The price for letting the world look through your eye

Most days are filled with research and preparation on the latest, but in many ways my oldest project, The Great Ape Diaries. One element of that project will be to work with award-winning documentary film-maker Skye Fitzgerald. In our last meeting Skye discussed a film technique he would like to use. One where you, the viewer, will share my perspective as I create images, in the digital diary posts we make. Skye suggested I watch War Photographer, a film by Swiss author, director and producer Christian Frei.

Frei followed photographer James Nachtwey over the course of two years into the wars in Indonesia, Kosovo, Palestine, and Nachtwey's pursuit of poverty and famine, ostensively as a by-products of war. In addition to an exterior perspective on what Nachtwey was experiencing, Frei used special micro-cameras attached to James Nachtwey’s 35mm still cameras. The approach surrenders a feeling of not just being in his shoes, but in his 'other' eye. I shoot this way, with both eyes open, a technique a taught myself years ago--the better to see the world moving in and around the frame. The documentary is a decade old, but the personal "in-sight" point of view or POV remains fresh and refreshing, even in this iPhone Youtube consumed world.

That POV is what Skye is interested in working out with me as we create The Great Ape Diaries - we'll discuss that more over the coming months on this blog. Our advantage of course is a wealth of new small HD video cameras like the Hero Pro. Still the challenge remains creativity and simplicity of communication, and that was the reward in watching Frei's War Photographer.

After some thought about the Academy Awards nominated documentary, I don't think it can be discussed outside Frei's microcam technique, although most online reviews and discussions are determined. Most of the online debate after the film debuted in 2001 were focused there, negatively and positively, on the age old reportage argument regarding war/tragedy: Is the photographer/journalist a cold and cynical chronicler, or should their humanity step forward and intervene in what they are bearing witness to? Or at the least step away from feasting on the pain and suffering of others? Words like vampirism, vulture, scavenger and leech were peppering the comments. Nachtwey's apparent calm translates as callous, his thoughtfulness as heartlessness, these have always been the leading volleys of critics. Unfortunately, to bolster their objections, there is one elongated scene in the German offices of Stern magazine where editors discuss an upcoming layout of Nachtwey's images in terms that translate into the hands of cynics; describing Nachtwey's horrors of war black and whites with adjectives like, "Fantastic" and "Ya, this great, terrific."

The micr0-cam I think does yield more than just a POV on the images Nachtwey creates, but on Nachtwey himself. As Skye has said to me, "I want to get in your head as you're back creating these photos." And any careful observation of the War Photographer I think does that. We, the viewer, have 96 mins of self-determination about what a war-photographer-kind-of-human James Nachtwey is or isn't. That kind of exposure causes me pause going forward on The Great Ape Diaries. A bit of fear. There is a price for letting the world look through your eye.

One of the last comments Nachtwey gives into the camera, and there are remarkably few, is regarding his role as image-maker in such conditions, "It's something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allowed genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition, I will have sold my soul."

Again, critics may attack in their belief that "genuine compassion" begets involvement beyond the images, and Nachtwey's words are little more than hollow excuses, his soul was sold. But having met the man in an unflattering state, he is paying a price, and the images are a price to know reality. Nachtwey says earlier in the documentary about the genocide in Rwanda, "It was like taking the express elevator to hell." Never be so naive as to think that ride has no price. Having visited the suburbs of hell myself on another scale - no one else can fully judge the price.

*****

Finally this note. The sound track is as subtle and wonderfully done as anything you may never notice, but should. As someone said, "One of the most profound aspect I found in this documentary, is the use of sound. I think it's one of the best, if not most calculated sound editing ever done, since the film [is] supposed to focus on images."

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."

A few peanuts of wisdom

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

in Australia."

- Charles Schultz

Reacquainting with the road

Thirty plus hours each way, two weeks on the ground, fish market on bicycles, Kashmiris brothers selling shawls, one successful assignment, fifteen minutes with one of the rarest cats on earth and close with a TV talk show – it’s been a very long time since my life looked like that. I’ll admit, it took me no time to be mainlining it again. I'm a travel junkie. It was a fix long in coming. It was good to get reacquainted with the road.

Still just settling back into Portland so this is short – many more details and images to come over the following weeks – I missed something this past decade that I had become very skilled in hiding away. This unexpected, hastily planned trip to India, for friend Shyamal’s wedding, and a collection of wanderings before and after the wedding vividly shined a light on the magic that only travel is. It threw me back into photography, filming and writing and thinking about the three in a way I couldn’t have imagined, and in reality could not have eased into as I had planned. A bit over a month ago a bought all new gear, forced my brain, eyes and fingers to reacquaint themselves in this dance of creativity that seemed so intimate not so many years ago. But the reality is the "reacquaintance" could only take place on the road, where I have always been most at home.

I’ve only walked in the door and am hungry return to the road; wash a load of clothes, review 1,500 odd images, a couple hours of film, sort through my field notes and then get back out there. I’m completely set to again live at tiger speed. What I am completely convinced of is I never ever again want to live at Blackberry speed. While passing through SFO airport earlier on the return, I happily stood far right on the moving sidewalk and let everyone stream by – most staring at some digital device. I don’t want it, don’t need it.

When I began this journey over a quarter century ago I did so with the hunger to have each day be a clear punctuation mark in a long time line of living fully, for the past decade days have merged and gotten lost in seamless monotony. The road reminded me everyday had a value, a memory retained, experience worth living. This is the most alive I have been in years.

Now, off to plow through a sea of bits and bytes that now assemble my perception of the world via the 7D’s shutter button.

Photo (c) J. Loren

Perspectives

Here is another wonderful animation to share. Very different from the Kudan animation I posted a couple months ago. The below work is a captivating perspective on the idea of a book, and words, and an interpretation of moving through a space. The light throughout is wonderfully created - worth watching multiple times.



Discovering this piece comes on the heels of a couple hours scrutinizing the quality of light and reflective surfaces in the latest Pixar film UP. They have become masters down in Emeryville at bring life to two-dimensions through reflective surfaces and indirect lighting. If I were currently teaching photography and/or film-making I would spend half the class immersing students in great animation, both variety and depth.

Stepping out of the monocular rut

The Ernst Haas quote I posted a few days ago, "I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new.", popped up again today when a friend sent a link to this short film "Kudan". It's a nine minute animated voyage through a different world. Voyages should be like that - journeys, perambulations in lands unfamiliar. I guess that's why I have always been passionate about exploring nature - a different world full of surprise that always awaits. Nature inevitably forces me to step out of my monocular rut. Other artists and art forms can do that as well, and I'm always delighted when I find an artist or work, in any medium, that pricks my perspective.

A quote I use in the early moments of a live presentation I do called, Wanderings on a Wild Planet, reads, "Life is not measured by the breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away." I am unapologetically selfishness about those take my breath away moments every day - I'm addicted. Yes, a life on Earth junkie. I can't imagine a more amazing place than this, Earth. Every several hours light spills upon it, magically, miraculously turning everything about me into something new and full of discovery - how frigg'n cool is that! Then, so our eyes don't become dulled, impassive to the magic, the light fades and goes out; left are but the faintest fireflies twinkling in the dimensionless firmament, reminders that the light will return.

Photography is very tricky - it's about seeing, with two eyes, a richly influenced multi-dimensional world, framing it, refining it through a single viewfinder and lens (using just one eye), then creating an image to be viewed once again in multi-dimensions. When done exceptionally well, truly an heroic feat! Mostly we are awash with thoughtless, poorly executed, mountains of mediocrity - which does dull our eyes and makes us impassive to the magic. So it vital to voyage through a different world, to prick our perspective.

The film below, Kudan, is wonderful because it is not what I would have imagined - until now there were no people-headed cows or word tubes in my world. There are fractal clouds, but not imagined in the same way. So, today, Kudan, became part of a Friday afternoon's wonderful voyage.

"I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new."
--Ernst Haas

Searching for new perspectives

Cycling photography has now become one of my new challenges - but cycling photography is and isn't like a lot of sports photography. Most sports are confined by the dimensions of some preordained space - a field, a court, the pitch, or the pool. What ever the imprisonment, it helps get ‘the shot’ for a hungry media, but seriously strains at the coattails of creativity. Let’s face it a lot of daily sports photo coverage is insanely boring – celluloid clichés (alright, now they are digital derivations).

Cycling in most of its incarnations has one enormous photo advantage - it is played out through the villages and countryside of the world – anything with a road or road-like surface is fair game. As a Frenchman once asked me while I was cycling in the French Pyrenees, “don’t you have high mountain roads in your country?” yes, I explained, but we don’t pave a road over every goat trail up there like you do. Photographically this yields a wealth of opportunities. What other sport enables you to cast your actors in an amphitheater of soaring granite and glacial sheets, or against the sun washed stone of a thousand year old Tuscan village. The disadvantage – they never stop moving, never.

The Pros (cycling photographers) have the distinct advantage of a moto” – perched on the rear of a motorcycle with credentials to zoom in and about the peloton (cycling’s big group of riders) as well as venture a field for unique perspectives and return to catch the race action.

As one without benefit of ‘moto’ cycling photography has presented some new and interesting challenges to me. (I’ve also turned to my previous wildlife work for inspiration – there too the ‘game’ is played out in the uncontrollable arena of life.) Fortunately I have no editor sitting anxiously waiting for ‘the shot’ to grace the front page of the sports section or the fleeting lead web story for the day. That freedom gives me the liberty to take some chances – something I just don’t think photographers (regardless your experience) are willing to do – the hell with it, go take a chance, screw up a little, you just might strike gold – accidents are the birthplace of genius.

The Boston Globe posted some of the best photos from the recently completed Tour de France – as you can see, some cycling photo pros are trying to find that new perspective – enjoy.

Over on my cycling website – BicyclingNorthwest.com – I am co-sponsoring a bike photo contest with local Portland shop Pro Photo Supply and Canon cameras. I hope that photographers of all levels and approaches get creative – taking advantage of the millions of opportunities the bike, its infinite habitat and characters, to create some very cool images. Here’s a link to the 2009 Bike Photo Contest.