She looked at the table towards my Leica M6 and said, “anyone who owns and knows how to handle a Leica should have my father’s camera.”

I’m starting a new photo project, and for this project I have been looking for a medium format camera to shoot some very detailed portraits. I had a Hasselblad for a few weeks, but sold it to finance a much needed computer upgrade.

Last week, at the Marine Corps Ball, the Leica came along for the ride. I set it down on the table with a half-assed intention of making some photos. The wife of a retired Gunnery Sergeant, noticed the camera and began making conversation about how she used to work at a camera store and how her father was a photographer.

In between conversations, a few of us at the table thought it would be fun to share a bottle of wine, so I ran off to find an overpriced bottle of wine to share between three Marines over a steak. When I returned, the Gunny’s wife offered the camera to me, mentioning that she’s had it for years and hasn’t used it. I didn’t know what to say, except, “thank you” over and over. I had been looking for a larger format camera, to cost me between $500 and $800.

The camera, a Mamiya RB67, is a monster. The thing is huge and weighs a ton. RB stands for Rotating Back, and 67 means 6×7. 6×7 is a medium format film size that is 4 1/2 times larger than 35mm. Included with the Mamiya was a 65mm lens (wide angle), a 90mm lens (“normal”), and a 180mm lens (telephoto). Also included were four film backs, 2 for 220 and 2 for 120 film.

One thing about this camera, its HUGE. I mean, the pictures don’t even do it justice and it weighs like 7 pounds. I’m still learning how to properly use it and am finding that a tripod will be necessary in most cases. The downsides are actually upsides though, I was looking for a big camera with a big negative for image quality and a technical requirement for me to slow down and think about the image.

Something I’ve come to realize, a lot of photographers call the Leica their “sketchbook,” after lugging this Mamiya around for two miles on a hike the other day, I can definitely see how a Leica could be considered a “sketchbook” compared to this monster.

Speaking of Leicas, the other thing I’ve known for a while, and keeps being reinforced, is how much I really enjoy shooting with this camera. I think with the setup I have, I could pretty much photograph everything that interests me. Would I miss some photos due to manual and slower focus? Sure. Would I miss some photos due to extreme low light and/or missing ttl? Definitely. In the end though, like I said, everything that’s really interested me in the last year or two could be shot with a Leica, and a 35mm or 50mm lens with Tri-X pulled to 200 or pushed to 1600 ISO.

I <3 my Leica(s)

Last year I decided to stick around the Olympic Peninsula for a while and mostly shun any international photo projects. The trip to Vietnam awakened an understanding that I had been missing. While traveling internationally on all previous trips, I did everything I could to get off the beaten path, the tourist traps. Vietnam took me deep into the Mekong delta to stay with a family in a village that sees perhaps 3 westerners year-round. Being so far off the tourist track, I saw the parallels between rural Vietnamese life and rural western life.

When I returned from Vietnam, I vowed to stay stateside until I better understood my vision. The beginning of my self-discovery began last winter and then was promptly derailed. Finding a balance between my work as a computer programmer with a major side of network security expertise and the creative world of photography and artistic vision is a huge struggle for me. I often feel two distinct personalities, each one developed and fully capable of succeeding with enough nurturing. Programming and security satisfy my monetary and professional needs, photography satisfies my philosophical and spiritual needs.

Finding a better balance recently, I’m getting back on track and have earnestly started working towards a new photo project.

The project is essentially contemporary art of the Makah. I’m hoping to open a window into the world of contemporary art of the Makah in order to challenge common stereotypes, educate my community and provide a “moment in time” of the Makah art tradition for the Makah Cultural Research Center. This project will be done primarily on black & white film using my Leica and a Mamiya RB67 medium format cameras.

Research for the project has led me down several fascinating roads. I recently finished “Voices of a Thousand People,” by Patrica Pierce Erikson, which details the history and “why” of the Makah Cultural Research Center. Voices has answered many questions and given me a good cultural platform to begin with. Just starting this project and nailing down a “what” was daunting as I didn’t want to make assumptions (which I initially did anyway) or be offensive. We “white” guys have a really bad tendency to box Native Americans into quaint little boxes that fit our preconceived ideas. Necessarily throwing away all previous notions left me with a blank slate, but with a blank slate there was no way I could define a project. The first step required feeling out a direction, and for that I turned to Dr. Jeff Mauger, an important anthropologist who worked with the Makah on the Ozette dig. Between Dr. Mauger and Voices, I was able to begin writing a new perception, one grounded in fact and cultural understanding.

Also, “Indian Artists at Work”, by Ulli Steltzer is a beautiful photo book that provides a visual insight into art and craft being performed in western Canada. Many of the photos detail the production of native art and the people who were making it in the 1970′s. “Indian Artists at Work,” also gave me several ideas on what to expect.

I’ve been in contact with Janine Bowechop of the MCRC and have received positive confirmation on the project. I’ve also had several discussions with Dr. Mauger and he’s been and invaluable resource.

This is going to be a long project, but I’m glad for that. I’m hoping that the span of time will allow me to reflect on each session and tweak my direction or vision so that a healthy body of work emerges at the end. Once this body of work emerges, I will share all of it with the MCRC and hope to have gallery presentations. Peninsula College will probably be available for showing and I’m trying to understand how the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center works for submissions. After that, who knows?

Books and Essays I’ve recently read:
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield
War of the Classes, Jack London
Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
Liberalism And Socialism, Winston Churchill

Working on:
On Liberty, John Stuart Mill
The Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx (#1 most dangerous book by the American Heritage Foundation)

The rhetoric present in our nation has been laced with classic definitions turned to epithets. The “spectre of socialism” has not been the least of these.

At some point in my adult life, not too long ago, I stopped standing by my opinions and those of others. At that point, I began asking more questions than answering them. It seemed to me, there were a great many things I did not understand and was not qualified to hold an opinion on, let alone an educated one. Just because an opinion is popular or tradition, does not make it right.

Having a recent opportunity to digest many volumes of classic political thought, I’ve been spending my time reading. The concept of Socialism is one that has been lost on me. “Socialism” has been widely used as an epithet for the direction of the current government. I have not been politically educated beyond personal experience and so my recent selection of reading material has been to inform myself on what socialism means and why it is or is not popular.

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it. Each is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual.

-On Liberty, John Stuart Mill

I’ve been thinking a lot lately. Thinking about photography, the future, life, work and art. One thing is certain and requires little thought, photography is a difficult craft. Becoming great will consume a lifetime of trying to achieve perfection.

As I look through photos I’ve taken over 4 years, it quickly becomes apparent where a formal education in photography would have helped. Becoming competent at the technical aspects of photography is relatively easy. Rule of thirds, see the light, and finally capture the “decisive moment”. That stuff was fairly easy for me to pick up on as they are considered “rules” and I am very good with rules.

I’ve spent too much time with the rules, they were too comfortable and generated satisfactory generic results. I have hundreds of decent photos that are properly exposed and composed. At the end of the day, most of them do not “say” anything about me or what I really hope to share. The problem is, I’m not even sure I know what I want to say.

Trying to put together a portfolio has been depressing and rewarding for me. I’ve tried several times in the past with horrible results. Past attempts were driven mostly by portfolio reviews with newspaper photographers and the idea that I wanted to be a newspaper photographer. Following a formula, I put together an especially disastrous book (portfolio) containing news, sports, portraits, stories and maybe a few random photos thrown in for good measure.

A few months later, I knew for certain that I did not want to be a newspaper photographer. Documentary photojournalist seemed to be the best working description of what I want to do. An ability to blend art and storytelling with photography, forget the rules. Kevin German has been my main inspiration for this. The rules are a great place to start, but at some point, to break away from the rest, rules must be ignored.

I don’t know what kind of photographer I am, but I know I want to open minds through visual storytelling. If I can expose a lie, a cliche, or a prejudice with a photograph than I will feel accomplishment.

I keep staring at the same images over and over trying to make sense of what I keep capturing on film and file. The portfolio used to be a complete mystery to me. Now it’s a partial mystery. After a lot of reflection and thought about what kind of photographer I want to be, I took another crack at building a portfolio. This is the first take:

Port Angeles/Clallam County is the theme. Now that the theme or idea has been found it is much easier for me to figure out the holes and where I need to replace some images with stronger images. While I have some beautiful photos from around the world, they don’t really say much about me or the subject. This first round of portfolio selection represents in rough draft form what I’m trying to say. Clallam County is a unique place with all walks of life and I’d like to somehow represent that in photos.

Yesterday morning I received an email from the Port Angeles Fine Arts Center stating that two of my photos had been selected in the upcoming Strait Art Exhibition. Yesterday, I did NOT receive a phone call from the Northwinds Arts Center stating that my photo of Machu Picchu had been selected; which required me to go pick it up.

Needless to say, I’m pretty excited to finally have some work selected for a gallery showing. The photos, all from my Salt Harvesting series, represent the kind of work I want to be doing in this area and are more appropriate for a first showing than the Machu Picchu photo.

Strait Art Exibition, showcasing two works each from 35 artists including me. The exhibition will be open from Sunday March 22nd to May 10.

I’ve been pretty introspective lately and this is a nice multimedia icing on the cake. Please watch this video, especially if you work in a creative medium.

First posted on Scott Kelby’s blog:

http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2009/archives/3433

Video by Zack Arias:

I struggled last summer in putting together my first portfolio. I struggled because I had no idea of what to expect or what I should present. After hours of countless research and talking with other photographers, I built a portfolio that I hoped would cover the basics and show a variety of scenarios. In short, I created a portfolio for the newspaper business. However, I realized after my first stint at the Buc, that I did not want to be a newspaper photographer. I didn’t really know what I wanted to do, but newspaper photography was definitely not it.

After the review, I hated my portfolio, I hated the work I had done and I was disappointed with myself for not seeing what I felt should have been obvious.

I now realize what I had done wrong, I had created a portfolio for a job I did not want, and of work that I wasn’t really interested in. I made a portfolio to please the masses, adding news, sports, travel, a few portraits, commercial work etc. If I didn’t really care about the work how could I expect anybody else to?

I ran across this post on Chase Jarvis’s blog where he summarizes an article by Doug Menuez that was published on Editorial Photographers

…If you create a book [portfolio] that you think will get you work based on your perception of what sells, or on the advice of anyone who steers you away from your core, you have a complex problem ahead. Yes, you may find some work that way, which is really tempting short term, while you tell yourself you’ll do the real stuff on the side or in the future. “Show the work you want to get” is a lasting truism and if you have chosen to show work other than the purist version of your creative vision then whatever jobs do come in will be based on that work. There are many shooters who do this exact thing and end up with a middling level of success, stuck on a financial and creative plateau, slowly starting to run out of gas. After a few years they hate their work and life in general. They are getting divorced or leaving the business or pursuing whatever diversion eases the pain. They are not living the dream. They are not challenging themselves creatively because they did not give themselves permission to be who they are as photographers in the first place. This is the road to being a burned out, bitter hack. Boring. But by defining what you show based on what you truly are and what you want to do, you create a self-selection process: you are not for everyone. You are different. Be courageous enough to show that you see in a way no one else does…

This is who I am now. I don’t know how far I’ll get, but I’ll have a lot more fun getting there. I don’t think I could even create a portfolio yet, but I know what I need to do. When it was recommended that I start over on my portfolio last summer, I scoffed. Now I relish the thought, looking forward to building a body of work that represents me.

It seems that I always have something in the works. As soon as I return from one adventure I’m looking for the next. I promised myself that after Vietnam I would concentrate on the local area, the Olympic Northwest and surrounding territories. I know what I need to photograph and there are plans already in the works. Short term plans and long term plans out to a year. One big adventure a year from now, you may be able to guess, but I’m going to keep it quiet for now.

This week and the next I will be working on entering galleries and photo contests. Its time to get my name out there and get noticed by other people. After March, I’ll be finished teaching and the family should be settled in with the new baby. Starting in the Spring will be my next big photo push and will go through the summer and into the fall.

I’m really excited. I can’t wait to begin and I’m getting ready by buying film, saving money and making connections. This is going to be a good year for me.

It all began on a whim, what is it like to use a rangefinder? I won a Yashica GSN on eBay last year and played with it for about a month. It was neat, but was missing a bright focus patch which made focusing very difficult. A few weeks later, I was surfing eBay and spotted a Leica M3 selling for much cheaper than usual. Furthermore, this same M3 had recently been seen by a technician for routine maintenance. I won the camera and instantly wondered what I was going to do with it. I had no lens, or light meter or really any idea how to use and operate a Leica.

I set about researching and learning everything I could and found myself with a decent beginners kit. My first photos were pretty much terrible, although I improved. The bad photos were a result of two factors, the first being my learning how to use a rangefinder and manual focus, and two, trusting a completely manual film camera. I had grown so used to “chimping” my photos to check exposure and composition that going back to film was like relearning how to use a rotary pay phone.

Over the course of several months, I essentially left my DSLR in the camera bag choosing to use the Leica whenever possible. By August, the Leica had grown on me and I traded the M3 for an M6, the M6 having a built-in light meter.

One thing that makes using a Leica awkward is that film is loaded from the bottom. A removable plate comes off of the botton of the camera and you thread the film leader into the camera, tucking the tip of the leader into a small spindle under the shutter release. It’s hard to explain and there are youtube videos that show this much better than I can explain. According to Leica, this is a “feature” that makes the camera body as a whole much stronger than other systems. Either way, loading film is much slower than a swing-back design found on nearly all film cameras today.

During my time in Vietnam, the only camera I used was a Leica M6 with either a 35mm wide or a 50mm normal. During that trip the camera and I became one. I think I’ll be shooting film for the foreseeable future.