My photographic mentors and inspirations

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my photography, looking back on the path I’ve taken so far and thinking about next steps and what I need to do to continue the journey. As part of this process, I’ve been thinking through the photographers that have been important in my development in some way and trying to understand why their work has influenced me.

In lieu of a more traditional blogroll, I thought it might be useful to talk about what’s influenced me  and why. If nothing else, Consider this my way of saying thanks for what they’ve brought to my work.

So here are some of the people I feel have helped me become who I am today as a photographer, and are photographers I hope to emulate as I become what I believe I can become.

Some of these names you are going to be familiar with. Some aren’t. Some would be on your list. Some won’t be. It would be interesting, actually, if others also created their lists and we link to each other and see who the most common names are — and identify the interesting names others have found that we haven’t. If you do that, link to this list and I’ll link back and we’ll see if we can create a mega-list that way.

I’m willing to bet I’m going to see a number of “but what about <fill in a name>?” to which my answer is going to be “they aren’t on the list”. I don’t have any intention on talking about why someone DID NOT make the list, I want to stay away from real or inferred negativity. I will say that if I’d done this list a year ago my list would have been somewhat different, and that a few of the “what about?” names would have been on that list. There are some photographers out there doing a good job of teaching that are oriented more towards the newer and less experienced photographer;  that’s not a criticism, that is actually a very important niche and one I’m glad they fill.

Who got me started?

John Shaw: The first photographer that made me go “who is this? and where can I find more of his photography?” was John Shaw. His nature work, especially his macro work, really caught my eye and fascinated me.

In high school, I shot primarily black and white, primarily sports and yearbook stuff, spent a lot of time in a darkroom, which I loved. When I graduated I let my photography lapse. In the mid-80′s, I picked it up again with a Minolta 5xi, then a 7xi, shooting a lot of Velvia. Looking back at what survives of that phase of my shooting life, some of it actually isn’t bad. I’ll rate it as “has potential”. John Shaw’s work and books was what aimed me at nature photography and really got me interested in working with the camera again.

His books, especially his macro work, were the foundation I’ve built everything else on. I still have them in my collection, and while some of the technical discussions are outdated in a digital world, I’ve gone back to them recently and they’re still a fascinating read with some amazing photography.

Galen Rowell: Then I discovered Galen Rowell, probably in Outdoor Photographer magazine. He was the photographer that taught me the power of emotionally connecting with the viewer and turning an image into a statement, of having a message.

At some point I put the camera down again; a combination of time and money and too many things in life and setting priorities. And then digital photography happened. I actually owned a first generation Apple Quicktake, which was an interesting toy, but not much more. Some time later I bought a little Canon Elph. And suddenly I was hooked again. The Elph begat a Minolta Dimage, and the Dimage begat…

Well, it begat all of this.

For someone who I’ve exchanged maybe half a dozen emails with over the last 25 years, it’s amazing how much Bill Atkinson‘s affected my life. He wrote QuickDraw and MacPaint, which hooked me on Macs early on (my first was a Mac 512K). He wrote Hypercard, which convinced me to go from being a Mac user to being an Apple employee, where I worked for 17 years. Hypercard convinced me about the advantages of scripting languages which pushed me from being a C programmer to a Perl programmer (and later a PHP programmer). And then I found out he’d shifted out of high tech and into photography, and happens to be one hell of a nature photographer. So is Dave Cardinal, another apple alum I know from my six color days.

And seeing that those two had already done it made me think that I could, too. And so in 2005 I made a decision to work towards the idea of going pro. It’s now 2010 and I’m still haven’t pulled that lever — but that’s a discussion for another time.

Interesting side note on this. When I finally got serious about my photography and started working on the craft, I went and started photographing birds. Which neither Rowell or Shaw are particularly famous for. The things that really drew me into photography were not the things I did when I started doing photography myself. Typical? Not? Weird? Normal? I dunno. I don’t particularly care, but I do find it interesting that I set off on a completely independent path from day 1 of the journey. for whatever that might mean.

Who do I  judge myself by?

What do you want to be when you grow up? But it’s a question I’ve pondered a lot recently while formulating what my goals are and how do I judge whether I’m getting closer. Ultimately I decided to judge my work against the work of two photographers, because if I can make my work as good as and as popular as these photographers I’ll know I’ve succeeded. Those two photographers are George Lepp and Art Wolfe. They are both successful professional photographers who’s work is in the style of photography I want to become known for, and who are technically very good — and not coincidentally, they are both committed teachers of the craft. I will know I’ve “made it” when I hear the phrase “his work reminds me of….” from someone other than my mother.

One thing that attracts me to these two photographers specifically is how they work to inject the life and emotion of the animal into the image — to tell the story of the animal — not just the image. This is something I’m consciously trying to do in my photography now, and I use these photographers as examples to study as a guide for learning how to go from the “senior portrait” style of photography to something more dynamic and emotional and involving.

I was lucky to hear Lepp speak at the Morro Photo Expo last year. He’s back this year, and giving a private class for a few attendees. Very, very tempting. His lecture really helped push my photography by resolving some questions I had about his work I couldn’t figure out, especially with his landscapes. It turns out he was doing a lot of multi-image panorama images and stiching the pieces together, which is why I couldn’t reproduce his work with my lenses. In retrospect — duh — it was painfully obvious, but even though panoramas were on my “experiment with this” list, I didn’t make the connection. His work with extended depth of field also fascinated me (but I still haven’t gotten to experimenting with that). That lecture, and the couple of days I spent at the expo in general, really pushed the quality of my own photography forward in a short time through a combination of some focussed teaching (on HDR and NIght photography) and sharing and talking with the other attendees.

Who do I consider my peers?

If Art Wolfe and George Lepp are the photographers I aspire to become, it’s also an interesting exercise to consider the photographers who are currently doing what I am trying to do. I want to be careful not to use the phrase “as good as” here, because at the very least, professionally, I’m not. Nor is that the kind of evaluation I’m doing here.

By calling them “my peers” I’m saying that these are photographers who are all doing the kind of work I feel I am capable of (and am, or am trying to do) today. These are all California-based photographers who I feel are similar to my work in terms of subject matter and style. They shoot the same locations I do (or shoot in locations I want to shoot) and shoot in ways I look at and study and want to emulate. So when I’m looking for inspiration (or ideas of locations to go and explore), these are the photographers I tend to turn to and study, and as I work to improve my own images and work practices, these are photographers I look to for ideas to adopt.  Thanks, guys.

• Jim Goldstein
• Gary Crabbe
• G. Dan MItchell
• Mark Williamson

Who instructs and inspires me?

When I started down this path in 2005, I thought I was a pretty good photographer. Today, in 2010, I’m a much better photographer and most of my work from 2005 embarrasses me. That’s fine — this is normal in these situations, where the less you know, the better you are. Part of progressing is being honest about your progress without beating yourself up as you figure out what you don’t know.

But the more I learn and study, the more I find I still need to learn. The internet is a wonderful thing, in that it makes massive amounts of knoweldge avaialble to be studied, and gives you access to people who are happy to share and to teach. I’m always on the lookout for people I can listen to and learn from. This list changes over time, but here are the photographers who’s writing I pay attention to and who’s work I study to improve my own. (This list is oriented towards photography as opposed to geeky things and workflow and tools — that would be it’s own list, which I should do some time).

Mike Johnston: If  someone were to ask me the question “What web site do you recommend reading to an intermediate/advanced photographer?” my answer would be The Online Photographer (TOP) and Mike Johnston. It’s hard to say what this site is about — it’s about the kind of stuff` you probably want to know about photography, but it doesn’t really focus on any specific topic. And perhaps that’s part of the attraction, a well-written generalist blog is hard to find, and this one is definitely that.

Michael Frye: Frye is a nature and landscape artist who has photographed Yosemite for years. As a lover of Yosemite who’s been trying to photograph the park over the last couple of years, his work fascinates me. He’s also doing a regular critique of other people’s work that I find a very insightful and fascinating read.  Watching how he images the park and then trying to see the park the way he sees it has been an interesting exercise in learning to understand how to represent my vision within my images.

William Neill: Another very good and long-time photographer of Yosemite and the eastern Sierra. I find his work interesting for many of the reasons I find Frye’s work interesting, but while there are similarities, they also see the same subjects in different ways. Neill is also doing some interesting work publishing his material as ebooks for online sale, and that’s an area of great interest to me right now. I’ve purchased and read a number of his works, and they’re quite well done and I think he shows that this format is going to be an interesting and viable alternative to paper-based publishing. They are highly recommended.

Chase Jarvis: You can not learn if you only study what you already know. Jarvis is a photography who’s portfolio consists almost entirely of photography that I either don’t do at all, or that I suck at. He is also the photographer behind the iPhone’s Best Camera app, and someone who shows that photography is about passion as much as it is about technology or skill. But he can get geeky when he needs to, and his writeup and video of how he manages his image library and backups is awesome and everyone should be paying attention to this issue (and for smaller environments, his solutions scale down nicely, too!) He is in many ways the embodiment of all of the photographer pieces I am not, and he makes a wonderful resource to study as I try to integrate those things into what I am becoming. I owe him a couple of beers already….

David Hobby (Strobist): I am a natural light photographer. I am very uncomfortable shooting with artificial lights. I’ve done some, I’m rarely happy with the results. David Hobby’s Strobist web site and practice time will be my salvation — when I finally bear down and actually dig in and put the time in.

Trey Ratcliff: I’ve been dipping my toe into HDR for a while, and I’ve leaned heavily on Tret Ratcliff and his Stuck in Customs website as a resource for understanding this. I am very much in the photo-realism side of the HDR world (but — ssshhhh — don’t tell anyone, but I sometimes see why photographers like to dabble over on the dark side). It’s a controversial technique with some right now, but HDR to me is clearly the future of really expressive landscape photography. I have gratefully stopped carrying my collection of graduated ND filters in favor of HDR. I wasn’t always convinced about HDR, until the day I realized that most people who criticize HDR are doing so because they only recognize the BAD renderings as HDR and aren’t seeing the good ones. I hope most of mine fall in the latter category…

David duChemin: Like Chase Jarvis, David duChemin is a photographer who shoots the kind of photography I can’t really do today.  He’s a humanitarian photographer who sees his images as a way to inform us and to help improve the world around us. He’s also someone who’s photography is driven by his passion and his writing on teh subject is about vision and seeing, not aperture and ISO. He’s a fascinating writer and a damn good photographer. He’s also another photographer doing significant experimentation with the ebook format and has created the Craft & Vision imprint that he uses to publish and sell ebooks writing by himself and others. I’ve purchased and read a number of them and they are quite good; one innovation he’s experimenting with is the short form ebook, smaller, focused topics that can be produced quickly, sell for a lot less than a traditional photography book and look to me to fit in well with the e-publishing model I see emerging and at a price point that makes the purchase within range of the impulse buy, which I think is going to be a key success point for ebooks moving forward, especially on new platforms like the iPad. duChemin seems to be ahead of the pack here, and I’m watching his success closely, because I think this is a model others should be studying and looking to adopt as the ebook market matures into a viable publishing medium for more people. (I know I certainly am watching….)

Zack Arias: Arias is a photographer for which it’s hard to explain exactly how he impacts my work. He’s a music photographer who refuses to let his work be easy or safe or commercial. His writing and his photography show him to be driven by his passion, and someone who wears his emotions very close to the surface. He gives a damn, and that giving a damn is what drives him in his work, and that is an esthetic I am trying to embrace in my own work. His guest blog on Scott Kelby’s Photoshop Insider just blew me away, because of how much I saw of myself in it and how he was talking about things I was struggling with at the time. if I owe Chase Jarvis a couple of beers, I probably owe Arias a couple of cases.

George Barr: George Barr is another photographer who does really good photography about things I feel massively incompetent at. He’s a fine art photographer who’s work include some nature photography, but a lot of urban architecture and photography that I call industrial abstract — shapes and textures and patterns found within larger items or scenes. I picked up his book around christmas and found it fascinating, interesting enough that I went and re-read it a couple of weeks later, and then sat down and re-read it again very slowly and spent a lot of time studying the photographs to try to understand his sense of pattern and flow. He’s not a frequent blogger, but one who’s writing I find very much worth the time. He’s another one of those photographers I study because it stretches me and helps me understand a style of photography I find very foreign and uncomfortable, which helps me wrap myself around it and figure out how to do it well.

Harold Davis: I ran into the work of Davis fairly early on in my explorations, and I’ve been fascinating by it ever since. He is a very strong photoshop technician and does a lot of interesting work adapting photography in post-processing. He’s a strong nature photographer but also an exceptional studio photographer. His skills and writings align very closely with my interests — and yet his post-processing moves him far away from the photo-realistic results of most nature photographers and shifts his work into very different areas. All in all, someone who’s writings I follow closely, and as I plan to actually get my act together and start shooting in the a studio, his work will be a model for my experimentations here.

Joe McNally: Force of nature. Or something like that. McNally is another photographer in the “there isn’t a scene I can’t improve with a couple of speedlites. Or 20″ school of photography. He does a lot of innovative lighting and really pushes the edges in adapting a space to his vision. As a natural light photographer, what he does many times seems like magic, but as someone who knows he needs to understand and acquire artificial lighting as part of his skill set, McNally’s work is part of my education. It doesn’t hurt that he’s very willing to explain what he does and what the rationale was….

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