Haiti via Rangefinder…

Anyone who spends any time shooting overseas will struggle with the ever-present variations of the “when should I shoot and when should I put the camera down” questions… As our planet shrinks, the ubiquity of digital cameras firmly takes hold, and the volume of visual images reaches saturation point, we’ll all need to weigh the cost/benefit of the images we seek to create. My friend Esther Havens has even begun speaking about this at conferences. Her presentation? “When to Put the Camera Down.”  The thesis of these questions is really one of purpose and interaction. How can we partner, come along side, make something together rather than take, gawk, and ultimately disengage…

Now, I have had the honor of traveling to Haiti twice this year. The first as a part of a team documenting small stories of rebuilding in an effort to help connect stateside donors with organizations that fly well below the radar of the national media. The second trip was to produce video content documenting water well repair, made to accompany Advent Conspiracy* related events this Christmas season. 

Both trips were specifically aimed at creating video content, so I had all the accoutrements you’d imagine. Steadicam, mics, audio recorder, tripod, slider, lenses, multiple camera bodies, boom poles, etc…the whole deal. Now, it takes a ton of gear to pull off even a small video shoot. But, the consequence of all this gear is that you tend to be a bit of a spectacle. I mean, the only way for a 6’3” blond haired white guy to stand out more in Port-au-Prince is to have full production equipment. Beyond that, I feel a bit trapped behind all of that gear. I feel walled off from really interacting, engaging, really meeting the people that I’ve been tasked with shooting. 

After I returned from my first Haiti trip, I found a little used 35mm rangefinder camera on ebay. It’s tiny, near silent, and just looks different in a sea of DSLRs. I guess I just really missed getting to interact with people. My camera has always been my passport into the lives of those I’m documenting and I just felt this connection broken by a digital wall of gear. I vowed that if/when I had the opportunity to go back, I would make space to make some images with nothing but myself and a little camera. That I would wander and interact with intentionality.

I think part of the danger of digital image making is the ease with which you can create such a staggering volume of content. Not because the content in and of itself is bad, but because it fosters a posture of near constant shooting. You are only limited by battery levels and the size of your memory cards. You can shoot and shoot and shoot without needing to stop (re: think). Something happens when you aren’t really curating moments anymore. Everything starts looking like a photograph, a scene. People become subjects-in-an-image-I’m-going-to-take instead of real people deserving of honor, respect, and thoughtful engagement. Digital imaging, sadly, can foster a drive-by mentality. The least we can do, as content creators, as guests, is to take the time to meet and really interact with those whose images we make.   

I remember sitting, years ago, in a fantastically ornate ballroom room in a hotel in Cambodia during the Angkor Photo Festival. I was listening to a conflict photographer talking about the pain he feels when he comes back home from an overseas assignment. He shook his head slowly as images of pain and suffering he’d taken flashed up on the presentation screen. He slowly wondered aloud, does any of this make any difference at all? Silence hung in the air. Then, with a crack in his voice, he said, “I hope I haven’t taken more than I have given…”

It was a heartbreaking moment for me, a 23 year old kid. I had just come in from shooting images of young children hanging dangerously close to the red light district of this small town. It was then, though perhaps unintentionally, that I began to chew on these questions. What is the point? What can be accomplished by visual media? To be honest, in all the traveling I’ve had the opportunity to do since then, those questions haven’t been lessened. If anything, they’ve intensified. But what has become clear is that the way I interact with people overseas is the most critical of endeavors. If I can make something with new friends, rather than take something from an unnamed “them,” then I can lay my head on my pillow at night…

For instance, on this last trip, we ended up in one of hundreds of impromptu Tent Cities talking about water needs with the “city” leaders. They walked us around showing us the staggering divide between what they had and what they needed. As we were walking, I spotted a guy, about my age, sitting at the entrance to his makeshift tent home. I stopped, passing off my steadicam rig to someone on our team. They kept walking. I introduced myself and struck up a conversation in broken french. His name is Maxime and as I guessed, he and I are the same age.

I sat on the dirt at the entrance to his home as he told me about his wife who died in the quake, showed me a picture. I showed him a picture of my wife. He asked if I had children. Not yet. “You should,” he said, continuing with a phrase I didn’t understand. I turned to Cody, our Haitian translator. “My daughter is beauty in these ashes,” he said. I turned back to Maxime and couldn’t find the words to respond. He took my hand and said, “Vraiment.” I asked if I could make a portrait. “Of course.” I took one photograph, shook his hand. He pulled me in for a quick hug and then we parted ways.

Maxime // Tent City // Port-au-Prince, Haiti 2010: 

What am I trying to say? Mostly, let’s, as people, really be in these moments together. I’ve just noticed that film, structurally, requires a different method of shooting. It imposes a sense of discipline/interaction that digital can allow you to ignore. Mostly through two things: you don’t have an infinite number of shots to take and you don’t have a screen to immediately look at. I’ve found that very deliberately choosing when to shoot and then looking the person in the eyes immediately after making an image [instead of a screen] makes all the difference in the world. 

So here are few images created on my last trip to Haiti, days 208-212 since the earthquake. I hope that they convey a sense of place.

All Ilford 3200asa b/w film. All made a little more slowly, with a little more subtle intention:

*[Advent Conspiracy is a beautiful idea. What if we spent the Christmas season engaging with each other, thoughtful interactions, presence instead of so many (unnecessary) presents. Then the money that’s been freed up can go towards providing clean water.] 

StreetPortraits: Harry Potter Edition

I am a sucker for large scale cultural events. I can’t help it. Parades, national holidays, World Cup, even concerts to some extent. I’m just interested in things that can draw so many disparate people together. Maybe it’s just that there is something that feels so liberating to be standing inside of something that is so clearly bigger than yourself. Nevermind that this particular cultural event was, well, a movie. 

Now, I have a special place for the “Midnight Premier” crowd. I must confess, I’ve waited in line for plenty of midnight premiers. Star Wars, the Matrix, even Lord of the Rings. It always feels a bit like the Island of Misfit Toys and I love that. It is like a night of role-reversal. Suddenly it is cooler to be a turbo fan, in costume, swishing through the theater… Devotion is the measure of social standing. 

One girl had a vintage suitcase that she really wanted to show me. Inside the suitcase? A dozen beautifully hand-crafted wands. Hand-carved, stained, whittled, complete with metal inlays. They looked incredible. She was there with her husband, a literature professor. They looked fantastic and were unabashed in their love for Harry Potter. They see themselves in the story.  

Another lady hand knit herself a Gryffindor scarf and came to the midnight premier by herself. She wore a cape and the lightening bolt. The interesting thing? She’s an oncological surgical resident at M.D. Anderson, arguably one of the very best cancer centers in the country. With what (little) time I’m sure she has outside of such a demanding job and she decided to spend some of it making her costume for a premier of a movie about a book she loves. 

Kids told us of their parents reading the very first Harry Potter books to them as bedtime stories when they were six or seven years old. They have literally grown up with these characters. 

In the grand scheme of things does this really matter? Probably not. But I guess that depends on what you think matters. What did I see last night? I saw community. I saw people drawn to something outside of themselves, I saw what happens when people engage with a story told well. We begin to see ourselves in a different way.

My friends Trae Stanley and Casey Grahm were there as well. They brought an audio recorder and a mic and managed to interview nearly everyone that we made portraits of. We’re all going to sit down and cut together a multimedia piece and present it at a later date. The interviews were pretty poignant, in fact. I think it will stand on its own once Potter-mania passes this weekend. 

For now, I just thought I’d show a few photos from our StreetPortraits: Harry Potter Edition. 

More to come…

Yeah, a kid came dressed as a Chicken, cause as he said, “When else are you going to get a free pass to wear a chicken costume?”

*If you care: We used a Profoto 600R in a backpack, with the head mounted on a boom pole. We just held up a grey bounce card behind the subject as a backdrop…

New York, Via Mobile

I’ve just returned from a pretty whirlwind, bi-coastal, three week, holy-crap-is-this-really-my-job kind of trip. I had the privilege of shooting for Jedidiah, a San Diego based clothing company, for the first week. We shot in Los Angeles, in Miami, and finally ended up in New York. It was an amazing few days and I’m sure that as we get closer to the collection release (Fall 2011!), you’ll start seeing media from the trip. 

That isn’t the point of this post, though. 

I spent almost two weeks in New York on this trip. I stayed long after the gig was over and spent time exploring on my own, connecting with overlapping circles of friends and colleagues, taking a few meetings, attending the Vimeo festival, and finally relaxing with Anne.  It was a pretty incredible, packed, tiring, exhilirating couple of weeks. Kind of like New York, I guess. 

I spent a surprisingly large amount of time without my “big” camera(s). It was the end of a week of 14 hour days of shooting. I guess I was just a little more methodical about when I decided to use them. Especially given that often I was with other guys who had their cameras with them. If there is anything I really don’t like, it is being in a pack of photographers :)

So, as a result, I made a pretty decent sized chunk of images with just my iphone, if at all. Some in passing, some on purpose. I didn’t really think much about it at the time, but it is interesting to look at them compiled now… I ended up shooting a bunch of G10 images as well as several rolls of 3200 asa Ilford in my rangefinder. I’ll post some of those at some point as well. I’m still in debriefing mode, so I’m sure I’ll post a bit more about the trip later, too.

For now: no reflection, no interpretation. Just New York via mobile:

*If you care* Gear used: iPhone 4 camera, ProHDR app (sometimes for capture, always for post), Autostitch app, and CS3 to resize and lay out the diptychs