Sometimes there are days that nothing seems to get done. This time that day lasted a whole week. I’ve started 100 projects and finished none. By Wednesday, I’d had enough and decided to grab my cameras and just go out and chase an idea I have had for about six months.

There’s an old man that lives in downtown Georgetown here in Penang. He is the last of a dying breed, a paper lantern maker. They say there are only two of them left in all of Malaysia: one in the state of Malacca and the other here in Penang. Back in November, I went with my wife to shoot an essay of the man here in Penang. He was sick and so nothing was happening at his shop. All his supplies were all packed away. His old shop looked as if a slight breeze would turn it all to dust at any given moment, as if some Hollywood set designer had come in and strategically placed cobwebs all over to give an old, forgotten feel. Only, this was real: The layers of dust that blanketed the shelves of forgotten cloth were real; the old tattered lanterns that hung from the ceiling and lay decaying on the shelves were real. The only thing missing were the ghosts.

This past Wednesday, I went back to try again to do the essay. When I arrived, the door was bolted shut and there was a sign posted on it saying he had moved. The building was condemned and would soon be torn down. My heart sunk.

As I was leaving, thinking that I might never find him again, he suddenly pulled up in his old car, full of supplies. He smiled at me, walked up to the door, unlocked it and walked in. He told me he was still sick. Apparently it is his heart. I shook my head and then as cautiously as I could, asked him when he thought he might be making lanterns again. He said he didn’t know, but that I was welcome to come back anytime. Apparently, he is not moving quite yet.

I told him I felt it was important that I take pictures of his work and of him creating these lanterns, because he was a national treasure. He smiled a toothless smile and said, no he was too old to be a national treasure. I chuckled and told him that national treasures were usually old. I walked back into his shop and snapped a few pictures. Nothing had changed in 50 years. Why would it?

There was a few ancient bundles of some objects wrapped in old tattered Chinese newspaper. When I asked what they were, he shrugged his shoulders. They had been there for years and he had no idea what was inside. He had not touched them in 5, 10, maybe even 20 years. For me that seemed inconceivable; for him, they were a shrine or a monument to something long gone.

I have to keep returning to his old shop, I have to finish this quest.

I want to make my own monument to The Last Lantern Maker.

Brian Hirschy is a photographer friend of mine who lives in Western China. He runs photo workshops in the Tibetan region of China along with doing a few other things to keep busy. The other day he posted a story about being freaked out in the middle of the night by strange voices. I haven’t laughed as much as I did last night reading this post in a long while. Read the full story HERE and enjoy. While there check out the other post. Brian is a talented photographer that loves China. You put that together and you get THIS.

© Brian Hirschy, brianhirschy.com

© Brian Hirschy, brianhirschy.com

A few weeks back I introduced you to Heber (pronounced like “ever” only with a “b”) Vega. Heber, if you recall, runs a NGO in Iraq, with his wife Belen and several staff. While in Iraq I taught his staff how to take better photos of the work they do so they can tell their organization’s story in print or in multimedia. Heber made a wonderful multimedia show on his first attempt. While with him in Iraq, he confided in me that photography had gotten under his skin and he could no longer ignore it. Heber is true to his words. Over this past weekend he launched his own photo blog and exploration in to humanitarian photography at hebervega.com. One of the plans that Heber has for the blog is to spotlight other photographers and their work. One way he plans on doing this is through a series of interviews with humanitarian photographers called 10.Q.  I was privileged to be the first of the series. For what it is worth you can find my interview HERE. Be sure and drop by Heber’s site and say hello. Now is not the time to lurk, now is the time to comment and encourage. Tell him, Matt sent you

by Shiloh Lane
I grew up in a very small town in Kentucky; I went to college in another very small town in Kentucky; and when I went to “the big city” to go shopping, I really just went to a slightly larger small town in Kentucky. It suffices to say that I didn’t meet a lot of strangers growing up, and when I did, chances were high that I would see them again eventually – probably at a high school ballgame.

That’s partly why I find traveling so interesting – strangers flit in and out of my life as easily as fireflies danced in and out of my grasp when I was a kid. People become a blip on my radar, and then they’re gone forever, which  sometimes makes the relationship between the general populace and myself unpredictable.

I’ve discovered that people do crazy things when they don’t plan to see you again. More often, though, I’ve discovered that I do crazy things when I don’t plan to see you again – like forego social grace in pursuit of a photograph. My mother will be mortified to read this, but I find that dignity can get in the way of some really great shots. A few days ago, I was shooting at a crowded Buddhist wat, or temple, and I stumbled across a shot of discarded shoes lying on a mat as a line of worshippers knelt barefoot in the background. In a few seconds, my chin and my camera were on the pavement while my butt stuck straight up in the air. I should have probably been more lady-like, but I got the shot and I made people laugh.

I also love the stories my brief encounters create, the weird little tales I use to make my roommate smile. That same, sweltering day, I was taking a break from shooting while chugging water. My skin was slick with perspiration and my hair looked like Richard Simmons’ curly mop does after 30 minutes of Sweatin’ to the Oldies. Yet, for some reason, one man thought I was a great photo opp. He told his wife to sit next to me and smile, which she reluctantly did. She must have really loved him because I stunk badly. Although it was strange, I like to think that 20 years from now, their family album will hold pictures of his wife with opulent statues of Buddha, his wife in front of gorgeous temples and his wife next to The Random Sweaty Girl. I feel privileged to be that sweaty girl.

It’s really memorable, though, when someone you don’t know does something that makes them feel like family. When I left America, I sat next to two elderly women on one of the three planes it took to get to Southeast Asia. I didn’t know their nationality; I just knew that they were from Asia and that I didn’t speak a lick of their language. Yet, they still grew very concerned over my eating habits. When I didn’t feel like consuming the food, they insisted I do so, and a few hours later, they kindly offered me vegetables in a sandwich bag.  When I tried to sleep, they made sure I had a blanket. They reminded me of my own grandmother, only with healthier snacks. I miss them a bit.

I feel like traveling creates it’s own culture, one in which people often care less about what they do because they will never see you again and one in which generous actions mean so much more for precisely that reason. I’m not trying to philosophize or say anything particularly meaningful, I just found myself mulling over the moments we create with each other and contemplating whether or not any of those people will write about me in their blogs. I also wonder if my airplane grandmothers are flying right now, adopting more kids fresh from college who could use a few good vegetables doled out from sandwich bags. I hope they are, anyway.

This is the first time I’ve had a chance to interview a husband and wife team. Vivian, whose wonderful laugh permeates this interview, is described by Gary as the “brains of the outfit”. By having them both at the microphone you get a balanced sense of what it takes to run a business that takes you around the world.

Please visit Gary’s website HERE and his blog HERE.

This month’s wallpaper is courtesy of the International Guild of Visual Peacemakers. I am a member of several guilds and organizations, but there is none that I feel more proud to be a part of than the IGVP. Not only because I share membership with noted photographers like Ami Vitale, David duChemin, Gavin Gough and others, but because of what it stands for. To quote from the IGVP about page:

IGVP is a membership-based network of visual communicators and staff united around one purpose: Visual Peacemaking. We are an international community composed of multiple ethnic and religious backgrounds. IGVP visual communicators use their craft to breakdown stereotypes of the “other,” to display the dignity of cultures, and to show the common humanity amongst peoples of the world.

This month is the run up for the official start to the guild in all it’s glory. On April 15st membership will begin for community members and the new, very cool, website will be release around the same time. Downoad this month’s “Give Peace a Shot” desktop wallpaper and join me and other of the IGVP community as we Shoot for Peace.

iPhone Versions

Sometimes there is pain in enculturation.

The interview I had planned for today would be better as a Depth of Field podcast. So, left with a blank piece of paper, or screen as the case may be, I found myself musing about last week’s guest post from author Shiloh Lane. She ruffled a lot of feathers and, quite frankly, I was surprised by the amount of flak she took (but I don’t want to go back down that road). It reminded me that there is a big difference between traveling abroad and living abroad.

Travel photographers are often based out of their home culture. Receiving an assignment, they have to book tickets quickly, get visas, pack bags, and then, head out. After a week or two in the host culture, they head back home to the safety of the familiar. They are there long enough to see the beauty of the host culture, experience a little frustration, and remain in awe of the differences. Living overseas is quite a different story. Culture stress, or as it used to be called culture shock, is an extremely difficult stage of living abroad, and, if truth be known, we never fully get through it.

Belonger, Insider

My wife (L) with her good friend in Kashmir.

Experts in the field of culture stress and culture acclimation tell us that the road to making a second culture home can take up to two full years before you feel that sense of belonging, depending on both the expatriated visitor and willingness of the host culture to open itself to you. Not all cultures are the same, as if you didn’t know. Some are very open and accepting of foreigners, while others are very closed and may never fully accept you as a “belonger.” Often, cultures that place a high value on “sameness” and on identity make it very difficult for an outsider to ever become a belonger. Notice, I’m not using the word “insider.” As an outsider, a foreigner, it is very rare that you can become an insider in another culture. Really, the best an outsider can hope for is to be accepted as someone who belongs there.

This lines up both with my own feelings and experiences and with the extensive reading I did over many years as I tried to figure out how I could ever become an insider, or a belonger, in Kashmir. After 13 years, I came to realize that it wasn’t going to happen – but I did become accepted as their “resident outsider.” That was better than always remaining a visitor who knew nothing!

Language and more

When living in a place extremely different from your home, your first tendency is to view things that are different as “wrong.” Travelers who make quick visits abroad experience this. When you live in a place day after day, these thoughts are magnified 1000 times over! Constant stress comes from a lack of identity and control in this new place. You can’t seem to communicate. You can’t get the simplest tasks done. You feel that your whole day is spent simply surviving. Why? Because you don’t know how to communicate! What? Is it really just a problem with language? Yes and no. The words are important, but there is more. There are all kinds of nuances such as the way people use their hands to talk or point, the way they stand or sit, the way they look (or don’t look) into other people’s eyes, and even how quickly they ask or answer a question. You may have the words down perfectly, but without understanding the nuances, you will never completely communicate like a local. Even after years and years, you may never reach that proficiency.

Kashmiri is a very difficult language to learn; it has a gazillion pronouns and other grammatical nuances. On the other hand, Bahasa Malay, the language spoken in Malaysia, is said to be one of the easiest to learn. My wife has been slowly learning Bahasa Malay. She sounds pretty good, but she is finding that there are little things that make even this “easy language” not so easy. In Malaysia, you often hear the particle “lah” used both in Bahasa and in the English that Malays speak. What does “lah” mean? It depends, and that makes it complicated. Sometimes, it is used to mean same as the English “of course.” Other times, it is used simply to elicit familiarity. I can’t go into all of the details, and that is sort of the point: most non-native speakers don’t know how to use it. We sound silly trying even when we are speaking Bahasa Malay. Can you imagine the frustration you must feel spending years learning a language, cultural nuances, proper dress and etiquette, and then a little word like “lah” trips you up in a way that seems to scream to everyone around you, “I am a foreigner!”

You can’t win for losing.

Sometimes, “you can’t win for losing“. For instance, a local once told me that in Malaysia, you never put a fork in your mouth. Most Malay eat with a fork and a spoon only. They use the two utensils to tear the meat apart and then use the spoon to scoop up the rice and meat and put it all in the mouth. That is the “rule,” and yet, sitting in street side eateries, I see locals putting both spoon and fork in their mouths when they eat. So much for that rule!

Honeymoon. Experts say, and I’ve seen this firsthand, that the first six months to a year in a new culture is often called the “honeymoon stage.” It’s a stage when things may be difficult and even confusing, but the culture is still new and exciting. You are happy to be there, and the host culture can do no wrong. The average traveler functions in this stage when visiting a new country or culture for a short period of time. When I am on photo assignments, everything is new and wonderful. I leave the country and return home with all of my wonderful memories of the place and people I just visited. I think this is a natural buffer for the next really hard phase.

My wife & I had driven 10 hrs to catch a train.

Frustration. The next stage is a harder and more dangerous. It usually starts six months to a year after entering a country and can take over a year to get through. You often experience frustration, anger, and even hate for the host culture. As nasty as it sounds, this is normal. What is dangerous is the possibility that your nasty attitude creates all kinds of enemies and infects everyone around you with negative thoughts and feelings about where you are living. And, it is dangerous in another way, as well; if you leave the host culture now, you leave with all the bitter feelings and negative thoughts. And, realistically, if you leave during that phase, you may never return.

This stage was very difficult for me.  I lived in the stage for almost one year in India. I can remember being so frustrated with a rickshaw driver that I almost put my foot through his floorboard in anger. One time, and I’m just being honest, I was so frustrated with everyone trying to push their way onto a bus while I was trying to get off that I just shoved hard with both arms and sent everyone flying. Being about a head or two taller than most Indians, I had the advantage of leverage.

Another time my wife and I had driven 10 hours from Srinagar over the mountains to the city of Jammu to catch a 12-hour train to Delhi. I was tired, I had been sick, and the weather was very hot. The train pulled up and people were clamoring to get on it even before it came to a standstill. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! People were shouting and pushing and elbowing their way into the bogey. I managed to get inside with my suitcase in hand only to realize that my wife was not onboard. I had to force my way all the way through the bogey to the exit in the back to get down and find my wife. While trying to get out, one man shoved me a little too hard. I snapped. I grabbed him by his shirt collar and shoved him against the side of the train. Had I not had my suitcase in my right hand, I might have punched him. Later, I found out that he had shoved me because he was a pickpocket and had stolen my Cross pen from my shirt pocket.

I tell you these stories to illustrate the brutal reality of this phase. I’m not proud of how I acted but that is the reality of that time in my life many years ago. I soon worked my way through this phase of culture adaptation and found a more balanced view of the culture and was living in.

Observe. There are ways to make adaptation easier. The first and the best way is to learn the host language. Learning a language gives you an insight into what is happening around you. You realize that your paranoia of everyone talking about you is just that: paranoia. They are really talking about the price of bread or the latest movie.  Once you get to a conversational level in the language, your frustrations quickly diminish. You calm down and you can start observing culture. And when you start observing culture you can start understanding the “why’s” of the people you’re living with, and once you start understanding the “why’s,” you can start feeling at home.

Laugh at yourself. The last thing I would say to anyone entering into a new culture is, “don’t take yourself too seriously!” Learn to laugh at yourself and your mistakes. Develop a thick skin because your host culture is going to point a finger at you and laugh. (By the way, that’s a cultural difference. In my home culture it’s rare to find someone who will point a finger at you and to talk about you within earshot. But that is not the case in many other cultures!) Learn to laugh at your language mistakes because you’ll be making plenty of them.

I remember when I was learning Hindi, I always confused the word sharāb with the word peshāb.  (I can hear my Hindi speaking friends laughing now!) Sharāb is the word for wine and peshāb for pee or piss. One day, an old beggar man came up to me asking for money. I could tell he had been drinking. I tried to ignore him but he would not go away. Finally, he wore me down and I gave him a few rupees. As I handed over the coins, I looked squarely into his bloodshot eyes and told him in my best Hindi, “Peshāb mut ḵẖarīd na!” or “Don’t use this to buy alcohol!“… or so I thought. What I really said was, “Don’t use this to buy piss!” At the time, I did not understand why he gave me such a strange look.

Get off your high horse and learn to laugh at your self. Adapting to culture takes time. Most of the time you never arrive where you want to be, but you can enjoy the adventure and find a home while doing it.

Think Tank Photo has announced several new product lately. One of which rates a 12 on scale of 1-to-10 for it’s cool factor. I am speaking about the new Retrospective series camera bags. As the name implies, it sports a very retro look and feel. I have only seen the press release photo, but from what I can tell it looks very cool. It comes in a Black Poly Spun Canvas or a stonewashed Pinestone Cotton Canvas. I personally really like the look of the Pinestone from the photo and I have always loved the feel of the old cotton canvas bags. I can’t say anything about its functionality, as I’ve never actually touched one or looked inside of one. But, given it is made by Think Tank, my bet is it will not suffer in that area. Hardly anyone has outside of Think Tank has set eyes on this set of bags, as the bags have not been released yet. But they should be released soon.

There are two types of bags in this series. The Retrospective camera shoulder bags, designed for a camera and lens. This bag is capable of carting around a pro size DSLR and can accommodates up to a 70-200 f2.8 lens (lens hood reversed). It has a front pocket capable of carrying a body without the lens attached. There are three sizes in this bag: Retrospective 10, Retrospective 20 and the Retrospective 30 selling selling for $149, $159 and $179 respectively.¹ Then there is the Retrospective lens changer shoulder bags, and this model comes in two sizes. The Retrospective Lens Changer 2 will carry two lenses and will sell for around US$99 and the Retrospective Lens Changer 3, as the name implies, will carry three lenses and will be US$119.

This series is designed to pay homage to the days when bags where visually simple but highly functional. Here is what Doug Murdoch, Think Tank Photo’s president and lead designer had to say about the bags:

“As camera bag designers and frontline photojournalists, we honor the role of reportage and its influence on photojournalism. We understand that photography is more than an assignment or a paycheck, but a way of life and an art form. To quote Cartier-Bresson: ‘To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It’s at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.’”

If there is one question I get whenever I teach or discuss composition it is, “Yeah but do you shoot with all these compositional rules in mind or is it something you see afterwards?”  To put it another way, are these compositional rules prescriptive or descriptive? And the answer, of course, is a little of both.

Now, when I run a seminar or workshop and teach a load of compositional rules, I don’t expect my students to go out and start applying all of the rules right away when they are shooting. The fact is, when we go shooting, we are thinking about the subject almost to the point of becoming myopic. We become oblivious to everything else around us. Hopefully, we will try to think about a few of the basic rules of composition at the same time, such as thinking about where the subject falls in the frame, where the lines or elements in the frame are that we can use to draw the viewers eye to the subject. But there are a whole host of compositional elements that we never think to look for in a photo. And quite frankly, most of those would fall in the category I’d call descriptive.

While cropping, positioning the subject in the frame, the use of contrast and balance, being aware of the foreground, middle ground and background, rhythm or repetition and yes, even eye-lines can all be things  that we look for in the view finder there is so much more that will help us in zeroing in on that great image once we get it into Lightroom. These are the factors that help you select powerful images.

When I am in the field, I will often take 5 to 10 images of any one subject. I work the subject for different angles, light, expression and gesture. After I import the images into Lightroom, a lot of the other compositional elements come into play. It is now that the strong images rise to the surface. There’s a chance, and over the years it’s gotten a lot more than just a chance, that I know which image is going to be the strongest before ever importing them into Lightroom. But certainly, once the images are in there, a few images will stand out among the rest. It is now that I look for strong elements of design and composition, things that I might never have seen in the viewfinder. A good example is an image I shot of some farmers winnowing their barley harvest.

This image has some very strong repetition of triangles. I saw one maybe two of the triangles when I was shooting. But later when I look at the image in Lightroom I saw many, many more. I have marked a few above, but there are still more in the frame to be found.

Much of composition is learned and reinforced with practice and self-assignments. Then later, sometimes much later, it enters into the intuitive part of the brain. One day you realize that you are not thinking about diagonal lines curves and vectors, they just start showing up in the images. This is a lot like any art or sport. You learn technique so well that it becomes second nature. I fenced in college.  I was mediocre at best. But I fenced against some of the best. I can tell you they were not thinking, perry, repost, lunge, disengage.  It just magically happened. It was all second nature. Because we practiced the techniques over and over again. And so it is with composition. The more you practice, the more you critique your own images, the more it will become second nature.

A Whiff of Progress and Pad Thai

Considering the fact that you have no idea who I am, I’m not exactly sure how I should begin this post. I guess, to be completely cliché and obvious, I’ll start with: Hi, my name is Shiloh.

I’m a writer and photographer who’s lucky enough to be working in and traveling through the world of rice and geckos known as Southeast Asia. Matt asked me to contribute to his blog.

I love it here.  The landscape is exotic and gorgeous, the people are generally kind and I can get an hour-long massage for $8. I never thought I’d say it, but I’d pay an Asian woman to dig her knuckles into my calves any day.

However, four months ago when I first landed, I wasn’t a fan. Believe it or not, Asia is different than America. No, really. I think there might be 30 public trashcans in my city, which kills me because, as a twenty-something programmed by liberal media to think the fate of the world depends on the ultimate destination of my plastic water bottles, I don’t litter. I also had to get used to paying for toilet paper in public restrooms and prying the Chaco’s off my feet every time I walked into a house.

What really got me, though, were the smells. I never thought they would bother me so much, but you learn a lot about yourself when you uproot your life and move to the opposite side of the planet. I learned that I’m a picky smeller.

Asia has a smell, just like a person’s house has a specific odor. It’s a mixture of spicy food and pungent incense with a slight tinge of musk. It’s not bad – just strong – and it made my roommate throw up on her first day.

There’s also an absence of smells such as the warm, comforting fragrance of cinnamon candles like the ones my mother burns around Christmas and the scent of vanilla body wash. Apparently, Asian people prefer flowery bath soaps. Therefore, my apartment smelled weird, I smelled weird and the country smelled weird.

Strangely enough, though, my hypersensitivity to odors has become a testament of my acclimation to this place. Flower-scented soap isn’t such a big deal anymore, and I haven’t smelled the continent since the first month. It’s like I’m practically Asian, except for my curly hair, pale skin and propensity to prop my feet on furniture.

But seriously, my dulled nose is a sign of progress. It means I’m more comfortable in this country and with this new, world-traveling version of myself. I’m an overseas writer who has just learned one of her first lessons in a foreign land: that a place is home when you can’t smell it anymore.

-Shiloh Lane