A man sits outside of the Goddess Of Mercy temple in George Town, Penang, Malaysia. Is it just me or is this mans face mirrored in this temple lion?

Today was the day the world was asked to take 10 photos of our life and share them. The brain child of aday.org. I headed out early in hopes to avoid the heat. As it turns out, today was cloudy and rather cool. But I still was not feeling my best so I wanted to make a quick day of it. I headed to one of my favorite places, the Goddess of Mercy Temple in downtown Georgetown.

This Chinese Temple is said to be the first Taoist Temple built in Georgetown. It’s always seems to be undulating with life. Worshipers waving their josh (incidents) sticks and chanting quiet prayers, people tossing sticks to view their fortune and of course the little old man who sits out front and sales birds. Apparently, Chinese (Taoist?) tradition is to buy a bird, then release it. By doing this you acquire good merit. I’m not sure what this means for the man who traps the birds to begin with.

Later, I drove over to the Campbell Street Market. I wandered around and soon found myself in one of the most bizarre and rather disturbing places. In the back of the bazaar there is a poultry section where men and women kill chickens ducks and geese, clean, dress them and prepare them for sale to restaurants and homes. This, I’ve seen before. But what I hadn’t seen is the preparation of what I assume to be blood tofu. They drain geese blood into small pots and then steam them. It is sold for use in different Chinese food preparations. I could’ve walked on and not taken any pictures of it. But the reality was, this is life in Penang and I wanted to record it. I’m not sure this is exactly what the people of aday.org had in mine, but it was my day and I recorded it and now I share with you.

This is the question that floated to the surface of my mind through a Benadryl induced fog. As I fight my latest bout of bronchitis I sit and ponder life’s tough questions. OK, so it’s not exactly a “What is the meaning of life?” type question.  But it’s a fair question that was raised while I was browsing the net and reading some interesting post.

The first thing that planted the seed for this line of thinking was a report I read about a shoebox of glass plate negatives that were found in Edinburgh. A total of 178 negatives were found in a shoebox for a pair of grey, size 9, Peter Lord slip-ons, wrapped in copies of The Statesman newspaper date 1914. Can you imagine blowing the dust off this old shoebox to find a treasure like this? What I wouldn’t give to have been the one to find this. But more importantly, someone found them. A piece of history, hunk of heritage saved by a cardboard shoebox and old newspaper. How cool is that?

It got me thinking: How are we saving our history? My guess is we have more images made of our world in the last few years than in the combined previous history of analog photography. Yet, where are these digital images? Certainly not in some old shoebox wrapped in newspaper. Not in an old metal foot-locker like most of my old negatives and slides. Most are sitting on an iffy hard drive that is waiting to go bad. Hear me now when I say, I am not bemoaning progress. I love digital photography. But are we really thinking through how we are going to archive these images? I assume the museums are tackling this question. Many of us full-time photographers are attempting to address this as well. But what about the world’s families? Millions of people are storing millions of images that at the moment might seem insignificant, yet one day might give our grandchildren an insight into the culture we live in. Those glass plates, they were not from some professional photographer. They were just “snaps” of daily life in British India, that today are an invaluable look into history.

A Facebook friend and fellow photographer, Ian Furniss wrote, “I always worry a little about what will happen to the records of our lives since the demise of hard copy film, no long-lost hard drives found in the attic I guess…”

I guess, the quick answer is, the Internet. Unless the unthinkable happens and somehow we lose the Net, it will be our attic of sorts. It is not the same of course – virtual never is. We have already lost the tactile experience of the darkroom, how long will it be before we lose the experience of flipping through old photos with Grandma during Christmas visits? “Hey Granny, can we look at your old photos of you when you were young on your iPad?” Definitely not the same. Maybe digital photo books are the answer. The kind like Blurb, Lightroom and others offer us to bind and print our images for just a little work and a small price. But, who really uses them? I never used albums when I had prints. I used shoe boxes.

Then, just this weekend (I think I was the last to know about this) I saw this ad for aday.org.

Expressions of Humankind, a Swedish non-profit foundation came up this idea to have everyone photograph the same day around the world. This is not a new idea. People have been shooting simultaneous images of the world long before digital imagery. But the motivation for this is was struck a cord with me. It was as if they were reading my mind. Weird.

Why should I join?

“Because your life matters…. Because you like the thought of saving a little something of yourself for generations to come. Because your take on daily life is part of a much bigger picture.”

This is not the answer to my musing. I don’t think there is an answer. There is no digital dusty shoebox. But this is a nice attempt. I think I will do it for now, for today. I think I will get out and photograph tomorrow for other tomorrows. Want to join me?

After yesterday’s blog post Jessie, my daughter, wanted to post a comment to say thank you for all the nice responses she received. But, she wanted an avatar by her name (Hey it is important for a 15 year old to have an avatars… I guess.) So, in helping Jess create an “Gravatar” for her comments, I realized we really didn’t have anything current that she could use. Then, this morning I remembered a quick test snap I made of her in our doorway soon after I bought my Fuji X-Pro 1. It was literally a, “Hey Jess, stand here for a sec and let me take your pic.” kind of shot. So after playing with it in Lightroom, then bringing it into Photoshop, adding a few layer masks and some blending options and a stock border I came up with this. She liked it and thought I would share it with you. She says it’s her “Snow White” look. I made the image above a rollover so you can see the before and after.

This post is a treat for me. This is my daughter, Jessie’s first multimedia production. She produced it for a class at school called “Digital Media”. Jessie shot the images and mixed the audio. I helped her edit the selections and with Soundslides. I hope you enjoy this hard hitting bit of photojournalism from my 15 year old.

Everyone seems to have a smile in Aceh.

I have really enjoyed my time here in this amazing place. I head back in literally just a few minutes. So this will be very short. I say so long, as I know I will be back. This place has wiggled itself into a little corner of my heart. The people are endearing and the land magical. If you get a chance, please come and visit. The Acehnese will take great care of you, I guarantee it.

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I am taking a break from Aceh for a word from our sponsor. It’s been awhile since I have pushed any products here on the blog. But when Think Tank Photo sent me a press release on it’s new roller bag I felt I needed to pass it on to you. This is a sweet bag that is made for travelers like me. If you read my blog at all you know how I hate shlepping gear through airports. The heaver it is the more I hate it. I have three slipped discs and putting the weight of a 30 lb sling bag on my shoulder or an even heaver pack on my back is my idea of torture. Enter Think Tank Photo’s  first four-wheeled rolling camera bag, the Airport 4-Sight™.  The Airport 4-Sight meets international airline carry-on standards. The roller’s weight has been reduced dramatically through innovative design and by a strict focus on the features that photographers find most beneficial.

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I entered the kitchen to find the light was amazing.

The weekend is over and we made up for lost time. Today was spent shooting hours of video. We are focusing on the story of young man who lost seven of his ten brothers and sisters to the tsunami. He had an amazing come back and has gone on to help thousands of families in Aceh. That is all I am going to say, as I don’t want to spoil the story for you. Around noon when we broke for lunch we received an invitation to a kenduri or feast to celebrate the Prophet’s birthday. It’s either really early or very late for 2012. According to the web calendar I checked, his birthday was Feb 4th. Anyway, it was a party and it was fun! We has all kinds of food; fish, goat, beef and all spicy hot!

The locals folks saw our cameras and immediately wanted their pictures made.  If you don’t want to become the village photographer, leave your camera in it’s bag. But I wanted to give back to these folks since they had just fed us a huge spread! So we quickly began snapping a few mug shots. There were way too many people to spend any real time roaming around looking for dynamic images. The fact was, we were on break and on someone else’s dime, we couldn’t spend all day photographing the kenduri.  Many of the images would quick “snaps” that I will print, give to the NGO and then delete off my computer. Right when I thought, this mug shot factory was getting old, we entered into the kitchen where the men were cooking (the men cook the meat and the ladies cook the veggies). It was 1:30 pm and the sun was as high as it could be – bright and harsh. But it was also bouncing off the ground and off the wooden walls and drenching the kitchen with a beautiful soft, wood kissed glow.

I love my job.

A woman preparing the vegetables for the kenduri.

The story about this woman's region is that years back a European ship wrecked and the crew married the local women. Thus descendants with green eyes.

A member of the Party Aceh. The party made up of former freedom fighters.

This man was the first to ask for his picture to be made in the kitchen. Quite the stare.

The Masjid Raya Baiturrahman of Banda Aceh.

Today was one of those days. Not much accomplished. The client we are shooting for is taking the day off today and so we had a free day as well. We thought we would go to the Tsunami Museum and see a few sites, but it was closed. Something about no power. In fact, every place we went was either closed or closing. When I did pull the camera out it just didn’t seem to work. The only photo worth showing you from today is the above image I shot of the grand mosque called “Masjid Raya Baiturrahman”. This mosque was one of the few structures in this area that survived the 2004 tsunami in tact.

Below is an image of the community center in Desa Nusa I photographed last week. I am not sure what it is, but there is something about arches that attract people to sit under them. I love photographing this scene.

Sitting at the Community Center in Desa Nusa.

One of the village elders of Desa Nusa.

Banda Aceh – I was told it was a bastion of conservative Islam and to watch my step. I was told it was a stand-offish and closed society, that I would be stared at and questioned. What I found has been the polar opposite. Nathan and Stephanie, the husband and wife videographers that are shooting with me these days, and I were received with warmth and hospitality. Of course others had paved the way before us. NGO workers who were friends of ours found a small village called Desa Nusa and have spent years developing their trust and building relationships there. Realistically, there is no way we could have made our way into a small village like this and receive the welcome we got without their years of service to these people.

Banda Aceh (pronounced: AhChe) is the capital of the provence of Aceh and was the epicenter for the December 2004 earthquake and tsunami that devastated countries, towns and villages all around the rim of the Indian Ocean. The tsunami has now become a part of this towns identity. It has embeded itself into it DNA and culture. I guess when something so catastrophic like this happens it had to effect a towns psyche. Everyone know not just one or two people kill by this wave, but they know dozens. This is a town were two thirds of the population was washed away buried in mud. Those of us who have never live through something like this can not understand it. I have heard the stories and they have broken my heart. Out driver lost this wife and kids. Another man we met was washed up into a village and was being drawn back out to sea when the wave was subsiding. He managed to grab on to something and pull himself to safety. He lost all his brothers and parents. A school teacher who had 150 students in his classes before the tsunami only had 15 after it and of all the teachers he only survived. The stories go on.

I am moved how these people have rebuild their lives. They still cry when they talk of their losses. Still mourn those lost to the sea. But they have moved on and have rebuilt their lives. One man who lost everything has rebuild what was a small bread business into a major factory now. Others that were working for others now own their own land and are cultivating chillies. I half expected a lot of self-pity. It certainly would have been warranted. But as of today, I have not see it. I see self determination and courage. I am impressed with the people of Aceh. I am move by their spirit.

This is Ru, with a smile that is topped only by her spirit.

The new hope for Banda Aceh.

One of several chillie farmers of Desa Nusa.

Yasin, our host in Desa Nesa.

Stephanie shares a light moment with her new friends of Desa Nusa

Roll your mouse over the photo. What is real? What do you prefer?

This may be bad timing as I am preparing to leave tomorrow for a week in Banda Acheh, Sumatra, Indonesia. I’m not sure if I will have Internet access to be able to respond to the comments. But here goes– I want to address some flak I got on Facebook about the previous post. I received a comment from a reader or two stating they felt that what they saw in the produced images was not real. Meaning, after running through my workflow in Lightroom the images no longer represented reality. I have gotten this kind of feedback many times in the past. I think people are rather shocked at seeing a photo “undressed”. It’s a bit like seeing a high-fashion model on the streets without any makeup, it can be scary.

I think this raises several questions. I only have time to look at two. The first is an ethical question should we alter an image? The second is are we comfortable with where photography is going in the digital age?

Let me respond to the first question with a question of my own. Were photographers ever meant to capture only reality? I think the short answer to this is, no. It’s like saying, carpenters are meant only to build houses. Of course, this is silly. Carpenters can do anything with their trade and craft from building a house to a beautiful wooden statue or a gorgeous boat to sail the ocean. Traditionally, carpenters are meant to build things out of wood. The only limitation is that it needs to be wood. To relegate carpenters to do one thing would be stifling, limiting and simply ridiculous. I venture to say, photography is the same. Photographers can do anything with the images they create, from beautiful artwork to photojournalism. Photography is made to capture images from reflected light. Period. What a person does with this is something entirely different.

I think, the real issue here isn’t what a photographer does or what photography is. The real issue is how we try to define it. Some people, want to define it very narrowly and say photography is for capturing an image of reality. Fine. There are people that use the camera like an office worker uses a xerox machine. If that’s how you want to define it for yourself then that is all well and good. But that’s too narrow for the rest of the world. Likewise, there are people who use a camera like Picasso used a brush. These people are every bit an artist. So, the question really is, either what have you defined as your personal boundaries or what has your profession defined? Look at it this way, if I’m working for the National Geographic magazine they have very strict standards of what can be done with an image once it’s shot. My friend, and Nat Geo photographer, Ami Vitale told me she has to send in the raw files to her editors, completely untouched. In fact, they’re not even allowed to delete files from the card. That’s fine. If that’s the way the magazine wants to do it, and you want to work for the magazine, then you do it their way. You have a choice, their way or the highway. The fact is, there is no right or wrong when it comes to using this tool we call a camera.

The thing that really chaps me is when people try to define boundaries for everyone. Personally, I think even the strictest rules used by the National Geographic and other photojournalist are a bit naïve if you take them and apply them broadly. I know, that’s sounds like bold talk coming from someone like me, who doesn’t work for a great magazine like the National Geographic or great newspaper like the New York Times. Yet, these rules are made to work within the boundaries of those organizations. They’re not over arching rules for photography. But even these rules, that many photojournalists subscribe to have blind spots. We’ve talked about this here before. Every time someone points a camera somewhere we choose what we want or do not want to include in the frame. This alone is subjective and can alter the story. The story is altered no matter what we do. Reality is not two-dimensional. It is not a set of RGB colors. It is not black-and-white. The angle in which we shoot influences the viewers emotions. This is an old argument and one that’s been beaten to death, so I’m going to move along.

The other question really is derived from our humanity. Without getting overly philosophical, people are uncomfortable with change. I’ve said many times that what we do in the digital darkroom is not that much different than what we used to do in the physical darkroom. You know what? It doesn’t matter if it’s different. It doesn’t matter if it’s completely different. It doesn’t matter, because things change. Things evolve. We don’t do what we did 100 years ago. Not only do things naturally change – things have to change. It used to be, most photos represented pretty much what the camera saw; telephone lines, poles sticking out of people’s heads, eyelids half shut and more. This was what the camera saw and this is what we got. Now, it’s easy to remove telephone lines, poles and even open eyelids in Photoshop. Does this matter? Yes it does matter. It matters because people want poles removed and eyelids opened. We want perfect pictures – or at least we want a representation of what we saw. We have selective vision, we don’t see telephone wires when we take a picture. We don’t see the pole sticking up behind someone’s head and we certainly don’t see someone’s blink and the fact that we can alter that is in itself the reality we live with. Maybe when photography stops recording light and some smart person finds some other way to record what we see, we will have to change the name of what we call photography to something else. But until then I still love this thing called Photography and I’ll continue to use the tools that are being developed to support me in this addiction.