Searching for gorillas, not gravel roads

I have a friend who I cycle with regularly. His life is working successfully at being paid a handsome sum for a large international tech firm and avoiding anything that resembles work - this is his own admission not my summation - and et in as much cycling as skipping work will allow. On weekends when we make longer cycling days of it, a hundred miles or so, and more climbing than mountain goats do, we invariably end up on a road he thinks is 'good', invariably it is gravel. So we end up on our expensive carbon road bikes pedaling over gravel. Stupid. Why? Making life hard invites disaster - survive disaster it's adventure (which they then make into some cheesy reality show) - which he needs and has none of in the rest of his life. I think he looks at my career and wishes for a bit of that adventure cum disaster and hardship.

Years ago I was doing research for my first trip to document mountain gorillas in the highlands of the Central African Rift, the Virunga Mountains, where Rwanda, Uganda and then Zaire shared a steep, wet, green relationship. I was reading big mammal biologist George Schaller's The Year of the Gorilla in which he writes,

"Adventure implies hardships and accidents, which are usually the result of poor planning... Our expedition accomplished...what we set out to do without much trouble and,...without great effort."

I found myself reading that over and then over out loud. That made sense. Schaller got a heap of work done, work that eventually every mountain gorilla researcher and conservationist since, including Diane Fossey, has relied. The Virungas have enough gravel roads, neither Schaller nor I needed to look for them. In fact, we got over or around them as efficiently as possible, that left more time for discovering gorillas.

Over the years I have been asked repeatedly about the "struggle" and the sacrifice in becoming a photographer (now with success.) I know what they want to hear. They want an edge of horror, of pain, of suffering, something like what I recently read about Pablo Neruda:

At the age of 19, he set out to publish his first book. His family disapproved of his writing, so he chose a pen name: Pablo Neruda. He struggled to find a publisher. Eventually the Chilean Students' Federation agreed to publish the manuscript, but Neruda had to pay all the expenses. He said: "I had setbacks and successes every day, trying to pay for the first printing. I sold the few pieces of furniture I owned. The watch which my father had solemnly given me, on which he had had two little flags enameled, soon went off the pawnbroker's. My black poet's suit followed the watch. The printer was adamant and, in the end, when the edition was all ready and the covers had been pasted on, he said to me, with an evil look: 'No. You are not taking a single copy until you pay me for the whole lot.'"*

Heck, my first book came with a $15K advance, another $10K in corporate support, free airfares and four amazing years living in Australia and Papua New Guinea.

"without much trouble and,...without great effort." That's what I want to tell them. The plan wasn't super detailed, it allowed for adaptation and evolution, years following a twisting road through university bio classes taught me that. But it didn't include gravel roads. Struggle is stupid. Disaster is stupid. They waste time and time is precious if life is successful.

Recently I have begun to reconsider the struggle again, as I return my attention to mountain gorillas. One doesn't struggle traveling if you love traveling. One doesn't struggle writing if you love writing. One doesn't struggle learning a new language if you love learning and languages. Sure everything has a gravel patch, but you don't go looking for gravel roads.

*(His second book, published a year later, was a book of love poems: Veinte poemas de amor y una canción desperada (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, 1974). This book made the 20-year-old poet famous.)

Who holds the copyright to a picture taken by a monkey?

Interesting copyright thoughts in a short article about the macaque monkey picture I posted a few days ago in Always Better Lucky Than Good:

Who holds the copyright to a picture taken by a monkey?

Always Better Lucky Than Good

Crested black macaque smiles for his self-portrait while using the camera belonging to photographer David Slater in an Indonesian national park

Read more:

Sharp Isn't The Point

The more I wade into the deep end of the digital photo pool and the ping-pong pixel rhetoric that consumes folks, I'm mystified by one simple truth about photography - sharp isn't the point - communication is. It reminds me of a conference I attended twenty years ago. The speaker, a very savvy photo agency director/owner launched this question from the podium: "What business are you in?" The stock photo business was under siege from the upstart digital (royalty free) wave that had yet to spawn the tsunamis Getty and Corbis.

The answer - you and your creators (photographers) are in the Communication Business.

The Haiti earthquake disaster, remember that? Doing some global water research I ran across the above image by Emilo for AP appeared on WorldNews.com in a story about cholera in Haiti - is it razor sharp? Who cares. It's sharp enough where it needs to be. Sharp enough, that's the point. What it really does it does exceedingly well. It does all that it is suppose to do - rip your heart out. It reeks of pain and suffering - sharply - and that's all that matters.

LOOM - a brilliant "little" film

Every once in a while you see something that just makes you pause - a little piece of brilliance - such is Loom. Magical film-making. Maybe more magical film-thinking!

As the creators say on their website:

"But it’s the point of view that creates an intense relationship between the hunter and its victim. There is much more to explore, much more to feel if one takes the time to really experience the content of a split second."

Flooding Fiction

Yes, those are rushing Mississippi River flood waters - a torrent pouring virtually harmlessly into Lake Pontchatrain. No, no one is losing their home, business or life in front of them. Officials opened the Bonnet Carre Spillway a few days ago to prevent flooding of New Orleans, Baton Rouge and more importantly (in some folks minds) the endless number of chemical plants and oil refineries that edge the immediate shore behind the Levees between Baton Rouge and The Big Easy.

I'm in Louisiana to document the Mississippi River flood waters for National Audubon Society (more on why it's important to a bird group in a later posting.) Just saw a CNN report this morning from Morgan City, Louisiana - about 85 southwest of New Orleans. The reporter was standing in front of a old house I looked at yesterday, but decided not to photograph because it just wasn't all that dramatic, the flooding around its raised foundation. The owners were working, unrushed and jovial, to jack it up six feet to save it from possible rising waters. They told me they needed to do it anyway, save the place from future river rises (in this case the Atchafalaya River that rolls past waterfront Morgan City.) CNN put their reporter in hip-waders and had him stand in a foot of water with the house behind him reporting - it certainly had the visual feeling of impending doom - yet I know exactly where the camerman was standing - s/he and camera were plenty dry, as was the rest of Morgan City behind them. Good reporting or flooding fiction? Maybe just not the "whole" truth. Actually more the "misleading" truth by not showing the whole story. Oh well - the difference between media and journalism.

What was most frustrating is this is a network (CNN) that has its star anchor/journalist, Anderson Cooper, doing a spot on his nightly AC360 program in which he exposes others for not telling the truth, or "misleading" the truth. A bit hypocritical?

Undoubtedly there are people impacted by the most dramatic flooding of the Mississippi River since the record floods of 1927 (great book about that event - Rising Tide by John M. Barry) which created much of the levee building mess we are in today and altered the life of the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers, and ultimately the entire Mississippi Delta. And those people do indeed need there stories told. On a larger scale we need to be discussing now, while this is front and center in everyone's sights (thank you media hype) that this river, one of the three greatest river systems in the world, and worth more billions of dollars to this nation (in addition to sculpting much of its history, physically, politically and economically) needs help and attention.

A few peanuts of wisdom

"Don't worry about the world coming to an end today; it's already tomorrow

in Australia."

- Charles Schultz