A resident of Martins Creek, near Bethlehem, Fink has exhibited in museums such as MOMA and been published in magazines including Vanity Fair and The New York Times Magazine. Next year, when the festival expands to accompany the 20-venue Lehigh Valley Photography Month, Fink will shoot the opening party in his highly recognizable style, which often relies on off-camera flash. The pictures will be immediately projected onto the nearby blast furnaces of the city’ old steel mills—among the structures that are being incorporated into SteelStacks, ArtsQuest’s ambitious new performing arts center. Events for November 7 include portfolio reviews by various industry professionals, including Magnum photographer Alex Webb and his wife, photographer Rebecca Norris Webb. That day’s featured workshop will be “The Art of Seeing and Printing,” with John Isaac, a former United Nations photographer and a masterful inkjet printer. Several InVision exhibitions will be on display from the end of October through November 21, on both the art center’s walls and strategically placed video screens. These will include InVision MUSE, a clever pairing of work by acknowledged masters (Fink included) and some of their most successful students, as well as a juried college photography show and images by participants in the Banana Factory’s highly regarded instructional photo program for disadvantaged youth. For some connoisseurs, the most intriguing InVision event will perhaps be “Magnum and Microbrews.” For $35, attendees will be able to sample the region’s handcrafted beers while chatting with some of the photographers Lipzin oversaw in her tenure as a director of corporate and advertising assignments at the Magnum Photos agency. So let’s all lift a glass to the success of InVision. AP

Ten Years afTer With a powerful photographic book about the past decade, Phaidon puts the world’s recent tumult and triumphs in thoughtful perspective | BY Judith Gelman mYers

22 americanphotomag.com | nov/dec 2010

Clockwise from top: new orleans burns after 2005’s Hurricane Katrina; a U.S. Marine flags a statue of Saddam Hussein in 2003; Usain Bolt wins gold at 200 meters in 2008; Britney Spears kisses Madonna in 2003.

The decade known as the “aughts,” 2000 through 2009, brought a series of seismic shifts to the globe’s social and political landscapes worthy of the wildest millennial predictions. Following the photojournalistic triumph of its best-selling Century, Phaidon has assembled a thinking person’s illustrated guide to the first 10 years of the new millennium in Decade (Phaidon, $40). The new volume’s writing team created a framework of themes running through the period—the rise of Islamism, social networking, climate change—to which they added a must-have

cLocKWISe FRoM ToP: coURTeSY PHAIdon PReSS: © MIcHAeL APPLeTon; © WIn McnAMee/ReUTeRS; © MARK dAdSWeLL/GeTTY IMAGeS; © JeRoMe deLAY/AP

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FOCUS | Under cover list of pivotal events, including 9/11, Hurricane Katrina and the capture of Saddam Hussein. The picture team then populated those lists with images culled from such sources as Magnum Photos and the World Press Photo contest, as well as from independent photographers approached by picture editor Eamonn McCabe. Author Terence McNamee wanted to steer away from simply reinforcing readers’ preconceptions. In concise text blocks and deftly juxtaposed pictures, Decade succeeds in showing another side of issues we’re familiar with, as well as those that got less attention, such as a gathering of Brazilian tribespeople at the 2003 Indigenous Nations’ Games. For his part, McCabe avoided predictable images, going for “a new take on something that the newspapers didn’t see,” like a Nigerian man dowsing himself with water to withstand the heat from an exploded pipeline. The book has a significant flaw, and it’s one that shortchanges its photographers: The photo credits are shoved to the back of the book and jumbled into a list in type so tiny that it’s nearly impossible to read. Any reader who actually wants to

NOTABLE NEW PHOTO BOOKS Destroy This Memory (Aperture, $65). The latest coffee-table book from landscape master Richard Misrach employs his enigmatic but evocative visual style in the setting of Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath. The images focus on graffiti found on devastated homes—from “Help! Help!” scrawled across a rooftop to “I am here I have a gun” greeting would-be looters—with effects ranging from heartbreaking to humorous. With these unforgettable photographs, Misrach ensures that the directive of the book’s title is ironic because it is impossible. One Block: A New Orleans Neighborhood Rebuilds (Aperture, $40). In Aperture’s other 2010 Katrina-related book, dave Anderson focuses on the hope of rebuilding, with a detailed look at the reconstruction efforts in one new orleans neighborhood and the residents who carry on with faith, weariness and grit. Through a combination of portraits and architectural progress reports, Anderson records the tedious process: “You strip and fill and sand and caulk and sand some more and then prime and paint,” in the words of one determined rebuilder. The faces tell their own sad tales.

Harlem: A Century in Images (Skira Rizzoli, in association with The Studio Museum in Harlem, $55). A masterfully assembled collection of imagery and text honoring both the neighborhood and the people who have lived there gives the reader new visions of an old place. Although pedestrian shots are shown side-by-side with iconic images, the reverence and fascination that many photographers—from James vanderZee to Henri cartier-Bresson—bestow upon Harlem is palpable throughout this beautiful volume. above: A shot of the second airplane striking the South Tower in the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade center, from Decade

know who took what picture is left in the dark. Although this approach, so easy to avoid, belies the seriousness with which McCabe and McNamee approach photographers—indeed, photography itself—it does not undo the remarkable power of the book as a whole, which will leave you with a new understanding of what is now the recent past. AP 24 americanphotomag.com | nov/dec 2010

Galen Rowell’s Sierra Nevada (Sierra club Books, $30). Few adventurers combined the twin passions of mountaineering and photography as well as Galen Rowell, who died at age 61 in a 2002 plane crash. Rowell’s best images of his favorite locale, the Sierra nevada range, are gathered in this striking collection, which also serves as a review of his rise from a childhood with adventurous parents to his remarkable career on the cliffs and behind the lens.

B oT To M L e F T: c o U R T e S Y P H A I d o n P R e S S , © S P e n c e R P L AT T/G e T T Y I M A G e S

Leo Fuchs: Special Photographer: From the Golden Age of Hollywood (powerHouse Books, $65). The job of special photographer—typically an independent shooter with special access to movie stars—was an invention born amid the peak of Hollywood glamour, right after WWII had ended and magazines were competing for more intimate looks into the private lives of the country’s favorite stars. Fuchs’s intimate images of the likes of Paul newman, Audrey Hepburn and Marlon Brando radiate the actors’ charismatic power even as they unmask their vulnerability.

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LOST & FOUND

above: Paiva’s “Pepto-Squarebird-Reflux” was shot in a car junkyard about an hour north of Sacramento, california. “I tend to shoot on or near the full moon and shun locations lit by man-made light,” he says.

Troy Paiva sets out to document what’s left of the abandoned old West—one surreal scene at a time | BY Jack crager Like many an American kid in the 1960s and ’70s, Troy Paiva spent lots of vacation time in the back of a car on the nation’s highways. “My family took driving trips across the deserts of the American Southwest,” says Paiva, now 50.

“We cruised the remnants of bypassed Route 66 towns and visited real ghost towns like Bodie, California. As a highly impressionable 12-year-old, I was blown away by the idea that people would leave whole cities behind.”

That fascination led Paiva to create “Lost America,” a 21-year visual documentation of civic detritus found at the byroads, junkyards and fringes of modern civilization. “As I got older I began to visit all kinds of abandonments on my nov/dec 2010 | americanphotomag.com 29

FOCUS | WORK IN PROGRESS

own, and the obsession grew,” he says. In 1989 Paiva started photographing weathered old sites as a creative outlet to offset his day gig in San Francisco as a graphic designer for a toy company. “I was looking for a way to do personal 30 americanphotomag.com | nOV/dEC 2010

shooting techniques (see box below). “The ‘Lost America’ project is all night work,” Paiva says. “I’ll take pictures anytime, though.” Part of his reason for shooting abandoned sites at night is aesthetic. “Most photography is about capturing an instant,

ClOSe-Up: trOy paiva Training: Paiva sat in on a night-photography course at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco, where he studied illustration and 3-d modeling. ”But for photography, I’m self-taught,” he says. Honors: Winner of “Photography Book of the Year” in 2009 at the new York Book Show for Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration. Workshops: Semi-annual Pearsonville Junkyard workshops (lostamerica.com/workshop.html). Best advice: “The hardest part of doing night photography is dragging yourself out of a warm house on a cold night,” Paiva says. “But it really is all about experimentation and practice.”

© T R OY PA I VA / LO S T A M E R I C A ( 3 )

Top: Mcdonnell douglas dC-8 and Convair 880 airframes, now long gone, in Mojave, California. Bottom: A train graveyard in England. “It’s lit with a yellow-gelled strobe in the boxcar,” Paiva says.

work that was totally unrelated to techniques I was using in my job,” he says. Paiva had tagged along with his brother to a night-photography course. “When the subject of adding light with hand-held sources during moonlit time exposures came up, my brain popped,” he says. “Here were techniques that were perfect for capturing the surreal and spooky souls of the abandoned places that I’ve always been drawn to. I bought some cheap 35mm gear, hit the desert the next full moon, and never looked back.” It took a while for the avocation to morph into paying work. “The first nine years, I worked in total obscurity, shooting purely for fun,” Paiva recalls. “It wasn’t until 1998, when I put the work online, that it started to be noticed.” He posted a series of galleries at lostamerica.com, which led to numerous publishing projects over the years, including the award-winning 2008 book Night Vision: The Art of Urban Exploration (Chronicle Books, $25). He’s shown his work in galleries in New York City and Los Angeles, and the Bolinas Museum in Marin County will host an exhibition from April 23 to June 5, 2011. Paiva also teaches periodic workshops about his night-

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© T R oY PA I vA / Lo S T A M e R I c A

Long disappeared from modern maps, the ramshackle mining camp in Kincaid, nevada, slowly sags and falls apart. “I shot this image under heavy cloud cover during a summer monsoon,” Paiva recalls. “It would have just been a black silhouette without the added Led flashlight and lime-gelled strobe flash.”

32 americanphotomag.com | nov/dec 2010

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FOCUS | WORK IN PROGRESS

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but minutes-long exposures capture a block of time that humans can actually feel,” he says. “It’s eons in normal photographic terms. Doing it in these places where it seems like time has stopped stretches reality even further. Once I began experimenting with strobes and flashlights, it didn’t take long before I began incorporating color and theatrical lighting angles, all in the pursuit of intensifying the emotion and spooky weirdness of these places.” His night moves also have a pragmatic aspect. “Much of my work is done while trespassing,” he confides. “I frequently have to travel light and work fast. All my gear, aside from the camera and tripod, fits into the pockets of a jacket or a small 34 americanphotomag.com | nov/dec 2010

backpack, allowing me to hop fences and slip through the cracks in security.” Although his exposures are long, from two to eight minutes, Paiva often feels a sense of urgency in documenting places. “I try to finish them as quickly as I can,” he says. “Abandoned locations tend to be time-sensitive; there’s a sweet spot when I like to shoot, where they look weathered and post-apocalyptic, without being too tagged-up and trashed. Vandals, partying teenagers and metal recyclers can ruin a site, photographically, in a very short time. I’ve made notes about locations to come back to, only to return a year later and find the site is a vacant lot.” Paiva notes that several of his series, such as “Ghost Trains” and “Lost Wheels,” are “ongoing junkyard projects that I’ve been adding to for years, because they are constantly evolving as objects come and go.” But he’s always seeking new sites. “I seem to have a radar for finding this kind of stuff,” he says. “I can drive into a remote desert town and make a couple of random left turns and end up in the driveway of an airplane recycler, or an eccentric artist with a collection of 25 motel signs in his yard, totally by accident.”

Top: Gas pump-styled water sprayers in the pool area of an abandoned Route 66–themed water park in newberry Springs, california. Bottom: Remnants of a dormant gas station in ely, nevada.

He’s added a few items shot during world travels—such as trains he found in England on a lecture tour—but Paiva prefers to focus on his homeland. “I’m documenting the American experience,” he says. “The failures of 20th-century expansion into the deserts of the West, with its big skies and epic vistas, will always be my main subject.” ap

© T R oY PA I vA / Lo S T A M e R I c A ( 2 )

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Capture the breathtaking beauty of a true tropical paradise as the Mentor Series journeys to Puerto Rico on December 9–12. This stunning island is sure to inspire you and invigorate your portfolio. Nikon professional photographers Mark Alberhasky and Essdras Suarez are bound to take your technique to the next level. Your base will be the secluded coastal town of Guanica, a pristine retreat bordering the Caribbean. With the aquamarine water beckoning from every angle, you’ll be ready to fill your frame with the tranquil waves, white sand and expansive horizon. Get ready to photograph surfers at Rincon. Imagine the unbelievable images you’ll take, as the surfers ride the powerful curl of the clear water. We’ll continue on to another of Puerto Rico’s best beacons with Los Morillos lighthouse at Cabo Rojo. The structure stands proudly atop jagged, red limestone cliffs. You’ll also capture other natural treasures in the surrounding dry forests, lagoons and mangroves, home to more than 100 species of birds including terns, pelicans and falcons. At every turn the unspoiled beauty of Puerto Rico is on display. Capture the diversity of this island and bring back images that will be just as powerful as the knowledge you gain. This is a once-in-a-lifetime experience you won’t want to miss!

VIETNAM & ANGKOR WAT February 16–26, 2011

Join the Mentor Series as we lead you into Vietnam and Angkor Wat. With Nikon professional photographers Layne Kennedy and Daniel J. Cox as your instructors, you will witness all the exotic beauty these gems of Asia have to offer. In Vietnam, we’ll take a morning jaunt to the outskirts of Hanoi and visit the remains of the once-grand citadel of Hoa Lu. We’ll then head to the caves of Tam Coc and Bich Dong, passing rice paddies and large rock formations along the way. Practice your architectural shots when we explore the area’s temples and pagodas. Halong Bay is remarkable, with over 3,000 limestone monoliths that seemingly rise from the water. Off the beaten path we’ll journey to villages before proceeding to the Angkor region of Cambodia. We’ll begin with an elephant ride around the 12th-century Bayon Temple and then on to the magnificent Hindu temple Angkor Wat. With bas-reliefs, soaring towers and stone carvings, you won’t want to put your camera down. Later, floating down the Ton Le Sap Lake and Mekong River on a small shaded vessel, you’ll find a new perspective on this captivating countryside. Don’t miss out on the photo opportunity of a lifetime.

REGISTER ONLINE AT WWW.MENTORSERIES.COM For more information, call toll-free 888-676-6468.

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March 16– 25, 2011

The Mentor Series invites you on a photographic journey of a lifetime filled with breathtaking adventure, stunning vistas and diverse wildlife! Join us as we travel to Botswana, one of the jewels in subSaharan Africa’s crown—a country brimming with photo ops. Nikon professional photographer Reed Hoffmann will guide you through Botswana’s deserts and savannas, offering photo tips along the way to ensure that your images will be as brilliant and unforgettable as your experience. Botswana is an outstanding destination—something you will discover for yourself when you take to the veldt, camera in hand. As you look out at the serene beauty of the grassland, the seemingly endless sky stretches across the horizon and above the majestic wildlife in their natural habitat. Fill your frame with tens of thousands of magnificent animals: lions, elephants, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest, leopards, cheetahs, hippopotamuses, rhinoceroses, African buffalo, hyenas, and antelope, to name only a few! Although words alone will not describe this luxurious safari, the remarkable images you capture will speak volumes of your time spent in one of the most fascinating regions of the world. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to see Botswana with the Mentor Series.

SANTE FE, NEW MEXICO May 13–15, 2011

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FOR THE PAST 12 YEARS, the Mentor Series has taken photo enthusiasts to destinations across the country and around the world. With top Nikon professional photographers accompanying participants every day and teaching them how and what to shoot, there’s nothing like a Mentor Series trek. You and your photography will never be the same!

For stunning vistas and glimpses into a rich cultural past, look no farther than Santa Fe, New Mexico. With Nikon professional photographers Michael Clark and Dave Black at your side, this desert locale will heat up your portfolio. We’ll begin at Bandelier National Monument, with its ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings. As we make our way around the Main Loop Trail zoom in for close-ups of the rock paintings and petroglyphs. Arriving in Los Alamos later that day, we’ll stop for shots of Black Mesa, followed by White Rock Overlook at sunset. At Tent Rocks National Monument, massive rock formations soar amid a mountainous backdrop. These sandcolored giants, formed millions of years ago by volcanic eruptions, will create an unforgettable series of images. Nambé Pueblo is renowned for both its natural and cultural beauty. Here you can capture a remarkable double-drop waterfall, as well as a troupe of traditional dancers. Heading back into Santa Fe, capture the solemn ambience of the Cross of the Martyrs at sunset. On our walking tour, we won’t miss any of the city’s must-see spots—among them the Mission of San Miguel, the Palace of the Governors, St. Francis Cathedral and the state capitol. Join the Mentor Series as we capture the visual splendor that Santa Fe has to offer.

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Of all the hundreds of cameras, lenses and accessories released over the past year, these are the ones that matter most—the true innovations in the field By Jonathan Barkey | Photographs by Jon Whittle & Michael Kraus The winners of this year’s Editor’s Choice Awards had to meet the highest standard ever: For American Photo’s editorial team to choose them, they had to qualify as “game-changing”—to have transformed, or have the potential to transform, the very way photographers work. To be fair to all the other great photo products that came to market this year, that’s a tough standard to meet in a field in which progress is largely incremental. But the rigor we brought to the task challenged our preconceptions and helped us transcend our usual category-based thinking. Of our dozen winners, some are obvious breakthroughs, such as FujiFilm’s FinePix W3, a point-and-shoot that brings 3-D image creation out of Hollywood and into the home, or Sony’s Alpha A55, which represents a new camera genre combining DSLR and EVF traits. Others push the envelope in an established category, such as Sigma’s 8-16mm zoom, the widest ever for APS-Cformat DSLRs, or Leica’s M9, the world’s first full-frame digital rangefinder, a camera that manages to merge tradition and high technology. Many of our winners are exemplars of larger trends in the industry. Sony’s NEX system joins the burgeoning ILC (Interchangeable-Lens Compact) phenomenon, significantly advancing the convergence of still and video capture. Likewise, we include Nikon’s D7000 DSLR because it features the first DSLR autofocus system capable of continuous tracking in video capture mode, challenging ILC dominance in that arena. The application of consumer technologies to high-end products is yet another common thread, one that makes both the Pentax 645D and Einstein Monolight more capable and/or affordable than their competitors—and thus deserving of our recognition. The wow factor influenced us too, with products originating in the space program (GigaPan’s EPIC Pro) and the computer industry (Apple’s iPad) empowering photographers to create and communicate in exciting new ways. Yet for winners like the Canon PowerShot S95 and Induro PHQ Panhead, it was a heightened attention to ergonomic and operational detail that made them compelling choices. After all, photographers practice their craft with both eyes and hands—and the best photo products recognize that truth.

38 americanphotomag.com | nov/deC 2010

focus phenom NikoN D7000 Continuous autofocus finally comes to DSLR video, allowing photographers to shoot moving subjects without the need to follow-focus manually NikoN started the video-DSLR revolution with its trendsetting 12.3-megapixel D90, but it and all the DSLRs that followed suffer from the same flaw: their inability to continuously autofocus when you’re shooting video. This has limited DSLR video shooting to photographers willing to manually adjust focus—particularly difficult with a moving subject and when the photographer wants to get closer to or farther from a subject. Now comes the 16.2-megapixel Nikon D7000, which can follow-focus automatically in its HD video mode—giving photojournalists, sports photographers and others much more shooting freedom. The new DSLR accomplishes this feat with full-time contrast-detection autofocus similar to that in ILC cameras. Called AF-F, this Nikon-exclusive system can be used in four live-view/ movie AF modes, and it works best with a fast-aperture ultrasonic AF-S lens. What’s more, the D7000’s video is Full-HD 1080p at 24fps, in AVCHD format, with manual audio levels and full exposure control. Other serious features include 100-percent viewfinder coverage, ISO 25,600 maximum sensitivity, dual SD/SDHC/SDXC card slots, 6fps capture and a weather-sealed magnesium-alloy body. About $1,200; nikonusa.com

40 americanphotomag.com | NOV/DEC 2010

coming of age Leica M9 The digital rangefinder returns to its full-frame roots with a 35mm-sized image sensor optimized for Leica’s extraordinary lenses HaviNg pioNeered the 35mm still camera nearly a century ago, Leica comes full circle with the first digital rangefinder to incorporate a 35mm-sized image sensor—a design its engineers had deemed impossible because of the steep, light-sapping angle at which the outer rays from its short back-focus lenses would strike the sensor’s surface. But the M9’s 18-megapixel CCD brilliantly proves otherwise with an innovative light-balancing microlens overlay that works with image processing that automatically adjusts to suit the optical characteristics of the lens in use. Because there is no anti-aliasing filter in front of the image sensor, the camera actually equals or betters the resolution of full-frame DSLRs in the 21- to 25-megapixel range. As you’d expect, the M9’s magnesium and brass body feels both bulletproof and supremely comfortable. Shooting with it is direct, instinctive and discreet—manual focus notwithstanding. But it’s still digital, saving Adobe DNG or JPEG files to an SD card. Above all, the M9 excels at pure image quality, thanks to Leica’s incomparable M-series optics. About $7,000; en.leica-camera.com

another dimension FujiFilm FinePix ReAl 3D W3 This amazing, affordable digital stereo camera records both stills and movies in totally compelling 3-D. And you can watch them without special glasses In a year that saw the first 3-D Hollywood blockbuster and the mainstreaming of 3-D home entertainment, it’s fitting that ordinary consumers can now create their own 3-D digital content with this breakthrough system from Fujifilm. The FinePix W3, which succeeds the W1 camera originally marketed in Japan, uses twin 10.17-megapixel CCD sensors to capture stereo MPO stills and stereo AVI videos at 720p HD resolution. Offering entry-level, mostly automated features, the comfortably contoured W3 is slightly wider and thicker than a conventional point-and-shoot. Sliding open its front cover reveals identical lenses (each with 3X internal, optical zooming) spaced three inches apart, which creates the parallax disparity needed for stereo imaging. In back, the W3 features a spectacular 3.5-inch, 1.15-million-dot widescreen LCD with a lenticularstyle overlay that eliminates the need for special glasses to see in 3-D. The image pairs are ghosted at first, but focusing aligns them for comfortable viewing. We achieved the best results by including both foreground and background elements while keeping our main subject about four to six feet away. When it works right, the depth effect is almost hallucinatory, and 3-D videos taken with the camera are truly immersive. That’s especially so on a bigger screen—any HDMI-connected 3-D HDTV (though you’ll need special glasses). FinePix W3 shooters can order 3-D prints from SeeHere.com. About $500; fujifilmusa.com

fastest flash PAul C. BuFF einstein 640 monolight This portable pro flash unit offers uniquely short bursts and ultrafast recycling, enabling rapid-fire, action-stopping photography at an unbeatable price hIgh-output aC-powered strobes, useful for many assignments, are less suited to fast-paced subjects because their flash duration is too long to consistently freeze motion and their recycle time is often insufficiently fast for rapid-fire frames. In contrast, the affordable yet sophisticated Einstein 640 Monolight is uniquely capable of super-short flash durations. It accomplishes this with special circuits that quench its flash tube very quickly—a technology common to hotshoe flashes but not studio strobes. This is especially valuable when you reduce recycle time by lowering output to keep pace with the framing rate of a high-speed DSLR. Set to Action mode, the Einstein delivers bursts as short as 1/13,500 second, syncing with a camera shooting up to 10fps. For portraits and other critical work, you switch to Constant Color mode, which maintains 5,600 degrees Kelvin (+/- 50 degrees) at all power levels. Other specs are equally impressive, among them a 250-watt modeling light with brightness proportional to flash output and a microSD slot for upgrading firmware. About $500; paulcbuff.com NOV/DEC 2010 | americanphotomag.com 43

going wider Sigma 8-16mm f/4.5-5.6 DC HSm This ultrawide zoom delivers the widest rectilinear coverage available for APS-C-format DSLRs, not to mention superior optical quality and great handling Sigma’S current 12-24mm f/4.5-5.6 is the widest non-fisheye you can get for a full-frame DSLR. The all-new 8-16mm DC is functionally equivalent to it but designed specifically for APS-C-format cameras—offering the same mindblowing maximum angle of view and the surreal, exaggerated perspective that comes from shooting so close. At 3.0x4.2 inches and 19.6 ounces, it’s slightly smaller and lighter than Sigma’s full-frame version, and it focuses 1.6 inches closer, to 9.4 inches. The lens’s Hyper Sonic Motor AF is fast and silent. The new lens’s exotic design consists of 15 elements in 11 groups, including four fluorite-like low-dispersion elements plus one hybrid aspherical and two molded glass elements. The result is superior sharpness compared with others in this class (though no competitor is as wide), with mild chromatic aberration only at longer zoom settings. We found vignetting moderate except at 8mm with the lens wide open. Barrel distortion is apparent at the widest setting and pincushion at the longest, but both are correctable in software. Available in Nikon, Canon, Sony, Sigma and Pentax mounts. About $700; sigmaphoto.com

44 americanphotomag.com | NOV/DEC 2010

oPTiCAL eXCHAnge SONY NEX-5 aND NEX-Vg10 The world’s tiniest ILC and the first interchangeable-lens consumer camcorder have a lot in common—including optics aS tHe WOrLD’S SmaLLeSt, lightest interchangeable-lens compact, Sony’s unorthodox NEX-5 (below) stakes different turf than its Micro Four Thirds competitors. In essence, it’s a super-stylish pointand-shoot that takes interchangeable lenses (Sony E-type) rather than a diminutive DSLR substitute. Yet its 14.2-megapixel image sensor is bigger than the chip in Micro Four Thirds models—the same APS-C size, in fact, as those in most DSLRs. The NEX-5’s other assets are estimable, too. They include a rugged magnesium-alloy body, sensitive 14.2-megapixel APS sensor and 921,000-dot, 3-inch tilt-screen. It also has super-swift AF and LCD response, 7fps shooting speed, HDR and Sweep Panorama mode—and Full-HD 60i AVCHD video, a rarity in this class. It even shoots in RAW format. Maybe more unusual, though, is the NEX-5’s fraternal twin, a camcorder called the NEX-VG10 (right). It incorporates the same sensor, lens mount and LCD screen as the NEX-5, not to mention most other features, including still capture. That’s huge news, because it’s the first of its kind with an APS-C-sized chip and silent-focusing interchangeable optics, thereby offering filmlike shallow focus, low-light prowess and better video handling than any DSLR. And it costs a fraction of any professional equivalent. About $650 (NEX-5, with 16mm f/2.8); $2,000 (NEX-VG10, with stabilized 18-200mm); sony.com

infinite detail GiGaPan EPiC Pro This NASA-derived robotic camera mount finally accepts large DSLRs and lenses, advancing multi-frame gigapixel imaging to a new level Once Only a fictiOn in the movies, the concept of a digital image with practically infinite detail has become a reality, courtesy of GigaPan motorized camera mounts. Derived from NASA imaging technology, these systems precisely automate the process of shooting dozens or even hundreds of separate frames that, when stitched together in software, create gigapixel-size (1000-megapixel-plus) images. The first models supported only smaller, less advanced cameras, but the new GigaPan EPIC Pro holds 10 pounds, enough for full-frame 25-megapixel DSLRs and bigger lenses, significantly extending its microcosmic reach. The battery-powered gimbaled mount has a simple LCD menu and four-way motion controller, which you use first to measure your camera’s vertical angle of view, then to establish the top left and bottom right corners of your planned image. Press “OK” and the GigaPan goes to work, tripping the shutter via electronic cable while repositioning itself for each new frame. The number of shots depends on the angle covered, focal length, memory card size, computer power—and your patience while GigaPan’s software renders these gargantuan files. About $900; gigapansystems.com

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a new breed Sony SLT aLPha a55 A revolutionary translucent mirror design finally brings the speed of DSLR autofocus to the small size and optical advantages of an electronic-viewfinder camera thOugh it physically resembles other Alpha APS-C-format DSLRs, the SLT A55 is actually a live-view camera with a large, exceptionally clear 1.44-million pixel electronic viewfinder instead of a conventional pentaprism and focusing screen. The SLT (Single Lens Translucent) design replaces the DSLR’s instant-return reflex mirror with a fixed semi-silvered mirror, which allows most of the light from its lens to pass through to its new, high-sensitivity 16.2-megapixel CMOS sensor. The rest is diverted to its 15-point autofocus module, which uses a DSLR-type phase-shift detection system that’s superior to the contrast-detection AF in other live-view cameras. This ingenious system significantly reduces the A55’s size and weight compared with conventional Alpha models. And with no interruption in autofocus, it can continuously track moving subjects during exposure. Plus it can shoot at an astounding 10fps—until now possible only with pricey pro models. The A55 is also the first Alpha that records video (Full HD). About $750; sony.com

a happy medium Pentax 645D Designed like a consumer DSLR, the 645D drops medium-format digital to less than half the price of its competitors— yet still offers awesome resolution and a huge existing lens selection Pentax’s first medium-format digital camera is a bombshell, delivering 40-megapixel image quality for radically less money than comparable medium-format systems. How does it do this? By borrowing core technologies from the APS-C-format Pentax K-7 DSLR. In fact, it will seem instantly familiar to any Pentax DSLR owner. That said, the 645D’s gigantic 44x33-millimeter Kodak CCD boasts two-thirds more pixels than a full-frame 24-megapixel DSLR and produces 23x30-inch native image size at 240dpi, ideal for big prints. The body itself offers superb balance and ergonomics, a light but tough magnesium-steel alloy frame with extensive weather sealing, and automatic sensor-dust cleaning, a first in a medium-format digital camera. It also features built-in automatic correction for a given Pentax 645 lens’s optical characteristics. It shoots in RAW (Pentax PEF or Adobe DNG) or JPEG format and saves to dual SD cards. Under $10,000 (limited availability); pentax.jp/english

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a new direction InDuro PHQ PanHeaD The world’s first five-way tripod panhead combines speed, flexibility and precision with unique features for panoramic and 3-D photography tHis well-made, cleverly designed product is the first of its kind to combine the best attributes of a conventional panhead (precise and repeatable framing) with those of a ballhead (speed, simplicity and a wide range of movement). In fact, the “quintaxial” Induro PHQ offers precision adjustments in five separate directions. Its range of movement actually exceeds that of some very expensive geared heads, but it’s a lot faster to operate. The PHQ’s two rotating handles control vertical and horizontal tilt (+90/-15 and +90/-45 degrees), and conveniently fold for easier transport. Both its base plate (attached to the tripod) and its top plate (attached to the camera) independently rotate 360 degrees. This allows leveled panning at any tripod angle, eliminating distortion in stitched panoramas. It also means you can level the head on uneven terrain without endless tripod-leg adjustment. Finally, the bidirectional Arca-Swisscompatible quick release conveniently slides up to 20mm left and right. This is useful for weight balancing and creating stereo pairs for 3-D photography. The same ability allows precise alignment of image pairs taken with a perspective-control lens for stitching purposes. Available in two versions: PHQ1 (to 25 pounds; $315) and PHQ3 (35 pounds; $395); indurogear.com

the new view Apple ipAd This one-of-a-kind touchscreen tablet is the classiest, most intuitive digital photo album you can get—and it’s ideal for sharing images with a client Apple’s much-hyped ipAd is the first entry in a transformative new category of personal, Web-enabled multimedia devices. The sheer size and stunning detail of its 9.7-inch LEDbacklit display practically clinches its appeal for photographers. It’s also a wonderfully compact tool for offloading, managing, viewing and sharing photos on the road (though its internal memory is somewhat limited) as well as an elegant way for pro photographers to bring pictures or videos to a meeting. With 1024x768 resolution, the iPad’s screen is also great for playing HD movies. And its incredibly responsive Multi-Touch interface lets you show off your images with intuitive finger gestures. At only a half-inch thick, this Apple is exquisitely crafted,

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in brushed aluminum and tempered glass. It’s not a full-function computer, but it does include Wi-Fi and optional 3G, add-on connectors for SD cards and digital cameras, a virtual QWERTY keypad and touch-enabled software such as Safari, iWork, iBook and YouTube. Photos, its elegant viewer and organizer, sorts pictures using Events, Faces and Places metadata and plays slideshows with music from iTunes. You can now download more than 400 third-party iPad-compatible photo apps. These include filters and effects, online photo services, editing tools and Eye-Fi card wireless file transfer straight from your camera. Available with 16GB, 32GB or 64GB of flash memory; about $500 to $830; apple.com

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custom compact CAnon powerShot S95 The world’s smallest RAWand HD-video-capable “professional” compact features a unique click-stopped lens ring for customizable control compAct cAmerAs good enough for serious photography are rare—and this stylish gem is the smallest and lightest one yet. The sturdy, metal-clad S95 is just half the size and weight of Canon’s top compact, the PowerShot G12. Yet it incorporates that model’s 1/1.7-inch CCD image sensor, which is among the biggest in its class. Because the S95 only has to squeeze 10 megapixels of resolution into that chip, it delivers remarkable quality at higher ISOs, aided by advanced DIGIC 4 image processing. What’s more, like the G12, the S95 can shoot in RAW mode, recording more tonal and color data and permitting much greater control in post-processing. Though it sheds the G12’s vari-angle LCD, hotshoe and optical viewfinder, the S95 is actually better in some ways. It has a bigger screen (a 3-inch, 461,000-dot LCD), a faster 28-105mm (equivalent) zoom and 24fps, 720p HD video with stereo sound. But the S95’s unique programmable Control Ring is its true innovation. Surrounding the lens and click-stopped like a traditional aperture ring, it can be assigned any of nine separate functions, including ISO, exposure compensation, white balance, manual focus and aspect ratio. About $400 (with Canon’s professional RAW software); usa.canon.com 52 americanphotomag.com | NOV/DEC 2010

16th Annual International Festival of Photography and Digital Imaging

FOTOFusion January 11-15 2011 ®

OVER 130 EVENTS YOU WON’T WANT TO MISS! Hands-on Photoshop™ Workshops Seminars & Panels • Portfolio Reviews FOTOfusion Technology Centre FOTOshoots • Book Signings Fusion-Schmooze Parties

Learn from the Masters • Photo tours to Africa, Bhutan, Burma, Papua New Guinea, Peru, India, Vietnam... • Over 200 digital & traditional photography workshops throughout the year in West Palm Beach, Florida: Photographing Children with Ross Whitaker; The Digital Fine Print with George DeWolfe; Alternate Processes in Digital with Jack Davis; The Darkroom Called Lightroom with Rob Sheppard; Sports Photography with Adam Stoltman; And many more...

FOR MORE INFORMATION, VISIT US ONLINE AT WWW.WORKSHOP.ORG OR WRITE FOR A CATALOGUE 415 Clematis Street West Palm Beach, FL 33401 561-253-2600

© Lewis Kemper

BEGINNERS TO PROS, EVERY FACET OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND DIGITAL IMAGING AT YOUR FINGERTIPS

PRETTY IN THE CITY

The Trees: Japanese flowering cherries at Newark, NJ’s Branch Brook Park The ThreaT: urban development and poor maintenance PhoTograPher: Yong Hee Kim New York–based Kim has exhibited his work in galleries from Poland to Seoul, South Korea, where he was born. He teaches part-time at the International Center of Photography and Baruch College.

© YO N G H E E K I M

truNK SHow

Why we sent 12 of our favorite photographers to shoot some of America’s most significant and endangered trees By Russell Hart NOV/DEc 2010 | ameRicanpHotomag.com 55

That belief is expressed not just in the innumerable images of trees photographers have created, but also in the fact that a tree’s scale and visual complexity—along with human intrusions into its space—make it a challenging subject. It compelled 19th-century photographer Carleton Watkins to set up his mammoth-plate camera whenever he saw a noble specimen, and more recently led National Geographic photographer Jim Balog to hoist himself up giant redwoods in order to shoot them digitally section by section for stitched vertical panoramas. Still, the magnificence of trees hasn’t deterred us from cutting down roughly 12 billion of them each year for fuel, farming, building materials and other less necessary purposes. Even trees we take for granted in our own communities are endangered by development, disease, climate change and other threats. To focus our collective attention on great trees in our own midst that may need protecting, American Photo and The Cultural Landscape Foundation (TCLF) have partnered to create a traveling exhibition featuring photographs of such specimens. As part of its annual “Landslide” initiative, the foundation chose 12 trees from more than 100 nominees that were solicited from landscape architects, horticulturists and the readers of Bonnier’s Garden Design magazine, one of the project’s sponsors along with AP and TCLF. The exhibition, which will be supplemented with TCLF’s educational signboards for a special opening next spring, is called Every Tree Tells a Story. We chose the photographers not just for their geographic connections but also for the sympathy toward the natural world displayed in their work. Just as important, though, was the work’s aesthetic excellence, because we wanted these artists to interpret the trees rather than simply record them. View a more complete portfolio at AmericanPhotoMag.com, where you’ll also find a touring schedule for the exhibition. And visit the site of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, tclf.org/landslide, to learn more about this remarkable project.

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WISE ELDER The Tree: a historic tulip poplar at washington, DC’s tudor Place Historic House and Garden The ThreaT: the tree’s age, which makes it more vulnerable to weather and environmental changes PhoTograPher: Amy Bedik • amybedik.com New York–based Bedik has prints in the collections of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum and the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Nestled in a five-and-a-half-acre sanctuary in washington, DC’s Georgetown neighborhood is a tree that has witnessed much of America’s history. the tulip poplar, which stands over 100 feet, has seen the burning of the capital by the British in 1814, the turmoil of the Civil war—all from its peaceful setting on the grounds of what is now the tudor Place Historic House and Garden. Amy Bedik has photographed formal gardens for many years with a Diana plastic camera, which contributes a pictorial quality that softens the manicured nature of her subjects. rather than shoot the tudor Place tulip poplar in its entirety, Bedik isolated representative details— leaves, limbs and massive trunk. “Its breadth formed a shelter from the hot sun that day,” she says. “So I explored the idea of shelter through the photographs.” the tree’s garden confines would seem, in turn, to shelter it from the ravages of urban development. Yet its advanced age puts it at greater risk from environmental contagions and the changing, destructive weather patterns of the past few years. one big storm could fell it, silencing its many stories.

B E LO W : © A M Y B E D I K ( 3 ) ; O P P O S I T E : © J AY D I c K M A N ( 2 )

A

ny student of science will tell you that life is untenable without the fresh air furnished by leafy trees. One mature tree is said to dispense enough oxygen during its growing season to keep 10 people breathing. Even the least scientific human enjoys the more obvious contributions of trees, from wood to fruit to shade from the sun. And while there may be few living entities as ecologically important, photographers clearly believe that there are also few as magnificent.

FOREST CATHEDRAL

The Trees: the old-growth forest of the abandoned Arborland tree Farm, Milliken, Co The ThreaT: urban development, habitat destruction PhoTograPher: Jay Dickman • jaydickman.net A Pulitzer Prize winner, Dickman has shot many stories for National Geographic; his work also has appeared in Time, Life and Sports Illustrated. He now runs the successful FirstLight workshop series.

Photojournalist Jay Dickman is inordinately skilled at bringing visual order to chaotic subject matter. the proof of that talent has ranged from his photographs of the civil war in El Salvador to coverage of national political conventions—the former winning him 1983’s Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography. Yet when Dickman arrived at the abandoned Arborland tree farm in Milliken, Colorado, he found hundreds of old-growth trees standing row upon row, as if they were expecting him. the photographer knew that light was the key to capturing what he calls the “cathedral effect” of this unlikely forest, so he shot at dusk and early in the morning, when sunlight could stream down the grand corridors formed by the trees. Situated in grasslands near the rockies, the grove in its maturity has greatly benefited local wildlife, offering refuge to birds, deer and wild turkey. But it stands in the way of urban development north of metro Denver, where Dickman himself lives. the grove’s owner has sought a buyer who will develop the site without harming the forest. that’s a tough sell, of course. So the fate of Arborland remains uncertain—unless a tree-loving benefactor comes to its rescue. NOV/DEc 2010 | ameRicanpHotomag.com 57

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CITY OF TREES

The Trees: Louisville, KY’s olmsted-designed parks and parkways The ThreaT: highway building and severe weather The PhoTograPher: Bob Hower • qphoto.com recipient of an NEA fellowship, Hower has prints in the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, among others.

© Q U A D R A N T/ B O B H O W E R ( 2 )

Bob hower’s favorite subject is the industrial landscape of the so-called rust Belt, which makes him seem an unlikely choice to photograph trees. then, several years ago, he was commissioned to do photography for Louisville’s City of Parks initiative, a plan to set aside thousands of acres of land around a nearby watershed. So Hower’s strategy was pure photography: “Nothing to do but go walk in the woods and keep your eyes open,” as he puts it. Hower did just that when we asked him to document Louisville’s first park system. A network of three large parks connected by six parkways, it was designed at the end of the 19th century by the great Frederick Law olmsted Sr. then came the expansion of the interstate highway system and a series of severe storms, forces that toppled many of the mature hardwoods that provide the shady canopy that is the parks’ hallmark. Hower’s images capture that ongoing double threat, but they also conjure the dazzling things that big trees do to light—which is, after all, the favorite substance of photographers. NOV/DEc 2010 | ameRicanpHotomag.com 59

ANCIENT MARKS The Trees: the boxed pines of weymouth Heights, in NC The ThreaT: development, fire suppression PhoTograPher: Frank Hunter • thomasdeans.com

A professor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke university, Hunter is recognized as a master of platinum/palladium printing. His work is in the collection of Atlanta’s High Museum of Art.

If they look closely, visitors to weymouth Heights, a subdivision in the North Carolina town of Southern Pines, will find strange carvings on many of the long-leaf pines that populate the area. the V-shaped gashes and hollow chambers date to the second half of the 19th century, when former slaves made them to drain the trees of their viscous sap. the sap would accumulate in a “box” cut into the tree and then be used to make turpentine and pitch. these age-old marks transcend their utilitarian origins, according to Frank Hunter. “one that I photographed reminded me of a human torso,” he recalls. “others were reminiscent of African masks, mummies or faces.” In fact, the remaining stumps and shafts of boxed pines are known as totems. Like the intact boxed pines, they are not protected by any local ordinances. Hunter challenged himself to shoot in color rather than his usual black and white. And though he brought a view camera on his trip south, he ended up thoroughly exploring the trees with a digital SLr. “I often return to a subject when the light is better,” says Hunter. “using the DSLr meant I didn’t have to haul my view camera back in 100-degree heat!” 60 ameRicanpHotomag.com | NOV/DEc 2010

A B O V E : © G A R I E WA LT Z E R

OPPOSITE: © FRANK HUNTER;

AMAZING GRACE The Trees: the American elms of East Hampton, NY The ThreaT: Dutch elm disease PhoTograPher: Garie Waltzer • gariewaltzer.com Formerly the chair of the photography department at Cuyahoga Community College, Cleveland-based waltzer has earned grants from the ohio Arts Council and National Endowment for the Arts.

garie Waltzer describes her black-and-white photographs of civic spaces—parks, pools, city streets—as “Baroque.” She means they are packed with active detail, both human and natural. So when waltzer arrived in East Hampton, New York, to photograph the arching elm trees that line the streets of eastern Long Island’s famous summer resort destination, she was faced with a “decidedly quieter” kind of subject matter. You may know that Dutch elm disease

has killed millions of American elms. In East Hampton, though, the remaining elms are considered so important to the town’s identity that they are regularly inoculated to prolong their lives. In other places, lack of funding for such programs means that diseased trees are simply cut down. “I wanted to highlight the trees’ heroic qualities,” says waltzer, who carried a ladder around town in order to get more elevated views of its sidewalks. “It was important to tell their stories.” NOV/DEc 2010 | ameRicanpHotomag.com 61

ROAD WARRIORS

Late in world war II, the united States undertook a national road-building proj-

Based in North Carolina, Pons is cofounder of the Digital Photography Experience, an online digital learning center, and leads workshops through his own wild Nature tours. His work has been published in Sierra and Audubon magazines.

ect to allow faster transport of military personnel. one such road cut through the erstwhile Puerto rican town of rio Piedras—skirting a handsome stand of mature ficus trees. the canopy formed by three of the remaining trees now arches over several lanes of what has become one of Puerto rico’s busiest highways. “I was so taken aback by the sheer size of the canopy that I thought I might have to use large banks of lights to selectively illuminate the trees,” says Juan Pons, a respected nature photographer who hails from San Juan, which now incorporates rio Piedras. Instead, Pons shot the trees at dusk with long exposures that both turned speeding cars’ taillights into streaks and allowed him to paint the foliage with light. Pons’s experience with these vulnerable trees, the bark of which is harmlessly stripped and beaten into cloth in their native Africa, went beyond solving photographic problems. “Just about everyone walking by asked me what I was doing and proceeded to tell me some personal story about the trees,” Pons recalls. “I realized that these trees were a cherished part of the community.”

The Trees: three massive barkcloth ficuses in San Juan, P.r. The ThreaT: a major highway passing directly under the trees’ canopy PhoTograPher: Juan A. Pons • juanpons.org

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Barbara Bosworth grew up in Novelty, ohio, east of Cleve-

A recipient of the coveted Guggenheim fellowship, Bosworth teaches at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston. Her prints have been shown at the Princeton university Art Museum, the Addison Gallery of American Art and the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She is the author of the 2005 monograph Trees: National Champions (MIt Press).

land and south of the famous Holden Arboretum. “we would go for walks there as a family when I was young,” says the photographer. the tree we asked Bosworth to shoot forms a neat triangle with her hometown and the site of those walks. the massive black oak at Katewood, as the property is known, overlooked Lake Erie a lifetime before the adjacent house was built. the tree’s horizontal spread was a perfect fit for the panoramas Bosworth usually shoots. rather than use a panoramic camera, she shoots with an 8x10 view camera, carefully rotating it to construct the image section by section. the result of this technique isn’t seamless, and that’s the way she wants it. thin black lines divide the frames, and in her Katewood image, branches don’t always align perfectly—as if to echo the way time and the elements have battered the tree.

The Tree: a massive black oak at the Katewood estate, Bratenahl, oH The ThreaT: age and weather PhoTograPher: Barbara Bosworth R I G H T: © B A R B A R A B O S W O R T H ( 2 )

O P P O S I T E : © J U A N A . P O N S / W I L D N AT U R E P H OTO . c O M ;

FOR THE AGES

NOV/DEc 2010 | ameRicanpHotomag.com 63

MALL WALKING The Trees: Commonwealth Avenue Mall, Boston, MA The ThreaT: heavy use and Dutch elm disease PhoTograPher: James Sheldon Sheldon is an associate professor of visual and media arts at Boston’s Emerson College. His work is currently on display at the Tate Modern museum in London.

The tree-lined avenue is an urban archetype, and perhaps no city street in America hews to it like Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue Mall. For nine blocks running from the famous Boston Public Garden to the Fens (part of the city’s Olmsted-designed “Emerald Necklace” of parks) elegant brownstones wall the streets and a wide,

The mall is heavily trafficked by pedestrians and cars alike, and that wear requires constant maintenance. Jim Sheldon has traveled it for decades, but he had never stopped to photograph it in its full expanse until we asked. For that task he turned to an elaborate 360-degree panoramic technique involving

24 separate, overlapped frames—12 across by two high—created by careful rotation of his DSLR on a tripod. Stitched together in the computer in a process that can take Sheldon as long as two days, the results ably capture the immersive experience of walking down the Commonwealth Avenue Mall.

© JAMES SHELDON (2)

grassy median separates inbound and outbound lanes. Mature trees in the middle and on either side meet to form a canopy through which bits of iconic Boston buildings peek, while the blocks are anchored by statues of notables ranging from Federalist Alexander Hamilton to abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison.

Photographers adopt the slit-scan technique as a creative tool, shape-shifting subjects into dramatic distortions By Laurence Chen

66 ameriCanphotomag.Com | NOv/dec 2010

© J AY M A R K J O H N S O N

Time warp

PerhaPs the first thing about these images that grabs you is the blazing streaks of color that create the background landscape, like a rainbow on steroids. Or maybe it’s the strangely warped or disembodied forms, as if you’re looking in a funhouse mirror. In both cases, the mind wants to see the scenes as three-dimensional space instead of the timelines that they actually are. These “spacetime” images, as artist Jay Mark Johnson calls them, come from using an old photographic idea in new ways.

“Priscilla Malibu Sunset #7-3,” Malibu, 2007. Working with dancer Priscilla Jung Park, artist Jay Mark Johnson used what he learned from capturing landscapes to expand what he calls “spacetime” choreography explorations with his slit-scan camera technique.

Slit-scan photography has been applied to science and engineering work for more than 100 years. Employing a fairly narrow slit to record changes in the field of view over a period of time, slit-scan images infrequently find their way into art and commerce. When they do, the images are typically used for special effects, such as Douglas Trumbull’s famed use in 2001: A Space Odyssey’s Star Gate series. What has long been underappreciated, however, is the technique’s aesthetic potential. A slit-scan image is like a photographic

seismograph of whatever moves past the camera during an interval of time. Most photographs capture a brief sliver of time and depict a scene’s height and width, and sometimes its depth. The slit-scan technique retains the height dimension but substitutes time for width; the horizontal dimension is an accumulation of vertical slices captured over time and plotted from left to right, or right to left, like a data chart. The resulting image may yield unexpected visual distortions. We perceive the horizon-

tal plane not as a timeline but as a shape that sometimes clarifies, sometimes confuses and often intrigues by jolting our normal sense of proportion or motion. In addition, only movement is recorded; stationary objects are typically abstracted into a series of hues that form a visual element unto itself. In the right hands, such techniques can yield surprisingly expressive results. Here are three photographers who are exploring slit-scan’s potential as an artistic rendering of movement over time. NOv/dec 2010 | ameriCanphotomag.Com 67

Jay Mark Johnson Discovering and defining new directions in “spacetime” imagery is the specialty of Los Angeles–based visual artist Jay Mark Johnson. Using a custommodified digital panorama camera, Johnson has traveled all over the world to slit-scan subjects from tai chi practitioners to storm-tossed waves to amusement park rides. His technique translates the motion of these subjects into compelling visual timelines.

One slit-scan attribute that Johnson has exploited is the crisscrossing of shadows produced by the same moving subject at different positions. This apparent visual contradiction occurs because the direction of a subject’s travel in front of the camera determines whether the subject itself or the subject’s shadow is recorded first. Yet in the captured image, all subjects appear to be moving in the same direction, because the front of an object is always recorded first, no matter what direction of travel, while the image capture builds from left to right or vice versa.

Johnson brings a cinematic quality of light to his work. He selects the vertical plane that will be his background based on how the hues and tones will complement his subjects’ motion to render a painterly sense of depth. The prismatic streaks add to the atmosphere of the scene. Above: “Storm at Sea #2,” Los Angeles, 2010. Ocean waves appear as seismic waves in Johnson’s surreal slit-scan panoramic rendering of stormy Pacific breakers. Right: “Pacific coast Highway #1,” Los Angeles, 2006. Traffic along the shore traverses a prismatic landscape of separated hues and tones.

© J AY M A R K J O H N S O N ( 2 )

Motion and eMotion

[5x]

YOU BEGIN TO APPRECIATE NATURE FROM A SAFE DISTANCE.

Simulated representation of zoom capability.

Equivalent to 120mm

Although Johnson originally purchased his camera (from Spheron-VR AG, in Germany) for its intended use—in motion-picture visual effects—he recognized that its design offered tremendous potential for artistic expression. “This particular technology is so versatile,” he says. “I watch [the image] as it happens, and I’m fine-tuning it until I get the right emotion and effect that best represents what I’m looking at. Either I get it right away, or I might do several iterations

until I get something that’s exciting.” Johnson says he intends for his spacetime imagery to “challenge our normal perceptions, thereby helping us understand what normal perception is.” By blending the familiar with the unusual, the images force the viewer to grapple with the meaning of the transformations. “I look at timeline photography as a cognitive and cultural phenomenon, not as a technology,” he says. Old ways seen anew, indeed.

Above: davidhazy’s “rollout” portrait for his MFA thesis in 1968. His subject, Bruce Porter, stood on a rotating turntable in front of a slit camera, changing expressions with each revolution. Below: An exercise in davidhazy’s special-effects class involves a slit-scan camera with people walking in front of it.

illuMinating the Way

Andrew Davidhazy “We are used to perceiving images as instantaneous—one click,” says Andrew Davidhazy, describing the disconnect between how a slit-scan image is made and how it’s viewed. “In this case, however, there are a gazillion clicks. Every vertical line is a click. We’re looking at a time-based image, but we’re looking at it instantaneously. That’s what causes the brain to get taxed.” A professor at the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences at Rochester

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This page: davidhazy’s circular panoramic slit-scans.

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YOU START TO QUESTION YOUR PLACE IN THE FOOD CHAIN. Simulated representation of zoom capability.

Equivalent to 360mm

Institute of Technology (RIT), Davidhazy has been studying and promoting slit-scan techniques for more than 40 years. He became interested in the technology in 1965, after seeing the slit-scan sports images of Life magazine photographer George Silk, and he adopted the technique for his own sports-photo project to earn his bachelor of fine arts degree. Davidhazy’s online articles demonstrate the basic principles for

do-it-yourself slit-scan camera builders (see page 74). Technically speaking, there are variations of the method that produce slightly different results. Most of Davidhazy’s slit-scan work uses a stationary slit with moving film or a slit with a lineararray digital sensor sampling over time.

Davidhazy notes that use of the slitscan technique has evolved since he first championed it in its film incarnation. “People using it now [digitally] are much more interested in the art part of it, and they have made the connection between time and the image

Above: At the 2005 Long Beach Marathon, Graves shot elite runners sprinting toward the finish. The elongated feet represent runners who stepped on the slit camera’s vertical plane of view. Middle: Dancers at the Ballet Conservatory in Aliso Viejo, California, perform a grand jeté circuit in front of Graves’s DistaCam. Bottom: Las Vegas Boulevard, 2008, captured with the DistaCam mounted in Graves’s car.

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at a very high intellectual level.” But, he adds, there’s a rub: To push the envelope, a robust camera with no shutter is desirable. Such cameras—with the capacity to precisely record extended periods of time—are not that hard to build or operate (if you follow precise instructions), but they are expensive to buy. With some innovation, this method can be mastered, as a Davidhazy disciple named Rick Graves discovered.

Stretching the Form

Rick Graves

Former automotive photographer Rick Graves now specializes in slit-scan photography for commercial and fine-art purposes using a self-modified Hasselblad film camera. In 1999, a creative director challenged him to come up with some new and different imagery for a Mazda auto promotion. Graves recalled

a method he had used in the ’70s, with a Cokin linear filter and a manual camera (he had learned about the process from the slit-scan sports photography of another Life veteran, Neil Leifer), and decided to try the method again. The client was impressed and approved the job, but Graves recalls that he himself “walked out scared to death” because he had no idea how to deliver professional results with the technique.

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YOU TAKE THE SHOT AND RUN FOR YOUR LIFE. Simulated representation of zoom capability.

Equivalent to 720mm

So Graves, the son of an engineer, spent a month building not one but two 35mm slit-scan film cameras. His source of information was none other than Professor Andrew Davidhazy. Graves managed to finish and test his camera on the day before the shoot, and the images turned out “sensational.” Graves, who’s based in Santa Ana, California, considers himself lucky. “I did it on a lark, sold the client on it, and then I had to make it a repeatable, professional technique,” he says. In doing so, he real-

ized that industry trends made slit-scan photography a viable commercial niche. Digital technology was overcoming the limitations of optical enlarging, and inkjet printing on roll media was just coming into its own. It was a natural fit for displaying the extreme horizontal images Graves produced, so he set out to build the ultimate slit-scan film camera, based on the Hasselblad 500 C/M camera system. In 2004 he put his latest camera incarnation, dubbed the DistaCam, to the test, capturing Lance Armstrong’s record-

breaking sixth Tour de France win. The resulting image inspired him to start a company, DistaVision (distavision.com), specializing in the technique. His largest installation to date: a 7x300-foot building wrap in Bakersfield, California. “I firmly believe there are commercial applications for this work that have yet to be discovered,” Graves says. “Because of [new technology in] printing, now it can be utilized, and now people can put these pictures on their walls and actually enjoy them in their daily lives.” AP

The SliT-ScAn SeTuP

What you need to know to turn your SLR into a slit-scan camera By Laurence Chen To turn your existing camera into a slit-scan camera, you’ll need to buy or build an attachment known as a matte box. For slit-scan purposes, this is simply a lens-mounted, light-tight box that supports a coiled strip of opaque, flexible material drawn taut across its front opening, covering the opening’s full height and width. Cut a narrow vertical slit (about two millimeters wide) in the middle of the material. The interior of the box should be painted matte black to reduce film-fogging reflections, and its inside dimensions must be big enough to prevent vignetting when used with shorter focal lengths. The opaque strip must be attached and held in place in such a way that the slit can be pulled across the front of the lens for the exposure. Though RIT’s Andrew Davidhazy and other slit-scan artists recommend using motorized systems, a pair of hand-cranked rollers on either side of the matte box’s front opening can work, provided no light leaks around the edges of the coiled strip when it’s being moved. (You’ll probably need to use a tripod so your hands will be free.) You may be able to improvise a more primitive system in which you actually pull on the strip of material to move the slit—just make sure there’s enough extra material to allow the slit to travel from one side of the box to the other, across the full front rim of the lens. Once everything is in place, pre-focus your camera and lock its shutter open on the “bulb” set-

ting or with a cable release. Start the exposure with the slit at one end of the matte box, in a position that won’t admit any light until you start moving it. You can control exposure both with f-stop and the speed of the slit’s movement, though the former won’t have a great effect on depth of field given the slit’s narrow effective aperture. In any case, exposure will be largely a matter of trial and error, and of course will also depend on the sensitivity of your film or image sensor. Once the slit has completed its transit across the lens front and is in a position on the other side that blocks any further light from entering, release the shutter. (Don’t worry about jiggling the camera—since you’re only capturing a narrow slice of the subject in any given instant, it will have little effect on the sharpness of the image!) Then check your DSLR’s LCD screen to see if you’ve achieved the effect you wanted; if not, try again. If you’re shooting film you’ll have to process it to see the results, in which case you should bracket your exposures by adjusting the lens aperture, varying the speed of the slit’s movement, or both. In the wacky world of slitscan photography, of course, such adjustments will also affect how the subject is rendered. If you opt not to build your own matte box, commercial versions can be had; most are from makers of film and video gear such as Arri (far left). Even with a commercial unit, you’ll have to ensure that it mounts securely and is light-tight, and devise a way to advance the slit across its outer frame. (Go to arri.com.) If you’re willing to shoot 35mm film in panoramic format, the new Lomography Spinner 360° (left) is a slit camera that operates on a different premise: It actually winds the film past the back of the lens and slit as it rotates on its handle. You just pull its ringed cord to power up its rubber-band drive—we kid you not. (Visit usa.shop.lomography.com.)

Online ResOuRces For more information about matte boxes and slit-scan techniques, check out Andrew Davidhazy’s articles online: • people.rit.edu/andpph/textdigital-strip-camera.html • people.rit.edu/andpph/text-strip-basics.html • people.rit.edu/andpph/text-slit-scan.html • people.rit.edu/andpph/text-streak-strip scanning-imaging-overview.html 74 americanphotomag.com | noV/dEc 2010

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Right: A donkey tied to a tree braces itself against a sandstorm blowing into Gaga refugee camp in eastern Chad. Above, from left: Bales of straw used to repair roofs in the Goz Amer camp; a sheikha, or female community leader, at the Oure Cassoni camp; a Darfurian man at the Am Nabak camp; a student reading a book in his family’s compound in the Iridimi camp; two men playing soccer at the Djabal camp; a medical center behind a stand of trees at the Goz Amer camp; a sheikh, or leader, of the Messeriya Jebel community at the Mile camp; a woman and her baby looking away from an oncoming sandstorm in the Gaga camp.

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advocacy in africa

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Chris Farber’s work is designed to illuminate the experience and perspectives of Sudan’s genocide refugees. He works for an NGO. Is this journalism, PR, or something else entirely? By aimee Baldridge

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photo documentary projects that most newspapers and magazines can no longer assign. The shift has led many photographers—both veteran photojournalists and younger pros who are developing their skills in the new environment—away from getting the story for an editor who’s sworn to uphold the journalistic principle of objectivity and down the path of telling the story for an organization with a specific, and in this case humanitarian, agenda. How is our connection to the lives of people we’ll never meet forged by the images and multimedia projects these photographers create? Farber’s work with Darfur refugees, and with the organization that’s dedicated to amplifying their voice, offers a glimpse at an answer.

Homeless and Voiceless In 2003, when a rebel uprising in Darfur challenged the authority of the Sudanese government, the regime of President Omar Hassan al-Bashir responded with a wave of attacks on the region’s civilian population. The violence escalated into what both the International Criminal Court and the Bush administration deemed a genocide against several ethnic groups. More than seven years later, the conflict remains unresolved, and refugees who fled the violence languish in camps run by international aid organizations. In 2007, a group of Yale University law students launched a campaign called 24 Hours for Darfur to focus public attention on the crisis, soliciting video clips addressing the conflict from contributors around the world. They edited the clips and showed them at a rally where they were screened on a JumboTron outside of the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Gaining momentum, the campaign kept the name and grew into the nonprofit group it is today, an NGO specializing in research and advocacy. The group’s Darfurian Voices project is intended to communicate the opinions of those most directly affected by the conflict. As the group’s managing director, Jonathan Loeb, explains, “The purpose of the project is to document and broadcast the views held by Darfurian refugees living in Chad on issues of peace, justice and reconciliation.” The organization turned to academics to design a survey of about 2,200 refugees, and it hired Chris Farber to create the video and photographic documentation to accompany the survey’s results. “People can read our report and then watch people talking about these same issues,” Loeb says. “It adds a more personal aspect and gives people a better sense of being able to visualize the refugee camps.” The group’s report of the survey

results is being presented to policymakers around the world and made available to the public online at darfurianvoices.org; it will be distributed to the refugees themselves in a version translated into Arabic. In addition, the Darfurian Voices video has been distributed online and on DVD.

Developing a Career For Farber, working in Africa was, in a sense, a return to roots. It was while shooting and editing photographs of a semester in Kenya as a McGill anthropology student that he first realized he wanted to be a photographer. After graduating and spending a year teaching English and shooting on spec for publications in Beijing, Farber

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‘‘I

tell our children that when we were in Sudan, we were in our homeland,” says a woman speaking directly into the camera’s lens. She is sitting in a refugee camp in eastern Chad; photographer Chris Farber and video editor Justin Madden are viewing the footage in a postproduction studio in Brooklyn. And no setting could be more appropriate, because providing a window into her experience to people a world apart is exactly the purpose of the presentation Farber and Madden are finishing up. Titled Darfurian Voices, it’s part of a body of work that Farber created during four months of photographing and conducting video interviews in all 12 of the Chadian camps that have become temporary homes to an estimated quarter million refugees of the seven-year-old crisis in the Darfur region of Sudan. Perched on an office chair in Madden’s studio, Farber cuts a genteelly athletic figure. A former college swimmer who can not infrequently be found squeezing in an 8 a.m. match on one of New York City’s public tennis courts, he’s a thirtyish man with dark, wavy hair and the casually stylish sartorial taste of someone who has spent most of his adult life as a city dweller. Thick-rimmed black glasses and a touch of gray at the temples give him a mix of nerdiness and gravitas; it’s an impression he reinforces when discussing the often complicated issues surrounding his work. Farber has devoted a good deal of thought to both the subjects of his images and his role in relation to them; they’re topics he can talk about energetically and at length, filling the occasional pause with an endearingly open smile. He’s just the sort of photographer you could imagine packing a set of scuffed-up Pelican cases and heading out into rough terrain to charm his way into the good graces of the locals and tackle complex subjects. But if your reverie culminates in a photo essay in Time or National Geographic, that’s where your fantasy and Farber’s reality part ways. He didn’t travel to Chad at the behest of a news outlet or a magazine. Like many Western photographers practicing their craft in the developing world these days, Farber was working for a nongovernmental organization, an NGO. While the media industry has been contracting, the NGO sector has grown into a $1.1 trillion industry; if it were a country, it would now constitute one of the largest economies in the world. From large organizations such as Doctors Without Borders to smaller ones like 24 Hours for Darfur, the group that commissioned Farber’s Darfurian Voices work, NGOs have become an increasing source of support and exposure for the kinds of extended

A man takes a break from tending a vegetable garden to drink water from a gourd in the Goz Amer camp, the only refugee camp where Farber saw enough fertile land to plant and grow food. Farber hopes to convey what Darfurian life was like before the refugees fled to the desert. “They were farmers before they got removed from Darfur,” he says.

came to the U.S. and learned the ropes of professional photography while working with Philadelphia area portraitist Bill Cramer. As an assistant and then a shooter for Cramer’s studio, he absorbed the technical and business aspects of photography. Cramer also introduced him to pros working in other photographic veins, and the resulting income gave him the freedom to take time off for personal projects. Those experiences led him to a realization that changed the course of his life. “The epiphany I had,” he recalls, “was that the photographer I wanted to be was not the photographer I had learned to be or was. I had a lot more to learn, a lot more to practice.” His epiphany spurred a move to New

York City, where he expanded his repertoire by exploring different genres, both as a shooter and as an assistant to photographers working at the highest levels of documentary, fashion and editorial image making. He also got in touch with friends from his student days who had gone on to work in international development in Africa. When one of them suggested he travel to Juba, in southern Sudan, to work on a media project that the O ce of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) had expressed tentative interest in supporting, Farber seized the opportunity: “I sold my car, I sublet my apartment, bought a ton of new equipment and Pelican cases to make sure my gear got

there and back, and I just got on a plane.” The leap of faith paid off when he not only completed a project for the UNHCR but also found work with other NGOs in the area. But this isn’t simply a romantic story of fate rewarding zeal with success. Farber’s efforts succeeded because his contacts in the world of international development had helped him gain an understanding of how NGOs function in the developing world. “You need to speak the language of international development to work with these organizations in these places,” he says. After deciding to go to Sudan to pursue work on the UNHCR project, Farber put his knowledge of NGOs into play. “I e-mailed every other organization doing NOv/DeC 2010 | americanphotomag.com 79

work in Juba,” he says, “and basically said, ‘I’m coming to do this project for UNHCR, and if I can help you with your media, let me know.’” He notes that an element of rivalry for attention between organizations can work to the advantage of photographers trying to nail down a project: “They can be very competitive for funding, and when they hear that one is going to do a media campaign, a lot of times they think, ‘Well, we’d better do one, too.’” Becoming part of the development community on the ground was also vital to Farber’s success in working with NGOs— especially when traveling to areas where small staffs had been living and working together over long periods and formed a tight-knit group. You have to “put the cam-

Kids play with kites they’ve made from plastic bags in the Goz Amer camp. The children were babies and toddlers when they left Darfur; some were born here. Their community has spent seven years in the limbo of refugee status. “It’s a major issue to have an entire generation growing up in these camps,” says Farber.

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eras down and have some fun and make those connections and get in and become part of the community,” he says. This isn’t just social advice: Being part of the group can bring photographers access to NGO resources such as local transportation and contacts, as well as opportunities to tag along when NGO staff members respond to unfolding events. And being clued in on the internal politics of the NGO sector doesn’t hurt, either. Farber recounts an early misstep when he arrived to meet the local staff of the International Organization for Migration in Juba wearing a UNHCR hat: “It was like showing up to introduce yourself to the Mets wearing a Yankees hat,” he says. “They just took one look at me and they didn’t want anything to do with me.”

Photographer for Hire Photographers working with NGOs need to have a strong understanding of their subjects, their audience and the ways in which the organization is trying to connect the two. “If you don’t understand the bigger picture of it,” Farber says, “I think you don’t do enough service to these organizations as clients.” He stresses the importance of being knowledgeable about the political, social and economic factors in play, especially when working with multimedia. “When you move from photography into multimedia,” he says, “you have to be a reporter, to be an interviewer. You have to be ready to not just ask people why they’re sad. You have to understand what the relevance of the issue is, not just the suffering. In a par-

ticular issue, do we understand what the real complexities are? I think that’s why a lot of multimedia photojournalism now all seems sort of similar. It’s compassionate, it’s heartfelt—and it’s not that informed.” Farber used the month he had in the capital of Chad before the project to hang out with leaders in the Darfurian diaspora and just listen to them talk over the situation. “It was like living inside of a reference manual, living inside of a textbook,” he says. Jonathan Loeb explains how crucial this kind of preparation was from the perspective of the NGO. “We needed someone who had a really great eye for the photography and also had a great eye for the filming,” he says, “but we were also looking for someone above and beyond that traditional role, who

Chris farber’s paCking list For trips to East and Central Africa, Farber packs his equipment into hard-sided Pelican 1510, 1610 and 1200 cases, then uses them to create a makeshift workstation in the field (above, right). Bags: Lowepro CompuTrekker Plus AW; Crumpler 6 Million Dollar Home; The North Face duffel bag; Lowepro S&F Light Belt and add-ons; two Domke pouches. And, says Farber, “Ziploc bags are super important to separate everything and keep dust off of things.” sLRs: two Canon EOS 5D bodies; Canon EF 28mm f/1.8 USM, EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, EF 16-35mm f/2.8L II USM, EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM lenses; 85mm UV filter. Farber also brings sensor-cleaning swabs and gaffer’s tape, which he uses to seal his camera bodies to keep dust out of spaces around buttons, dials and other camera parts. CamCoRdeRs: two Panasonic AG-HVX200 camcorders; Canon HV20 (for backup); Century Precision Optics 0.6X Wide Angle Adapter Lens; Petrol Mini Hood; Petrol Rain Cover. Farber also brings neutral density filters for times when it’s so bright out that the camcorders’ internal ND filters aren’t sufficient to prevent overexposure. Lighting: two Canon Speedlites 220EX; Litepanels Micro LED panel; two 36-inch Calumet reflector disc with white diffusing and gold/silver zebra reflective surfaces; Impact 42-inch Collapsible Circular Reflector Disc in Soft Gold, White. Generally employed in daylight hours, the lighting Farber uses is usually combined with bright sunlight, often to fill strong shadows. ComputeRs: two Apple PowerBook G4s; 17-inch MacBook Pro; Antec Notebook Cooler audio geaR: Marantz Professional PMD660 recorder; Sony MDR-7506 headphones; Beyerdynamic M58 mic; RØDE NTG-2 shotgun mic; Audio-Technica AT899 lavalier mic; 6-foot XLR cable; Sennheiser circumaural headphones; two Sennheiser ew1000 G2 receivers; two ew1000 G2 transmitters; two Sennheiser MKE2-5 lavalier mics; two CL 100 1/8-inch male mini jack to XLR cables

© M AT T H E W B O W L B Y; © C H R I S FA R B E R

T H I S S P R E A D , F R O M L E F T: © C H R I S FA R B E R ;

suppoRts: Manfrotto 681B Monopod; Manfrotto 488RC4 Ball Head; Manfrotto 3021BPRO tripod; Manfrotto 501 Pro Video Fluid Head; Manfrotto 555B Leveling Center Column; two Manfrotto 5001B Light Stands; Davis & Sanford Pro Steady Stick poweR: “Three-way outlet splitters are very important,” says Farber, “because a lot of times you need to recharge your batteries in shared NGO compounds where you’re only going to get one outlet because you’re sharing a power strip.” In addition to plenty of batteries, Farber packs these power devices: Anton Bauer ElipZ 10K; two Apple Portable Power Adapters 65W; Apple 85W MagSafe Power Adapter; General Brand ST-3000 Voltage Converter; three Enercell 150W Power Inverters; Brunton Solo personal power plant. stoRage: Farber carries multiple high-speed memory cards and a Lexar FireWire card reader to download and make three backups of his image files every night. His backup devices: two SmartDisk FireLite 80GB hard drives; two FirmTek SeriTek/2EN2 eSATA dual-bay enclosures with a terabyte drive in each drawer. Plus plenty of video cassettes: “We were always sending the tapes back to a secure location in the capital. Someone would keep copies in their backpack so that if we had to just get on a helicopter and leave, one guy had all our tapes.”

the ngo Crib sheet Considering work with an NGO in the developing world? Here’s Farber’s checklist of things that ought to be on your radar. Fitness Working in the developing world can be physically demanding, so in addition to consulting a doctor about immunizations and other preventive measures, you need to be in good health. In places like refugee camps, Farber explains, “you lose a lot of weight, simply from not eating and working a lot and getting sick. So you have to be in shape going into it.” There’s a mental health aspect too. Farber points to exhaustion, lack of privacy, uncomfortable working conditions, cultural differences and being with the same people for a long time as sources of stress to be ready for. seCuRity pRotoCoLs While most places where NGOs work are pretty safe, some are not. In areas that are unstable or where there’s a military presence, it’s important to know and follow U.N. and NGO security protocols and stay abreast of dangerous conditions or developments. A good starting point is the U.N. guide “Basic Security in the Field—Staff Safety, Health and Welfare,” available at dss.un.org/BSITF. go Bags If you’re working in a potentially unstable region, have a “go bag” ready in case you need to make a quick exit. In addition to personal items and travel documents, keep backups of your work in it. Farber points out that if a crisis arises and you end up being airlifted out of the region, you may never get back there again. Which brings us to... insuRanCe and Customs Insure your gear for international travel (Farber uses Taylor & Taylor). Some professional organizations offer equipment insurance discounts. You’ll also need international health insurance that covers medical evacuation—ask the NGO you’re working with to put you on their plan. Before heading to the airport, Farber calls U.S. Customs to let them know he’s coming in with a large amount of gear. He arrives with a detailed inventory, including serial numbers and dollar values, and makes sure he gets the appropriate stamps on all relevant documents. Getting the right documentation on your way out can prevent both hassles in foreign airports and import charges when you come home. 82 americanphotomag.com | nov/Dec 2010

Right to pRivaCy The U.N.’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights asserts a right to privacy, which NGOs uphold. Talk to the organization you’re planning to work with about how this may limit the circumstances in which you can take photographs, especially if your subjects are children. Rules about photographing them are usually more restrictive. goveRnment peRmits Photography isn’t legal everywhere. You may need special permission from government authorities. Consult your NGO about the requirements in the region and whether it can obtain the appropriate documents for you. Cash Where you’re going, there’s probably no ATM, and traveler’s checks may not be accepted, either. Bring cash, and make sure you’re prepared for the way financial matters are handled at your destination. in-kind payments If you’re working on a personal project in the developing world and are not employed by an NGO, you may still be able to do a little work for organizations in exchange for resources such as local transportation, accommodations and food. Photographers who have good relationships with NGOs can ask to be put on the manifests for U.N. flights. CapaCity BuiLding One way that NGOs contribute to beneficiary communities is by helping people in the community acquire new skills. If you work with translators or assistants, show them how to handle a camera or audio equipment, or teach them computer abilities. That experience can lead to temporary but lucrative jobs for them if international media organizations show up later. CopyRight and use Most NGOs expect to have unlimited rights to use the work photographers do for them. On the other hand, many do not ask for the copyright to the images, leaving photographers free to use the work in book projects, exhibitions or Web sites. It’s considered unethical to present yourself as a photojournalist when interviewing subjects for work that will be part of an NGO project.

could act as a director as well. And it had to be someone who very much understood the objective of the project specifically and had an understanding of the conflict in general.” While photojournalists working with a media organization often rely on editors and writers to help give their work direction and put it in the context of other relevant reporting, NGOs tend to provide much less editorial support or oversight, relying on the photographer’s knowledge of the subject matter and ability to create a narrative about it. “When you work for an NGO,” Farber says, “you basically have to create a media campaign for them.” Although very large organizations have in-house media staff, the more numerous small groups “are not going to have a media person, a dedicated person who’s going to look at your work, who’s going to go over it and find what you’re missing and what you need to go back and revisit topically or aesthetically to make sure that they have all their needs met,” he says. “You become the media expert for an organization. It’s not enough to just create the content in the field.”

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That’s not the only distinction Farber sees between photojournalism and NGO work. “The photo industry has started to use the idea of being a photojournalist and shooting for NGOs interchangeably,” he says. “The truth is that they’re not interchangeable.” Working for an NGO, he says, “you’re a photographer for hire by what is essentially a company. You’re not there as an independent journalist.” In some ways, the networking that’s necessary to get the work and to do it well also contributes to this lack of independence. Farber compares it to the experience of covering a conflict while embedded with the military: “You’re just in a place where everything you know and understand about the situation is being told from your interaction with that development community.” But if NGO media work isn’t traditional photojournalism, Farber emphasizes that it’s not PR either. “The work still should be true and it should have integrity,” he says. “It shouldn’t just be to make an organization look good or make a group of people who are suffering look desperate and needy.”

Forging the Connection Ultimately, in any genre, it’s the quality of the photographer’s communication with his subjects that proves most vital. When the team from 24 Hours for Darfur showed up at each camp, its first step was to sit down with community leaders to explain the purpose of the organization’s work and ask for their blessing. “There was really a sense of reverence for the way that we were approaching making a connection,” Farber says, “that we were coming in and asking permission.” Farber also discovered that shooting video became a key part of the process of connecting with his subjects. On his earlier African projects, he recalls, “I was shooting video and trying to shoot photographs, put one set of cameras down and shoot with the other, and it proved to be impossible.” By the time he started work on Darfurian Voices, he had realized that the process of conducting video interviews could serve as an icebreaker as well as a way of expanding his knowledge of the subjects before he picked up his SLR. “Everything in this project began with the video, and that ended up being a real asset when it came to the photography,” he

Above: Community leaders convene in Touloum camp. Opposite, from top: Students dig up earth to make bricks for a school addition in Gaga camp; a man repairs his roof in Kounoungo camp; a 13-year-old girl in Goz Amer talks to Farber about the violence she suffered as a 6-year-old in Darfur.

explains. “There’s just so much more give and take in the interview process than there can be in the photography process. The video created so much context to what was going on in those camps through the interviews that it was like doing four days of intensive research on a neighborhood before you go and photograph it—it really helped.” When communication is handled well, Farber says, “a lot of people really get—even when they have acute needs—what you’re doing there, and they become part of the process. They invite you into their homes and their lives, and you need to connect with that person, really just person to person. That is the point where the separation between photojournalism versus PR versus working for NGOs just disappears, because you’re just there as someone who is creating photographs, creating a connection to people.” ap NOv/DeC 2010 | americanphotomag.com 83

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Students in FirstLight workshops focus on more than just f-stops and shutter speeds—they also delve into the fundamental craft of storytelling | BY AIMEE BALDRIDGE “Follow me! And make it snappy!” Jay Dickman shouts with a broad grin, calling out the window of his SUV to the woman at the wheel of the car next to

86 americanphotomag.com | NOV/DEC 2010

him. Moments later the Pulitzer Prize– winning photographer is leading a small convoy of vehicles up a winding mountain road to catch the evening light from an overlook in Dubois, Wyoming. It’s the first night of Dickman’s FirstLight workshop here, and the instructors and students had planned to meet up after dinner for a slideshow of each other’s work. When the rainy afternoon gave way to an especially gorgeous sunset, Dickman switched gears to give his students a hands-on lesson in one of the workshop’s guiding principles: When it comes to photography, all plans are subject to change. But Dickman’s students have come to Dubois to tackle more difficult tasks than capturing an exceptional sunset. They’ve signed up to work hard, get an immersion course in a new media language, and tread journalistic ground that is usually the domain of seasoned pros. Instead of

sticking to workshop standards like camera and lighting techniques, FirstLight Dubois participants are learning how to tell stories through the audio slideshow, a form that has become a mainstay of journalistic outlets such as the New York Times Web site. In an era of ubiquitous imagery, Dickman says, if photographers want to engage their audiences, it’s imperative that they learn how to construct a narrative. “We’ve got the most sophisticated audience ever in history, in terms of visuals,” he explains. “If someone turns to a National Geographic page or a Web page, you’ve got about half a second of time to engage them. So you have to do it on multiple levels.” Above: Workshop participant Gerald S. Meiling photographed a fisherman at Brooks Lake, near Dubois, Wyoming, during an exploratory shooting session at a FirstLight workshop in July.

© G.S. MEILING

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Dickman developed the idea for FirstLight workshops in 2002 with Becky Dickman, his wife and collaborator in all things photographic, to give students an opportunity to go in-depth with documentary subjects and create works of lasting value. (After being named as an Olympus Visionary that same year, Dickman impressed the company with the workshop’s concept, and Olympus has been an enthusiastic sponsor of the effiort since the initial FirstLight workshop in Auvillar, France, in 2003.) The Dickmans seek out small, tight-knit communities where they can tap into local networks. They create a list of potential assignments in advance by finding compelling profile subjects who are willing to let photographers spend a substantial amount of time with them. “They’ve got to be almost like what I’d be looking for with a Geographic assignment,” says Dickman. “The assignments are something I’d want to shoot.” As soon as the students arrive, they meet with instructors to select from Dickman’s list of subjects—which may range from a bronze artist to a ranch cowboy to the denizens of a popular tavern—and get to work. At the end of each workshop, selections of the students’ work are shown at a public event and published in a FirstLight magazine, to be sold in the community to benefit a local organization.

The July workshop was FirstLight’s third session to incorporate multimedia work. But whether using multimedia or photography only, the program’s objectives have always been the same: to develop the photographer’s eye through the process of crafting a visual narrative and to hone skills through daily critiques. The participants spend several days shooting the same subject and receive daily feedback from the instructors. “I love it when somebody has the opportunity to go back out to the same assignment and continue shooting it,” says Dickman, “because then they’ll take that refreshed eye, that new energy, and apply them.” The effiectiveness of this approach is borne out by the students’ observations: “By that last Saturday,” participant Chad Wilcox says, “almost every image I made was technically correct, the compositions were much better, and I

F R O M TO P : © S K E E T E R H A G L E R ; © T H E W R I T E H O U S E /J O H N H . O S T D I C K

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Above: FirstLight director Jay Dickman gives a workshop student a hands-on demonstration of a filtering technique. Right: John H. Ostdick’s atmospheric shot of downtown Dubois.

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Students at the FirstLight Dubois workshop used Soundslides software to assemble their audio recordings and images into multimedia shows. To structure their stories, they used what Jay Dickman calls a “narrative template,” which employs six sequential elements: establishing the setting, introducing characters, introducing an issue or problem, showing details to create intimacy, showing moments that bring energy to the piece, and then closing the story. To make sound and images work in tandem, the instructors emphasize, they shouldn’t be matched too closely or literally. As instructor Bert Fox explains, words and images succeed differently in telling a story, so the sound and image sequences should be able to stand on their own, while creating a combined effect greater than the sum of their parts.

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More advice from FirstLight instructors: • Start with interviews, then develop a shot list based on them. • Photograph your subjects on more than one occasion.ff • Try to shoot horizontal; that orientation works best in slideshows. • Capture both wide and close-up shots in each setting. • Record a little room tone—the background sounds of your setting—to fill audio gaps. • Keep the tonal qualities of your images as consistent as possible. • Let complex shots stay on screen longer. • Don’t use similar shots in different segments of the slideshow. • Pick your protagonists, and don’t include too many images of peripheral figures. • If you start obsessing over a particular shot or narrative element, take a break and come back to your editing later.

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was coming back with more keepers. The primary thing was understanding what I could have improved and then going back and getting it.” Dickman has assembled a group of FirstLight instructors whose collective knowledge and experience are hard to overstate. Lending their expertise to the Dubois session were Bert Fox, Charlotte Observer director of photography and former National Geographic magazine picture editor; Dave Harp, photographer and former American Society of Media

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Photographers president; and Jay Kinghorn, Adobe Photoshop certified expert trainer, who worked with students on capturing sound and using multimedia software. And of course there’s Dickman himself, a longtime photojournalist and National Geographic photographer. Throughout the week, students shuttle between their work in the field and editing sessions with instructors at the base camp at Dubois’s Headwaters Arts & Conference Center, learning to conduct interviews, develop story angles, create shot lists, and make images and audio work in tandem. Most of the students work in pairs, documenting their subjects going about their days and shooting portraits and details of the subjects’ environments. To

muLTImEDIA WOrKSHOPS These organizations offer workshops in multimedia storytelling: Participants construct narratives with a combination of still images, audio recordings, and sometimes video. Although most multimedia workshops assume or require proficiency in still photography, different workshops are geared toward different types of participants. Some are designed for students and emerging professional photographers, others are for working photographers looking to expand their skills, and still others accommodate amateur photographers and semi-pros. Discuss your shooting experience and expectations with the instructors before signing up. Many workshops have an application process. FirstLight Workshop firstlightworkshop.com Offers a small number of workshops each year; geared toward serious amateur photographers and students maine media Workshops mainemedia.edu Offers numerous workshops year-round for various levels from amateur to professional mediastorm mediastorm.com Presents several workshops year-round, many of which are geared toward professional photographers summit series of photography Workshops photographyatthesummit.com Hosts the annual Aurora Multimedia Workshop for advanced photographers and professionals Knight Digital media center series knightdigitalmediacenter.org Offers workshops throughout the year for working journalists eddie adams Workshop eddieadamsworkshop.com A prestigious annual workshop for students and emerging professionals; selects a few participants for multimedia training national press photographers association nppa.org Offers several workshops each year, mainly geared toward professionals and students; aspiring photographers are also welcome

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Above: FirstLight participant Michael Slider’s photograph of a horse corral at the CM Ranch, included in one of the multimedia projects that students created in a week-long workshop.

conduct the audio interviews, each team develops questions together, then splits photographing and interviewing duties. “Everybody! One and a half hours until deadline!” Bert Fox calls out. It’s 1:30 p.m. on the last day, and the Headwaters feels more like a newsroom than a classroom, with students and instructors hunched in front of laptops making final edits to their multimedia shows. That evening, after the Headwaters opens its doors to the public, the audience watches the presentations with rapt attention, responding as if on cue to their creators’ careful arrangements of sound and images with chuckles and thoughtful expressions. Their reactions attest to FirstLight’s success in teaching its students the key purpose of documentary photography— and the approach that sets it apart from other photographic genres. As participant Greg Lansing observed, rather than emphasizing the photographer’s ideas, “it’s about relating somebody else’s story.” AP

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Celebrating the Photographic Vision

November 5-7, 2010

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© lArry Fink

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Enjoy a dynamic presentation by this artist whose work has appeared in Vanity Fair, GQ, The New York Times Magazine and the Modern Museum of Art.

First Friday 6-9 pm, Free Visit our 27 resident artists in their studios, watch glassblowing demos and enjoy light refreshments at this awesome open house!

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—The New York Times

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According to the U.S. Government, women should take sufficient levels of folic acid (400 micrograms/day) during pregnancy to help prevent neural tube defects and reduce the risk for cleft lip and palate. When folic acid is taken one month before conception and throughout the first trimester, it has been proven to reduce the risk for neural tube defects by 50 to 70 per cent. Be sure to receive proper prenatal care, quit smoking and drinking alcohol and follow your health care provider’s guidelines for foods to avoid during pregnancy. Foods to avoid may include raw or undercooked seafood, beef, pork or poultry; delicatessen meats; fish that contain high levels of mercury; smoked seafood; fish exposed to industrial pollutants; raw shellfish or eggs; soft cheeses; unpasteurized milk; pâté; caffeine; and unwashed vegetables. For more information, visit www.SmileTrain.org. Smile Train is a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit recognized by the IRS, and all donations to Smile Train are tax-deductible in accordance with IRS regulations. © 2010 Smile Train.

AMERICAN PHOTO

Leather Case

Turn Your Used Camera Gear Into Cash!

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Phone: 970 - 577 - 0892

www.skytoptrading.com

The Last “Can of Air” You’ll Ever Have To Buy!

New DataVac® Electric Duster,® the high-performance “green” alternative to throwaway “canned-air” camera/ computer dusting products. All-steel, built to last, no condensation... Costs less than 5 “cans of air”!

www.UsedCameraBuyer.com 866-735-5444 ext. 9

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Call for info: 1-800-822-1602 www.DataVacElectricDuster.com Metropolitan Vacuum Cleaner Co., Inc., Suffern, NY 10901

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Realize the unlimited potential of each image! A fine arts lab, focused on customized jobs to meet the immediate needs of the artist, as well as insuring the archival life of prints. Visit us at www.autumncolor.com or call 800-533-5050.

Light-weight, compact holster means you can leave that big heavy camera bag in the car! Complete 8-part system includes: RigidCase tm Camera Holster (with belt loop), Detachable Lid, Adjustable Shoulder Strap, Camera Retention Strap, Accessory Pouch (for battery, lens cloth, etc.), Lens Case and Filter Wallet (for two filters). See the Video! Skytop Trading 970-577-0892 Estes Park CO 80517

www.cameraholster.com

Protect Protect

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The new Rogue Wallet does BOTH. Fits into your front pants pocket with style. Only $29.99

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AMERICAN PHOTO

Holiday 25 Custom Greeting Cards • Your photo & message • Free envelopes & shipping

Contact Chip Parham The

212-779-5492 or email:

Rogue WalleT, the only wallet with a revolutionary

[email protected]

curved edge, is designed to fit comfortably in your front pocket. PLEASE NOTE: It is impossible for us to verify all the claims of advertisers, including product availability and existence of warranties. To confirm that an advertiser is authorized to sell a product, we suggest you contact the manufacturer directly.

HURRY! Don’t wait until the last minute.

simplecard.com/amphoto simplecard™ is a division and trademark of Modern Postcard. ©2010 Modern Postcard. All rights reserved.

Learn more or order online at

roguewallet.com

or call 800-786-1768, ext. 14.

AMERICAN PHOTO

Camera Holster System

parting shot

ENGULFED

© e R I c G AY/A P

The explosion of BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig on April 20 initiated the worst oil spill in U.S. history—and the biggest story of the year. Last June Associated Press journalists Rich Matthews and Eric Gay brought back unique views of the damage: from underwater. “[The oil] sits on top of the water in giant pools, and hangs suspended 15 feet beneath the surface in softball-sized blobs,” wrote Matthews, the only diver willing to go in without a hazmat suit. “No fish, no bird, no turtle would ever be able to clean this off of themselves.” Gay took this photo of Matthews with a Canon EOS-1D Mark IV. Exposure was 1/400th second at f/5.0.

100 americanphotomag.com | nov/dec 2010

ANYTHING ELSE IS A COMPROMISE

CX CARBON FIBER TRIPOD • Lighter, stronger 100% pull-wound carbon fiber. • Created, designed and engineered in Italy.

manfrotto.us

[email protected]

The Samsung NX100. With the lens that changes everything.

ISO Aperture Shutter Speed White Balance

IIntroducing t d i th the h S Samsung i-Function lenses. A compact, interchangeable lens camera system, the Samsung NX100 will transform camera enthusiasts into experts. Just one push of a button on the i-Function lens lets you change settings instantly while previewing them in real time on the brilliant AMOLED screen. Revolutionizing the way you take pictures. Another way Samsung is Dedicated to Wonder.

©2010 Samsung is a registered trademark of Samsung Electronics Corp., Ltd.