“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”
Aristotle

This morning I met with some friends of mine for coffee. My buddy Hans tossed out this quote he’d recently read in a runner’s magazine of all places. He thought it might spur some challenging conversation. We were discussing this more from a theological bent and how this effect our life, work and art.  So, in the tradition of Socratic dialogue I offer you the same.

The first part of this is really the premise and the second part the application. The premise is “We are what we repeatedly do.” A lazy man derives his title because he’s lazy. A hard-working man, the same. A painter or a photographer because that is what they do. Maybe this is the case for you, do spend more time taking photos than just about anything else or is it just a weekend hobby for you? What makes this difficult for me to hear is I spend more time writing a blog, tweeting, working with Lightroom and keywording photos than taking photos. But then, just maybe, that’s what a photographer is these days or maybe, that’s what a working photographer is (I hesitate using the word “professional”.)  How much time are you actually spending on your craft?  Most photographers I know are almost addicted to taking pictures. They can’t help but, it’s in their blood, “it’s what they do”, thus it is what they are.  I worked with a guy that used to say, “if you want to know someone’s real values, you watch how they spend their time (not listen to their opinions or posturing). Ouch!

It’s the second part of the statement but I find the most intriguing. “Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”  I think what Aristotle is saying here, is that excellence is not an accident or a fluke. It is not a one time thing. Oh, sure, you can have an excellent photograph. But that does not make you an excellent photographer. The excellent photograph might very well be a fluke and you, on the other hand be a lousy photographer. Give a monkey a camera and eventually he’ll come up with an award-winning photograph. Quite frankly, there’s probably a lot of monkeys with cameras out there dubbing themselves excellent photographers. No, I think Aristotle is absolutely right here. Excellence is gained by habitually working at your art. Aristotle goes on to say;

“Excellence, then, is a state concerned with choice, lying in a mean, relative to us, this being determined by reason and in the way in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.”

Now there is a lot of words! But I think he is saying, you are excellent at something when you have the means to be able to choose to do it well and to do that thing well over and over again. He doesn’t just leaving it there, the last part says “in which the man of practical wisdom would determine it.” In other words you’ve made right choices by what you know and the results are excellence. This ability to choose excellence time and time again, gives you the moniker of excellent at your craft.

So, how do you achieve excellence so that you can choose it? Aristotle answers that as well, when he says, “Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.” (interesting that he calls excellence an art.) This one is pretty straightforward. You train at being great and you make it a habit. This kind of goes back to the whole Zen aspect of things we’ve talked about before. You do something over and over again until it becomes a part of you and you can do it without thinking about it. I’ve had several e-mails lately asking about composition and how do I frame an image etc. The fact is, most of the time I don’t think about it, it just comes naturally when I put the camera to my eye. But it wasn’t always that way. I had to work at it. I used the rule of thirds to train me. I use the concept of visual weight to beat my creative eye into submission. I consciously thought about it while framing images, over and over again until now it just happens. Wax on, wax off. Take off the jacket. Drop the jacket. Hang the jacket. Are you working at becoming an excellent photographer? Don’t think it will just come easy?

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Egyptian Sunrise

click image to view larger

I am at a creative dry spot today. I hit it harder than usually. I feel like I have fallen down a well, hit the dry bottom now I am flat on my back looking up a small pin point of light. How did I get down here? I’m tired. Too tiered to climb out, certainly not today.  This is one of those days I look at the screen and I hate my blog. I hate that it has so much control over me. I hate that I feel like I need it and that I must post something. I need it because it has created business. It’s made me friends. It’s opened new doors. And yet, it’s creatively too demanding. They say a blog is like a shark, it must keep swimming to survive. Sometimes I’d like to drown this shark. Spear it!

I hope I’m not getting you all depressed. The fact is, I’m not depressed. I’m just tired. I’m tired of trying to be creative and think of creative things to share with people. I love sharing things when I can think of them. But today I just can’t think of anything. So I’m going to post you an image I shot last month in Egypt. I’m going to go get a couple of steaks, sit in my backyard grill them to perfection and smoke a pipe. A pipe always helps. Maybe tomorrow I’ll think of something to share.

( Remember; you’re welcome to use any images on this blog for non-commercial use. Just linked this website when you do use it. Enjoy -mb)

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Photographers can cause ripples.

Recently I had an email from a reader who had some basic photography questions. He was dealing with some pretty common issues that most beginners deal with. He has been frustrated that his images, though taken in some very exotic locations don’t seem to grab the viewer. After I looked over some of his images and made some strong suggestions, I got the email below.  His questions are typical for where he is in his photographic journey. I figured the answers I would give might be helpful for others in the same place. So, I thought I would share them with you. I hope any beginners reading this, will find them helpful.

Beginner: Regarding composition — is there a book that you would recommend above the others?

Matt: Yes, several. But the one to start with is by Michael Freeman called “The Photographer’s Eye” from Larks Books. Michael goes into great depth covering composition and design. This book has really become a standard for beginners and advanced photographers alike, and no better place to start.

Beginner: The human side of my struggle in composition. A lot of the time I am walking around through a market etc and taking a lot of pictures on the fly.  I am not looking at the images after I take them but just trying to get the scene before people start to react to the camera.

Matt: This reminds me of an old joke. A guy walks into see his doctor and tells him, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” The Doctor replies wisely, “Well, stop doing that!” The answer is stop walking through the market and stop and experience the market and it’s life. You will never get more than”snaps” if all you do is breeze through a place and take snaps. We get good images because we seek them out, we watch for them, we observe life around us. If you are there for a few minutes and raise a camera to your face, snap a picture and then move on, yes, people will react. But, the converse is true if you slow down and join in what is happening around you. Buy some fruit. Ask questions. Show them you are genuinely interested in them, once they see that, they drop their guard and you can take plenty of photos. You will find most of them will not mind you taking their image. The bonus is that many of them will go about their daily business and pay no attention to you. Now your subjects are relaxed around you, they don’t feel threatened and you get candid images that you can take your time making, frame in the camera and not feel rushed.

Beginner: In practice how do you deal with this?  How do you try to really compose the picture well while at the same time mitigate against the scene changing with the introduction of the camera. How much time do you spend framing a shot vs cropping later?

Matt: As I said above, you really need to slow down and experience the scene. At the risk of sounding rather Zen, imagine it this way. If you throw a stone into a puddle you will make quite the splash and plenty of ripples. But wait and those ripples subside and everything goes back to normal except, the stone is in the middle of the puddle. Think of yourself as that stone. When you first enter a scene you create quite a stir. The best thing you can do is calmly wait with your camera at your side. Let the ripples subside and eventually people get used to you being around and start to relax and soon you will be allowed to shoot without much changes in the scene around you. As for the second part of your question; I frame the image I want in the camera. If I have to crop in Lightroom it usually is only around 5- 10% of the image.

Beginner: For rule of thirds and off center subjects, how do you setup your cameras auto focus system for times when you are doing “quick shots” and moving fast?  Typically I set it to use the center point so that with my old camera it wouldn’t pick the wrong thing to focus on.  What do you do?  Do you let the camera decide where the best focus point is in those situations?  Are you able to just really quickly change the auto focus points on the camera?  Or do you focus lock and then frame?

Matt: It is not a good thing to ever let the camera decide things. The camera is rather stupid, it doesn’t have a very big brain. This is the very reason we don’t shoot JPEG. We don’t want the camera making decisions on how the image should look, right? So, for heavens sake, why would you let the camera decide the focal point of the image? You have two choices as you mentioned and I do both. You can scroll through your AF points and set the one point that corresponds to the composition you think you will be shooting. I only do this if you have time and good contrast. The outer focal points are not as sensitive to contrast as the center point and thus not as quick to focus. The other way, is  to keep the center AF point your active point; focus and then recompose. Using the center point will give you a better chance at nailing that focus as it is more sensitive to contrast and focuses quicker. However, be careful. The fact is if you are using a very narrow depth of field and you are close to the subject, you can in fact focus on say someones eyes, then recompose and then be out of focus. The film plan is a flat surface and if you are close to a subject, when you tilt the camera to the eyes and then recompose you change the distance of the film plane to the subjects eye. The change is very slight, but if you are working with a 1.2 lens like I often do, then you might see a difference. It really comes down to using the technique that works for you for that moment. But, do me a favor, don’t ever keep all the AF points active and thing you cover all your focal bases. If that is your method, you are in for some out of focus images.

Beginner: So far I typically snap the picture as quickly as possible (and keep moving) and then crop later.  But I am betting there is a better way.

Matt: There’s that snatch and grab thing going again. Take your time, compose in the frame, and savor the moment. Observe your surroundings. Save your pixels and compose in the camera.

Beginner: I guess in the end I see the distractions (telephone lines etc) but I am not always sure how to change the composition without changing the shot by my presence.

Matt: You just answered your own question. You have to change your presence as you put it. I would simply say change your position. When looking through a lens and composing an image, often – maybe even most of the time – distractions can be eliminated by shifting a few inches or feet. Look at the example below. The first image had all kinds of distracting elements behind the woman. But, by moving over to the right a few feet, not only did I find a cleaner background, I also (and this is a big thing!) found much better light. Remember, when you move, the quality of the light changes. The fact is, the light stays the same but the angle you view the light changes. So, beware of  the background as well as the light quality. I will change my position for either or both, as in this case.

Beginner: Last question –  I have lightroom, but I don’t have the full version of Photoshop do I need it?

Matt: No. In fact 95 to 98% of my work never leaves Lightroom anymore. Lightroom is so incredably powerful you only really need Photoshop to do a few things like cloning  or perhaps some difficult spot removal. I will say this, that the new Photoshop CS5 has Content aware delete and cloning that is remarkable. I have never seen anything like it. But, in short, no. You really can get by on Lightroom alone. Do your self a big favor and make sure you have Lightroom 3. There are some really great books that can be of some great help. Scott Kelby’s, “Lightroom 3 book for digital photographers” and Martin Evening’s “The Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Book, The Complete Guide for Photographers” Both look like real winners. I just got both of these yesterday from my buddies at PeachPit. Then of course, I can’t mention Lightroom 3 with out talking about David duChemin’s new book hot off the press, “Vision & Voice: Refining Your Vision in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom“. I don’t have it yet. But David gave me a sneak peak sometime back and, like all David’s books, it promises to be the one you keep returning to. More than a “how-to” book on Lightroom. This book promises to help you use Lightroom to express your vision that you had when you took the image to begin with.

I hope this has been helpful. If nothing more than a gentle reminder that you can’t stand with your feet nailed to the floor and expect to get great images. You have to work the scene and the light. Spend time with your subjects and learn to see the image in the camera when you take it.

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Photo by Ramy Salem

I talk to myself.
There – I’ve said it. I know, you think I’m nuts. That’s not new news–but that’s a whole other topic.
The fact is, I talk to myself. Whenever I put the camera to my face, I talk to myself. Sometimes audibly, all the time in my head. I ask myself what am I shooting? Where is the picture? Where’s the story? What’s the story? Is this the best angle? And so many other questions. Maybe some photographers look at a scene and can view it through the lens of their mind. I can’t. I need to have the camera to my face. I need to look through the camera and view it through the lens that’s on it. I can get a guesstimate without putting it to my face. In fact, that’s how I choose what lens to put on the camera, by experience. I know pretty close what it will look like with a 17 mm lens or 200 mm lens. I know the amount of distortion an object will have with a 17 mm and I know from experience if that’s what I want or not to help tell the story. I know the compression I get with the 200 mm lens and whether or not that will help tell the story. But there are so many other questions left unanswered. So I raise the camera and lens to my face and I talk to myself while I frame the subject.

Do you talk to yourself? Is that something that you do to help you take your photos? If it’s not, it probably should be. You should be asking yourself all kinds of questions when you look through the lens of your camera. Not just about what you see, but what you don’t see. Is this the best angle? Is there anything distracting behind the subject? Maybe I should move three steps to the left. Is that bit of sky going to be too bright behind my subject? Is there a pole running through someone’s head? Is there a horizon line or horizontal line of any kind going through my subject head? These are all important things to be asking. You don’t find the answers without asking the questions.

We’re talking about being observant with purpose. Asking yourself specific questions to help develop your eye. Get into the habit and I promise you’ll have better images and you’ll tell a better story.

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There are several things taking my time up lately and most of them are rather mundane. I’m spending a lot of time keywording photographs. For some of you, this is not very important, all you need to do is keyword an image so you can find it quickly in your library. However, for many of us, this task, however painful and boring is critical. It ensures that others who are looking for a photograph can find what they are looking for. So someone who’s looking for a story, a concept or even a thought that needs to be illustrated with an image, will be able to type  into a search engine a word that hopefully illustrates that point and presto, an image fitting their need pops up!

Here is how it might work. Lets say an in-flight magazine for an airlines like Egypt Air or Gulf Air is writing an article about an Egyptian destination, and they’re looking for photographs to illustrate it, they may have specific things in mind. Lets put ourselves in the shoes of an editor for a minute. We need a few photographs that  illustrates traditional Egyptian culture. So we go to a stock house like PhotoShelter and type in some keywords that we think might link us to some images that will illustrate our article. In this case, we type in Egypt and galabeya (the long traditional Egyptian cloak worn by the men). What do we get? Well, several picture from Marco Ryan and hopefully the photo up above and a few more.  The point is, you need to second-guess what terms people will be using to search. Actually, for the photo above the keywords are;

carpet, Egypt, galabeya, headdress, headgear, Islam, Male, Man, Muslim, Nile, Nubian, oriental rug, persian rug, robe, rug, sand, sunset, traditional, village, white

Good keywording helps sell your images.  The trick to all this is consistency and quite frankly tenacity.  Consistency is really another  term for a controlled vocabulary. By maintaining a controlled vocabulary it makes searching easier.  An example given by the folks over at controlledvocabulary.com (yes there really is a website by that name) is the Yellow Pages. Most everyone has used Yellow Pages in a phone book. When you look up “Car Dealers” you fine a notation to “see Automobile Dealers.” In a simple way this is what were talking about. Now, I’m not going to go into details on how controlled vocabulary works for two reasons:  first, I don’t fully understand it myself, and second, the people at controlledvocabulary.com already understand it and have a whole website explaining it.  By tenacity I mean, tenacity–sticking to it. It’s boring and tedious work to keyword photographs. But if you want to sell your images you need to have good keywording. Quite frankly, almost any keywords are better than no keywords.

I see keywording a little bit like backing up your hard drive. It’s a mundane task that is essential. There is some great software out there that makes backing up the hard drive easy and painless. I wish there was some software that would do the same with keywording a photograph. But, I think we are a long way from a photo being read by a computer and having the objects in it being identified and listed as keywords. Even if it could (and that would be a great start), there are still concepts within the photo that could never be read by computer like; loneliness, anger, joy etc… Maybe someday.

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(Click on the image to view it larger.)

Here is a lesson; hold on to ideas and concepts your shooting lightly and let things happen naturally. Go with the flow.

One of the hardest things to photograph is an icon. Something that everyone knows and everyone has photographed. So how to you do it? Honestly… it is hard. One way is to look at all the many shots of it, and then shoot the same image. Counter intuitive? Well, sort of, but don’t stop there. Shoot what has been shot and then work it like you might in any other shoot. So you in effect start where others left off.

Marco Ryan, Ramy Salem, Alou, Jessie and I decided to shoot the pyramids at sunrise. We hired a camel driver and two camels. We set out at 4am to catch the sunrise at 5:30am. We gave ourselves plenty of wiggle room. When working with local people like camel drivers, somethings can get delayed. Remember, in the West, we tend to be time oriented but in the East people are generally event oriented. This means when we say, “Be there at 5:30am.” they think early morning. Early morning might be 6:30am after the sun has been up for an hour. This is not a character fault, this is culture and something you should plan for.

Anyway, all went well, the sun came up and we got some nice images of the pyramids at sunrise. But, for me they seemed less dramatic than what I had hoped for, I wanted more. Then, what so often happens, the unexpected met me and gave me a break. As the camel was being brought back around to walk through the shot again, it passed down a hill in from of Cairo, kicked up some dust and game me the shot I had hoped for. Not the one I planned for, but the one I wanted. The one with drama. I will take a drama in a photo over most anything.

OK, so I didn’t quite get the out-of-the-box iconic shot I had hope for, but I got something that I think I like a lot better.

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I’m going to go down a bit of a rat hole. I’m even going to give it a name: value.

You’ll already be wondering why a post that begins “I’m going down a bit of a rat hole” might have anything to do with Focus for Humanity – a newly launched foundation aimed at giving grants to aspiring photographers and to help under-funded NGOs afford world class photographers  – but stay with me for a couple of paragraphs and hopefully you’ll see why.

I’ve never quite understood why photographers struggle to sell the value that they bring to organizations. Well perhaps it would be more accurate to say I have never really understood why organizations won’t pay for the value that photographers can bring to their organizations.

That’s value with a capital “V” by the way – the intrinsic benefit that we recognize that great images can bring to a brand – and also value with a small “v” – because I think most photographers are undervalued and charge too little for what they do.

Why is it that an organization will pay an IT technician $70 an hour or a lawyer $200 an hour but not pay a photographer $100 an hour?

Perhaps it is because there is an association between complexity or certain required qualifications or proven experience and a market price.

Or perhaps it is that, for a profession such as a photographer, the need for creative vision, emotional intelligence and expressive story telling often outweighs the need for bachelor, graduate or professional qualifications. Yet because those qualifications are optional it becomes – especially for the uninformed buyer – more difficult to arrive at that market price or critically, to measure the value delivered.

It is of course further complicated by the proliferation and pervasiveness of digital cameras that mean many organizations don’t even to begin to create a business case for an assignment because its just too hard, right? Instead that same organization will thrust a Canon Ixus into the hands of the nearest intern and say, “get on with it”. (though I’ve nothing against Interns or Canon Ixus’!)

Now let’s add a layer of complexity. Let’s go further down that rat hole.

Imagine now that you are a business that is underfunded or does not make a profit, like an NGO. How do they afford someone like Matt Brandon or Gavin Gough? Or what happens if you are a talented semi-pro photographer looking for your first proper client and someone approaches you. How much do you charge without losing that first job or undermining that all-too-difficult-to-judge market price?

Many of the larger more established NGOs have multi-million pound marketing budgets and regularly use the likes of Karl Grobl, Matt Brandon, David duChemin or Ami Vitale on highly structured and well funded assignments. And long may that continue.

But the issue is more with the new, fledgling or underfunded NGO and also with that individual semi-pro photographer who is wanting to make the leap to full time – both of whose activities are more localized or more specific to a particular campaign.

Often, that new NGO’s need is greater, but their budget is smaller, resulting in a prioritization of funds away from hiring that top photographer. In the case of the semi-pro, they opt for doing pro bono work in the hope that it will strengthen their portfolio, but all that happens is that it undermines their value with the client going forward.

The first stage of resolving this is that the NGO needs some form of Damascan road experience to help understand how to budget and monetize the value of the photographer’s work and the semi-pro photographer needs the courage to value their own work and stand firm on their price so as not to undermine the market.

So how do we break this vicious circle? How do we climb out of this rat hole?

Well, one answer it to try and remove the barriers that are stopping each of them. In the NGO’s case that barrier is usually a lack of funds. In the semi-pro photographer’s case it is often a mix of lack of confidence, lack of knowledge in how best to price or a lack of experience with customers.

And this is where an organization such as Focus for Humanity (FFH for short) starts to make a difference. We see our role as bridging these two communities who have shared needs and common goals but perhaps different perspectives.

So as to not leave you hanging, here is a brief summary of how we tried to create a solution to help everyone climb out of that rathole!

Focus for Humanity created assignment grants to allow underfunded NGOs to win the services of established photographers such Matt Brandon, David duChemin, Gavin Gough, Karl Grobl, Jeffrey Chapman or Edoardo Agresti. For free. The NGO gets a full assignment undertaken by a world-class photographer with no strings attached. Well, actually a couple of very minor strings, like agreeing to budget for the following years for similar services; being willing to take some mentoring from FFH on digital marketing and acting as a reference for future NGO applicants. The established photographer gets a new client and is paid the right market rate for his work.

And for the semi-pro looking for that final leap to full time photographer?

We have an annual scholarship that provides the funding to allow them to work with their first client – probably an NGO – and to be mentored into how to approach and further educate clients in the value of images. In addition the grants cover travel, upgrading their equipment and some project expenses.

And for those of you still a few years away from being ready to apply for this scholarship there will be a series of mentoring and workshop grants that will help you to work on your craft and vision.

We fund the Foundation solely through donations, and we run the organization as a virtual online foundation to minimize the costs. Our current target is to allocate 93% of funds into grants each year.

But we can do with your help in three ways:

Firstly tell everyone one about it. Add a blog badge to your site HERE, follow us on twitter HERE, join us on Facebook HERE but, most importantly, become our advocates within your own network and get others to sign–up or donate.

Secondly we need your pledges and donations and those of your friends. It can be a one-off donation of $10 or a monthly recurring donation of any amount you like. But if, for example, we got a thousand of you to give, say, $50 each we would then be able to meet all our commitments for this year. So if you want to help, then help us to reach more than a thousand people willing to give just that little bit.

Thirdly, If you work for a company in the photographic industry then you can help with sponsorship too – although we prefer to use the term partnering as we believe that this is a two way relationship and we need to give those partners equal benefit in return for their support. Every lens, body, bag, filter, tripod, plane ticket or item that we don’t have to buy for our grant winners, is money that we can re-allocate into another grant. We’ve got great ideas on what else we want to add to our grants in the coming months and years, and sponsorship or partnering is one way of making that happen.

“Be the change you want to see in the world”, said Mahatma Ghandi. Perhaps you can help us make real change in how NGOs and other organizations value the work of photographers to help humanitarian causes.

Our thanks to Matt for allowing us the platform of his blog to reach out and share with you all about Focus For Humanity. Thank you for reading this far and for showing an interest in what we are trying to do. You can read more detail about Focus for Humanity, our grants, how to apply and how to help by checking out our website, http://www.focusforhumanity.org.

Marco Ryan was born in the UK, but now lives in Cairo, Egypt with his wife and young family. His professional career as an eCommerce Strategist, Digital Marketing expert and speaker is covered on his work blog, www.marcoryan.com, but it ensures endless travel but sadly insufficient time for one of the more creative forces in his life – photography. Contact him through this blog for commissions or prints.

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I don’t even know where this post is going. Partly, I’m posting out of discipline. Partly, I’m posting because I know there’s something in my brain that needs to be said; I just can’t put my finger on it.

Vision, vision, vision, all this talk about vision. Very few people actually define what they mean when they speak of vision and when they do, it’s often so esoteric you walk away not knowing if you just heard an artist or politician. So let me give you my take on what vision is. I’m sure I’m going to get all kinds of folks chiming in to tell me I’m either wrong or I’m limiting things. And maybe that I just don’t get it.

The way I see it, we use the word vision because it has to do with what we see. As photographers what we see is everything. Simply put, vision is the way we view our subject. But here is the rub, as Shakespeare would say:  two people can stand side-by-side viewing the same subject and see something completely different. I could stand next to someone while looking at the Taj Mahal and we could see two different things. Really. Oh sure, we both will see a big domed white marble building, but what is it communicating? I might see it as a beautiful monument to love. And the person next to me sees it as a cruel king’s enslavement of the masses. Maybe someone else might see it as architecturally edgy for the time, paving a new direction in design. So what is it that you see when you walk the streets of Old Delhi? Do you see people struggling to make a living? Masses of poor people? Do you see ancient architecture rich with history? Maybe you see the underbelly of industry in India. It’s like this whether you’re in India or walking the streets of Dallas, Texas. What you see is unique to you.

So you have to find a way to communicate what you see through the images you take. What makes this hard, and I’ll confess that I’m right here with you, is oftentimes we aren’t in touch with what we are seeing. When I go to a new place to photograph, I find it very difficult the first few days to capture any images that say anything about the way I feel about the place. Mainly because I know very little about the place and my vision is not developed. Oh sure, I’ve done my research (hopefully). Research can inform your vision, influence it, but it shouldn’t dictate your vision. You need to get out and smell, touch, look (best done without a camera IMHO) and most importantly talk to people. What are the stories they are living? What are their dreams? What’s important to them? This is very hard to do. And quite frankly, not done very often.

What happens is, we do our research and we come predisposed with ideas and opinions. We listened to people that maybe have only a fraction more experience in the environment that were photographing than we do and we let them help form our vision. This is unfair, both to the people, the place we are shooting and to ourselves.

Here’s another added wrinkle to finding your vision:  your vision is almost always influenced by your worldview. If your worldview at the core is selfish and suspicious, then you will view the world through those eyes and your photographic vision will reflect it. I’ll make this even harder. Your vision will be influenced even by something as small as the amount of sleep you’ve gotten the night before. Really. There have been several times, that I have not had a good night’s rest and woke up frustrated and grumpy. I walk the streets of the place I’m photographing with the heart of a curmudgeon. Later, I look at my images and I wonder why I shot what I shot. My worldview and my general attitude influences the way I view the people around me and that defines my photographic vision. Why would I see the Taj Mahal as a monument to love if I was feeling unloved or didn’t feel there was love in the world? Humbug! Of course, it works the other way as well, if my general attitude is that of rainbows and daisies, this will also influence the way that I see things.

I remember when I first moved to Kashmir and met the shepherd people called the Gujjars. I thought they were amazing, incredibly romantic with their long flowing shalwar kameez and beautifully wrapped turbans walking the trails of the Himalaya. They could do no wrong. How could they, they were the stuff of fairytales and adventures. Then many years later, after living with them and among them, I saw them for who they were:  people, just people—but with really cool clothes. People made up of good and bad. Indeed, they could do wrong, I found that out after one young Gujjar boy stole a backpack from my camp. My point here is not that Gujjars are good or bad people. It’s that I viewed them as something they were not and it took years for me to understand that. We cannot hope to think that our vision will be unbiased and just. I don’t care whether you’re a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, you are influenced by your surroundings, by what you know (and what you don’t know) and by who told you those things, where you got that information. We can only be as unbiased and fair as our information will allow us to be. Our vision will then have to be flawed, but it will be ours.

I’m going to end this here, because I fear I’m starting to ramble. Think about what you’re shooting; take time to ask why you’re even raising your camera at a certain subject. What is the subject saying to you and are you comfortable with what you’re hearing? Then, if your images communicate this, your vision may have just found you.

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The poet Robert Service once said, “A promise made is a debt unpaid“. I have several debts that need to be paid. How about you? Have you ever promised someone that you’d send them their photo and then just forget about it. Maybe on purpose. Maybe out of just laziness. Maybe your just too busy and a little unorganized. For me it’s more the latter than the other two.

It’s nagging at me and I must follow through. “In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load.” Why do I promise such things? The woman above, is one of many photos I promised to send back to India after my workshop there. But, I will confess to you here, I have yet to do it. I will. But I haven’t…yet. I have a stack of little scraps of paper but now it’s a matter of trying to remember whose picture goes with whose name. What I try to do, but often forget at the actual moment, is take a picture of my subjects holding their address that they have just written. This is the easiest way to remember whose photo goes with each address.

Now, I can hear some of you saying, “Matt, why didn’t you just use your Pogo printer?”  I do like to use that, and it saves me a lot of trouble when it works. My problem is, the batteries don’t seem to ever stay charged. I only seem to get one to two prints from each battery. I may look into the point-and-shoot version of it. But for now, I know this week is filled with printing and mailing.

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If you’re reading a story and everything goes according to plan, everyone gets along and there is no conflict at all in the pages of the book, that would be a very boring book. Conflict in a story, as in life can get your heart beating. Remember the time you had conflict with that particularly irritating individual?  Do you remember how your heart raced? Remember how your hands shook? You were irritated, angry and your blood boiled. Whether you were right or wrong, the fact is you felt alive. This is what conflict does. It creates emotion that helps deliver a message. It helps maintain interest. It can keep an audience captive. Part of the reason, is you don’t know what’s happening next. It’s  plays off the concept of  “the gap of knowledge”. George Loewenstein, behavior economist at Carnegie Mellon University says,“Curiosity happens when we feel gaps in our knowledge.”  This is why the classic “whodunit” is so powerful. You’re left with wondering what’s going to happen. You want to stick around to the end. You need to know!

In conflict within the image, the viewer wants to know what’s going to happen. There is an uneasiness felt. In the image above we view a rather smug looking young Muslim man standing in the doorway of a mosque. A woman behind him looks as if she wants to go in but isn’t quite sure. The man’s body language with his arms crossed, his smug look, and the fact that his standing in the middle of the doorway gives the impression that he’s barring the entrance. Whether it’s true conflict or not, it’s implied. Interestingly, this would not be as strong if you did not know a little something about Islam. The person that doesn’t know that there are religious barriers (called purdah) between men and women in this faith might not feel the conflict in the image. Sometimes this lack of understanding of the subject matter can be overcome with visual clues, as in the next image.

Here we have almost the same kind of conflict happening. Except, this time there’s no man standing as the barrier (at least not intentionally). This time it is a sign. The sign clearly states that women are not allowed inside. It doesn’t matter your views on Islam, you still experience conflict and are drawn into the image.  It would be as if I had a photograph of a green bench with a sign that said “Wet paint do not touch!”, and someone sitting next to it on the ground. Doesn’t matter what you feel about wet paint, you still are seeing conflict and are drawn into the photograph and held. In the image above, this conflict is heightened by the woman having her hands to her face as if she is crying. Actually, she has just finished praying, and in Islamic fashion she is drawing her hands over her face, as if washing in the blessing she has just received.

Conflict doesn’t have to be human. Conflict in an image can be something as simple as one horizontal line intersecting with multiple vertical lines. It doesn’t have quite the emotional impact, but nonetheless it’s unsettling and it maintains interest of the viewer. Of course, it’s more powerful anytime the conflict involves humans. Why?  Because we relate to it. We fall on one side or the other in the conflict. We have all seen the wet paint signs and want to touch the bench. We have all been barred from going someplace we’ve wanted to go.  We relate. Capturing this kind of conflict in an image is actually not that easy. But when you do find it and are able to photograph it, you can create a powerful image.

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