I am thrilled to announce that Mercy Corps has created a solo exhibit of my black & white images from Ethiopia. The show will run from March 1 – 28 in the Action Center Gallery at 45 SW Ankeny in Portland, Oregon.
I will be giving a lecture on Thursday night March 14 at 7pm at the same location.
Entry is free, and kids are welcome!
UPDATE:
The lecture was well attended and the kiddos had the BEST questions!
(Lecture photos by Bill Purcell)
For those of you who wonder what it is like to travel with me to Ethiopia, here is a guest posting from someone who did just that last November!
Photographer Kerry Reinking traveled from Amsterdam and experienced a whole lot more than he expected while traveling to Addis Ababa and Bahir Dar.
(Image of the back scenes of photographing The Market Workers series by Kerry Reinking)
She brushes past the crowd of worn out people waiting for their tables, her blonde hair preceding her real self, and her bling blinds us all. Cowboys tip their hats, women take deep breaths and straighten their spines, their eyes burning into their men.
Miss Terri, owner of “Terri’s Dirty Blonde Salon”, is in the house.
I first met her last year at the Canby Rodeo while I was photographing rodeo riders with my Speed Graphic 4X5 film camera. As I fumbled with the low light conditions, I reached for my dark cloth, and instead almost plunged my hand into her ample and adorned-with-a-huge-shiny-necklace cleavage.
Hi, I’m Terri!
She proceeded to rattle off cowboy names and stats, peppering the conversation with a bit of rumor here and there just to make sure I was listening. Her passion for the rodeo was unlike any sideline sports fan I had ever met. And yes, it extended past the “I want a sexy cowboy” quest.
We met several other times at other rodeos (imagine her glee when I got us press passes for the dressing room at the Mollala Bull Riding Competition) and throughout the year she kept me informed via text messages about champion rides, marriages and divorces, broken legs and even the death of one of her favorite riders who was her dear friend.
Her heart is big and unbound. She brings her scissors to each rodeo and cuts the riders’ hair when they need it, feeds them chips and salsa, gives them a soft place to pass out in her trailer after a night of too much whiskey. She’s a good girl.
And a sexy mother hen to boot! At home, she cares for her beautiful thirteen year old daughter and her erratic and loving autistic son. Sparkly and girly and bold and strong as a man, she drives a monster truck and hitches her trailer by herself, thank you very much. And she can shoot a gun like a bandit.
This week we are at the Pendleton Round-Up, the Mother Lode of Rodeos. After finishing our plate of bad Mexican food, we head over to her usual evening starting point, The Hut. We meet up with her cowboys and they take turns feeling her breasts, betting whether they are real or not. They have to check a few times to make sure their previous conclusion was correct. Oh, Terri.
Before I finish my Pendleton Whiskey on the rocks, she grabs my arm and swings me toward the door. Time to go downtown. I pony up to walk a mile in my cowboy boots, when I see a bull rider run into the street and stop a flat bed truck. On we pile, and away we go. This is how the cowboys get their rides downtown! (A few days later I try this technique on my own, and it doesn’t work. I had to resort to hitting up people in trucks waiting in line at the Taco Bell where they were trapped and had to listen to my sorry begging for a ride.)
We make it downtown, and one exceptionally sturdy cowboy who had seen my attempt trying to jump up on the flat bed fail miserably lifts me onto his shoulder like he would a heifer, and in a jiffy I am on solid ground again.
We make our way straight to Crabby’s where Terri tinkerbells her way around the room. Boy, Man, Girl, Woman….everyone watches Terri as she sashays her way to the bar to the dance floor and back to the bar.
I learn to dance the Cowboy Swing, taking home arm bruises to prove that I lost my battle to try to lead these bull riders.
And I vow one thing before the night is over: tomorrow I will bring my stick horsie with me and get these rowdy boys to ride THAT.
I think Terri would approve.
(This account was written about Day 1 of the workshop I taught at the Pendleton Round-Up. I was sworn to secrecy about Day 2, 3 & 4.)
(Last photo courtesy of Terri Nicol)
This week’s travel class at Newspace Center For Photography was a blast! It was filled with wonderful participants and we discussed ways they can finance their travel, how to create a project proposal, tips for traveling to sensitive areas, lighting/composition and how to work with NGOs.
We even got to do a bit of street shooting so they could test out what they learned about engaging subjects!
Check the Class section of my website for upcoming classes.
(iPhone photo)
In the last several years, I have been asked to perform portfolios reviews, consult one-on-one with individual photographers, and judge various photography competitions. In each case, I feel honored to provide this service.
And while I try to make some adjustments for each situation, I can’t help but uphold a standard of criteria when I look at photographic work. Sometimes this upsets people greatly, and they defend their work ferociously, even within an entry level photography classroom. This is fine. Others express gratitude for an honest assessment and helping them move into another phase of the development of their work.
I don’t pretend to know everything about photography. I am only one person, with one opinion. However, there are several themes that do seem apparent to me: Photography has no rules, never tells the entire truth, is bastardized frequently, and love is in the eye of the beholder. I have seen weak work garner stellar awards, and strong work pushed aside.
The truth seems to be that there is more to the picture than the picture.
This month, I am in the process of pre-screening 756 of this year’s Critical Mass entries. Each entry includes ten images and an artist’s statement. I am halfway finished, and after viewing 387 entries, I am starting to see a pattern regarding how I “judged” the entries. And often, very often, I wish that the artist is sitting right here next to me so I could ask them some questions.
Here are some of those questions. I hope this helps when editing your entries for any competition. As I reflect upon these questions, I realize many things about my own work and how I can alter my approach.
What were you thinking when you came up with this concept? Did you clearly state this in your artist statement?
If you’ve seen it before, are these images similar?
Does your work look strikingly like (blatantly derivative of) someone else’s work that you admire?
What are you really trying to tell your audience?
Do all photos form a song?
Do any of the images feel insincere?
Who is more prominently in focus: your content or your self?
How are these photos surprising?
Is your artist statement descriptive, and not overbearing or self-righteous?
How is your point of view different from others we have seen?
Did you take risks with the subject matter, execution of imagery, post processing?
Does one weak image take the others down?
Even though you captured important subject matter (cancer, crime, death), are the images interesting and different?
Have you gone too far just to be considered “different”?
Is the group of images cohesive?
Is the group of images repetitive?
Have you told anyone to blankly stare into the lens?
Are you trying too hard to solicit emotions from the viewer?
Were you engaged with your subject matter? How so?
Are you trying to please someone?
Have you taken a photo of a photo (or painting, or design) and if so, how have you made this your own image?
Do the images tell us something without having to read the artist statement?
Again, there are no right and wrong answers when creating a body of photographic work. It is yours, and should reflect your voice. But if we present the portfolio to others, especially within a competition, there seems to be another layer of pondering that might be useful in presenting something that is unique and therefore more aptly noticed.
Mercy Corps International asked me to teach a photography and storytelling class to 22 students from the Middle East. Seven countries were represented, and the class was highly energetic and inquisitive.
I was amazed at how quickly the students incorporated various lighting, composition and subject approach techniques into their imagery in such a short period of time.
(Photos by Brynn Opsahl)
I just took a peek at 1859 Magazine’s Summer 2012 issue and it is a beauty! I had great fun working on the Dive Bar assignment, as well as capturing images of Mike McMenamin, founder and owner of all of the McMenamin breweries, restaurants and hotels.
They also ran a story about rodeos, from buckaroos to clowns to cowpokes. I love shooting at rodeos, and have a great collection of images from various events. 1859 Magazine included some of my shots from the 2011 the Pendleton Round-Up. And here is an opportunity for you! During this year’s PRU, I will be conducting a photography workshop. Sign up, and buckle up for a wild ride!
Just had a deliciously super dig dag BLAST teaching a street portraiture workshop as part of the Julia Dean Photography Workshops. We focused on Venice Beach and found many great subjects.
We also built a mini outdoor studio….but the winds were so strong, we had to have body weight to hold down the sides of the black velvet material, which only added to the fun.
I am teaching photography classes for NGOs and corporations, and it is especially gratifying to work with an established team already in place when I arrive. We explore many areas of communications and focus on the psychology behind obtaining visually impacting images. Photography is about much more than just the devices we use for capturing imagery.
Here is the Mercy Corps’ Communications Department having a great time with some of the random subjects we met on the street.
I just had an incredibly fun time teaching my first class in a new series of workshops entitled “GET IN THE VAN”. The concept is simple and dynamic: I team up with another photographer I admire, we select a location, and participants get two-in-one instructors for the workshop. We also try to keep a few locations secret, revealing them on the day of the workshop. And we also keep the class size small so there is plenty of hands-on instruction.
Leah Nash was pure fun to work with on this first class! Here are some images from our one-day class held on the streets of Portland.
