The Insomniac's Sunrise
This is not your typical sunrise image but it’s one of the sunrise images I’m most proud of.
First light, Antarctica peninsula earlier this year - probably about four in the morning. Everyone still and sleeping.
I couldn’t sleep and went and sit on a rock on the edge of the water and just sat, alone. And listened to life. Ice cracking, penguins sleeping. Gentle whisper of the wind. The occasional pod of seals would swim by.
Eventually, light made her appearance and kissed me good morning. This is the sunrise that gave me all the feels.
Slices + Abstractions
There’s always work I do that doesn’t fit neatly into a box. It’s work that isn’t quite this…and isn’t quite that. But it’s work I love: scenes I see and moments that deserve my attention. So here’s a small post with some of those images. I’m going to call it Slices + Abstractions. Because that sounds properly pretentious….
The Power of Now
One of the things that I see most photographers of all levels struggling with has nothing to do with f-stops, mastering lighting, seeing, creating, competition, making a living, or any of the countless other “stress” factors that photographers seem to worry about. Rather, a trend that I notice time and time again—and I’ve admittedly fell victim to this trend myself frequently throughout my career—is the failure to simply recognize that things, in this moment—right now—are actually far better than you give the present moment credit for.
What do I mean by this? Let me give you an example.
Let’s take a fictional photographer—a fictional photographer that many of you may see bits and pieces of yourself in. I see parts of myself in this photographer as well. Let’s call this photographer Apollo.
Apollo wasn’t born a photographer. He was born a person who grew up with diverse interests and friends and a great deal of uncertainty about his place on this planet. At some point he discovered that he enjoyed photography and that made him happy. He liked the feeling of clicking the shutter and seeing his creations appear on the screen. They weren’t all winners—he had far more duds than masterpieces but he didn’t really care. He simply enjoyed the process of using this piece of technology to express a little sliver of his soul in a completed image. Those images brought out an artistic side in him that he never knew he had; he felt like they gave him some degree of purpose and the moments in which he was behind the camera and lens, creating, he felt more peaceful than most other times in his life.
But then something happened. He looked around and saw other photographers doing their own photography thing. These other photographers were creating their own images and sharing their own little slices of their souls. He saw that his images that he was creating didn’t really measure up to theirs: the other photographer’s images were clearly stronger. This made Apollo feel bad and his self-worth went down.
Not one to quit, he used this fact—that others were better than him—to push him to try to better himself. He said to himself “if I spend 20 hours a week on my photography instead of 10 hours a week” I’ll definitely get better and then I’ll be happy. So he did: he shifted around his life and found an extra ten hours a week and pretty quickly, he started seeing the fruits of his labour: his photography skills improved vastly and he got better and better.
A funny thing happened, however. Even as others were recognizing that Apollo’s photographs were getting stronger and stronger, Apollo still wasn’t happy. Sure his photographs were stronger, he thought, but when he looked around and saw that other photographers were getting in magazines and having exhibitions of their work and he wasn’t…well, that made him sad. “If only I could have my work published and have that big exhibition, then I will be happy!”, Apollo mused.
Fast forward a year. Apollo sent out countless portfolios to countless magazines and made meetings with various art venues. It took a lot of doing….a lot of frustration and cursing all the rejection notices that arrived monthly…but Apollo finally got his break. A magazine agreed to publish a small photo essay of his (and even gave him the cover!). The next month one of the most prestigious galleries in his city agreed to a weekend showing of his work: his first major exhibition!
At the exhibition, people sang his accolades. His work looked beautiful hung up and behind glass. At one point on opening night, someone approached him with the magazine that he was just in: they wanted him to sign the cover that he photographed.
Apollo signed the cover, but he was distracted. He was a little upset, truth be told, because he had just heard that his camera manufacturer choose a photographer he knew to be part of their sponsored team. He didn’t have a sponsor, and this made him sad.
A year later, after thousands and thousands more images that he crafted to perfection and through a lot of grim determination, Apollo got sponsored. He wasn’t enjoying creating these images as much any more because he wasn’t getting as many Facebook likes as he once did because social media algorithms kept changing, but he finally got a free lens in the mail, so that was something. His friends in the photography world were so proud of him but still Apollo wasn’t happy: he’d be happy, he thought, if he could just get onto National Geographic’s team. “They’re obviously flawed if they don’t choose me…look at the work I create!”.
********
The point of the above is pretty obvious. We, as humans, tend to live in states of being stuck in the past (“I could have been happy in life but I never had the money to go to photography school, so now I’ll suffer the rest of my life saying ‘what if’”), or looking ahead to the future as the elusive cure to being happy (“I’ll be satisfied when xyz happens”.).
Neither mindset—living buried in the past or placing happiness as a conditional future state objective—is a healthy way to live, generally, or to approach your photography.
Why? Because all you have is NOW.
What is now and why is important to recognize that you have it better than you think you do? Because you do. All we have is now: life is a series of moments that unfold one after another after another after another and if you constantly tell yourself that you’ll never be satisfied with the current moment unless something in the future happens? Well…you’ll never find happiness. You’ll never be satisfied. You’ll never find peace. You’ll never appreciate just how much you’ve accomplished and how talented you really are. How FORTUNATE you are (imagine how many people in the world would love to simply afford to own a camera, let only worry about whether you get 250 likes on an image on Facebook opposed to 10).
If you’re always looking to the “next big thing” as that magical place where happiness and contentment resides, you’ll never find happiness and contentment, because as soon as you hit that place—that goal—you won’t recognize the moment for what it is (beautiful) ad you’ll be looking for the next thing as the magical place where happiness and content resides. It’s “all retch and no vomit” as the great Alan Watts preached.
Truth be told, you’re doing pretty damn well. Right now. In this moment. You truly are. You’ve accomplished, I’m sure, a lot in this life already. No matter where you are on your photographic journey, you’ve made some pretty incredible gains. Maybe you finally understand the exposure triangle. Or maybe you’ve sold your first print. Or maybe you simply enjoy being outdoors and photographing images that make you happy. Lock onto and appreciate that—all of that—because that’s what it’s all about.
Appreciate the power of NOW. That’s not to say don’t have goals, of course. Goals are a great thing: they motivate us and keep us moving forward. But please don’t attach your happiness to a future state: happiness and contentment is here, right now, in this moment. You just have to recognize it.
People often ask me something to the effect of “what is your ultimate dream in photography….cover of National Geographic?”. My answer is pretty much always the same: “to be able to do ten years from now what I do now…and to just enjoy the ride”. And that’s the God-honest truth. I have goals, but I don’t feel a pressing need to do anything in particular with my photography other than enjoy it. To not only not hate it, but to always have the same satisfaction being behind the camera as I did when I first started out. I picked up the camera because I loved creating. I loved knowing that I had an artistic side and that this was my medium. I want to hold onto that feeling. Forever.
End note: for some great reading on this subject, I highly recommend Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power of Now”. I read this book about a decade ago and I can emphatically state this book has changed my life like no other book I’ve ever read.
When Mermaids Rise (AKA: The Power of Silhouettes)
It’s no secret that I’m a light junkie. My “fix” is to stop whatever I’m doing when I see light that makes me excited and jam it into my soul. I feel the high, the adrenaline, the rush. I let it drip down my veins and bring me clarity—a moment of truth before it disappears and I feel a funk, a weight which brings me down until the next high, which is usually just around the corner.
It’s not quite as melodramatic as that, but I do take my light seriously. When you surround yourself with enablers, it can be a serious combination.
I photograph weddings in addition to the 25 other things I’m passionate about shooting (I missed the memo that said you’re only supposed to be passionate about shooting one thing). And while I understand the advice that’s often given to photographers of “only shoot and display what you love,” I think it’s too often summarized as “only shoot one thing and shoot it well.” You’re in charge of your destiny, dammit. If you love something, do it. If you happen to love 25 things, you may be accused of being scattered, but the main question to ask is, “Are you happy making the photographs that you create?” We all shoot for different reasons and if you’re primmary goal is your own happiness with each click of the shutter, then walk your own path. Ignore other people (including me).
Rant aside, back to my addiction.
This light junkie is happiest when I have enablers, those people around me who appreciate that photography is a pursuit that involves an opportunistic element and when the light’s nice, there’s no point just sitting there looking at it when you can be creating in it.
I photographed Sam and Christine’s wedding in Antigua and this image was made a day or two before the ceremony.
All I had to say in the months before the wedding was, “Just give me a willingness to get wet and slightly uncomfortable, and the opportunity to create” and they were in.
Christine bought a pre-wedding dress that cost just a fraction of her “real deal,” giving us the opportunity to create something special without the worries associated with damaging her real wedding dress before the big day.
This image was photographed towards the end of the day, creating one of my favourite photographic elements: silhouettes. I find that silhouettes can be extremely easy to create after you’ve had a little practice and know the right light conditions that can make for a nice silhouette (more on that to follow).
What, to me, is the power of a silhouette?
To me, the power of silhouettes is that they make for great stories. Because they’re almost always anonymous, they draw the viewer into an image to imagine possibly being in the scene themselves. An image featuring a silhouette is no longer a textbook portrait as it’s not about that specific per son; it’s about the mix of pose, or moment, and light to create a mood. It’s storytelling. If you could see into the shadows of the person, you would lose the anonymous nature of the silhouette. And sometimes you don’t want that; sometimes anonymity is a great thing in photography.
You can shoot a silhouette at mid-day by putting the
sun (or some other bright light source, such as a window if you’re inside) behind your subject, but I find the strongest silhouettes are usually when the sun is really low, or perhaps gone altogether. The 20-30 minutes post-sunset is one of my favourite times for creating silhouettes. The sky is usually still dramatic and colourful, but there’s not enough light present to spill into the foreground where it can bounce around and light the nearside of your subject.
When Mermaids Rise was photographed moments before the sun disappeared completely behind the horizon. I love how the rich, warm light spilled across the ocean surface and shimmered into perfect separating highlights. She’s only standing in ankle-deep water and the waves are gently lapping in and around her, but it gives the impression that she’s walking on water. She started in a more static pose but then we got more creative. She would move one way and if the light didn’t look right and I yelled loud enough, she would move back the other way until it was beautiful and I would yell, “There, that’s it...don’t move a muscle!”
As often happens in these shoots I stumbled upon my favourite element entirely by accident. In this case, it’s Christine holding the sheer part of the dress backwards, which allows it to pick up the rich light and create a moment of magic. I didn’t direct her to do that—initially she was just trying to avoid it from becoming completely bogged down in the waves. But as soon as I noticed the effect it was having, I was in full-on junkie mode.
A few silent whoops of happiness on my end and for the next five minutes I was in heaven.
How Do You Find The Time?
One of the things I’ve heard most in my career is “how do you find the time to do all the things you’re doing?” - especially before I took the plunge to go full-time and was still juggling a 40-hour per week job and a family and, well, life.
One thing I found, early on, is that you have to take time to nurture your passions or else:
(A) they won’t flourish
(B) you are left feeling dissatisfied
Dissatisfied, that is, because you know you love this thing and you know you want to get better at it. NOT doing it leaves a hole.
“But”, you might say, “I don’t have the time I need to let that passion flourish. That’s my problem. I KNOW I could be a great photographer/guitar player/painter/singer/mountain climber/friend if I only had the time. I just don’t have the time.”
Well, at the risk of sounding like a used car salesman…you DO have time. We all do. We have more time than we think we do. Time is there. We all have the same amount, every single day. 24 hours come, 24 hours go. It’s how you use the time that counts….but I think you already know this, inherently.
I used to make excuses. I used to struggle with time. But then I started looking at how I used my day - my precious time (because it’s one of our most important resources) and I realized just how much time I wasted. There were the not-so-fun time-suckers that I couldn’t avoid, of course (my job, chores, errands) and “great” time commitments (family/friends), but it was the other moments that I looked long and hard at.
For me, I realized how much time I spent watching television and movies. Sitting in front of a TV and - at least a decade ago before the advent of Netflix - and channel surfing. An hour would turn into two which would turn into sometimes four or five hours per night. With this kind of habit, too, comes other bad habits: junk food and inactivity.
About a decade ago, I made a change. TV wasn’t going to rule my life anymore. I was going to make a hard change. “Even, I thought, if I made a small change a cut out an hour of that time and did something productive with it…”
Rather than just that hour, though, I pretty much started turning the TV off. For long stretches. Sometimes days and weeks at a time. It's not uncommon, now, for me to go a straight month without watching TV.
Imagine if you even had an hour, per day, to dedicate to your passion. Let’s say that passion is photography (go figure). An hour, admittedly, is not a lot of time…but it’s a start. Those initial hours, for me, didn’t mean always using the time to go out and actually shoot (more on that later) but I started using those initial hours to dedicate myself to the learning process. Books. Blogs. Researching techniques. Looking at images and being inspired.
I became hooked…addicted, even. I found that this extra time I spent “book” learning (or internet learning) translated to real gains when I had shooting time. I went out more inspired, or with more purpose. I had ideas I wanted to try. My former TV time became inspiration time.
Around the same time, I also started doing some “hard dedications” to shooting time. What that meant, for me, was to make a sound commitment to myself to set aside creative shooting time. To the stage of actually setting this time aside in my calendar weeks and months in advance. Every single month I would ensure - and still ensure - that I have in my calendar AT LEAST TWO blocks of time dedicated for creative shooting. Whether that’s a sunrise down at Canoe Cove or a creative portrait session…I bet you if I went back through my calendar for the past ten years I would find 99% of the months have at least two of these creative times set aside.
Why is it important blocking these off in advance? Well, if I actually leave it to a given weekend…life happens. The morning comes and you lose yourself to the weekend shuffle. Or laziness. Or a wine night. When it’s in my calendar I almost ALWAYS stick to it.
TV probably doesn’t take away as much time for most people as it once did with attentions shifting more to smartphones and Facebook and the internet….but what if, in the evenings, you promised yourself even for one day a week to not pick up your phone for an entire evening and instead do “Passion Time” with those minutes/hours (you know as well as I how much time these things suck)?
I know not every person is the same and we all have different commitments/obligations (family/work/sickness/stress) but I’m willing to be that almost every single person has more time than they give themselves credit for. It’s about shifting how you use that time.
For me, my new obsession is the guitar. I’m loving it. And despite being incredibly busy I am actually finding time to practice. Not as much as I’d like, mind you, but when I’m hanging out with the kids, or wake up and have my morning coffee, I usually pick up the guitar even for 10 or 20 minutes. Not a lot, but enough that almost every day I find this 20 minutes. And I’m seeing progress as a result.
In short (after a long essay, here): find the time. Look at your time-suckers or your non-productive time. We all have it built into our lives. Look at it, long and hard, and make choices. Do you really need 3 hours for Netflix or could you spend only one hour a day watching something and spend those other two hours (or even 20 minutes) for your passions? I bet you could.
Footnote: I still love binge-watching Netflix like most people. But it's in very dedicated blasts. It's time, too, that I hold dear...because, like, Game of Thrones....