Picture a Week (PAW). Week 15: Velvet Watch Tower

Canon EOS 7D. Tamron 24-70 at 24mm. f3.5 @ 30 secs. ISO 100. Ambient light with 3-4 bursts from off camera flash

Picture a Week (PAW): Week1: Moonlit whelk watch

Expecting a great sunset after a busy day, I headed towards Port Elizabeth's King's Beach hoping to capture the firmament. The clouds turned a little yellow, then faded to grey as the haze swallowed up light. I was disappointed but waited to see if something would come of the full moon. It was a busy beach scene which I captured with a few tripod mounted long exposures. But I kept being drawn to a woman, on her own, constantly combing a small area of the beach. I wanted to imbibe a sense of her solo activity so it was just a matter of timing to isolate her. A large ship in the far distance seemed interesting but in the end proved a distraction to the mystery of what the woman was doing. When she left I wandered over to her scene and could see nothing unusual. I guessed she must have been collecting whelks (Bullionidae) and tossing them into the ocean (where they belong?). I'm glad she went to the effort because otherwise she wouldn't have captured my attention and I wouldn't have captured this moonlit assisted shot.

WEEK 1: A woman gathers welks (Bullionidae) under a full moon. Kings Beach, Port Elizabeth.
Canon EOS 7D, Tamron 70-200mm @ 70mm. ISO 800, f2.8, 1/90th. 

Run Time or Changing Pace

 

Things sometimes take time when it comes to journalistic magazine production. And over time things can change. Also over time, I have made a number of submissions to a particular mainstream runner’s magazine in South Africa. The submissions often take at least 4-8 months before being published and hitting the news stands. Most of my content consists of two images used as double page spreads, a map graphic, and about 500 words of text. It has always been like that for this particular feature and it is a formula that works well and one that the magazine has used for years. So no change there.

What has changed, apparently, is their payment for the submission. And not upwards you probably aren’t surprised to learn. The drop in price was significant, at 40%, and enough for me to query if the payment was per double page spread (never mind about text and graphics) and not for the ‘package’, as in the past. It wasn’t. I requested some kind of explanation, assuming that there was some logic, perhaps the payments were separated into text and graphics. That’s how it used to be some years ago, in the industry. Whilst I am not in favour of cost cutting when it affects me negatively, I do understand that sometimes it is necessary. But 40%? Really?

I didn’t receive any explanation for weeks despite a second follow up email. I knew they didn’t have a backlog of content as the turn around time was quite quick at 3 months. Also the tone of the emails after submission confirmed that my journalistic training was appreciated (very little, if any, editing of the main text, a graphic that only needed dropping onto the page and images sized to match the output). I knew that even a mediocre designer could layout these four pages of the magazine in less than ten minuets. So you can understand my interest in finding out why there was such a marked drop in payment.

You can also understand my surprise when I bought a copy of the magazine in question and saw my images, text and graphic in print. And here I was thinking that I was waiting for confirmation of payment, which would equate to my permission to publish. Seeing it in print therefore negated any option I might have had to not have the work published, or to seek a more lucrative publisher.

And so time will tell, as I am still waiting for a response from the publishers as to why the payment was dropped by 40% and why my content was published prior to reaching an agreement. And because I haven’t received a response, I am also waiting to receive payment! 

What I learnt from a Turtle Tour: Part 2 “I don’t hate non DSLR photographic devices”

Recently I travelled to Kosi Bay on the very north eastern border of South Africa just before it gives way to Mozambique. Kosi is well known for its turtles that arrive each year to lay their eggs on their rapidly dwindling protected beaches. Witnessing this cycle is an extreme experience like no other. In my last post I wrote about my disappointment with, largely, my own engagement with the experience. In this post I want to write about the epiphany I had shortly thereafter.

As a professional photographer I have been a long time trying to establish an appropriate response to the deluge of digital photography that has shaped and fixated our present times. Accessibility to digital resources means that there are, well, more digital resources. This includes of course the images themselves. There are many more photographers taking/making many more photographs which have many more audiences. Just working with ratios, more cameras means more photographers, which means more images which means more, lets not deny it, good images (there are of course many more bad images too, but the bad images tend to have abrupt lifespans (like the many hatching turtles that I’ve not forgotten about and will return to in a moment). I’ve always resented the fact that ‘we’re all photographers now’. But it is true (that we are all photographers, and that I begrudge it). We are. I’ve resented the inability to separate (or worse, defend) my position as a professional photographer: “Wow. Your camera takes really nice pictures. It’s a fancy one right?”

And so there we were, the six of us, huddled round the back end of an exhausted female leatherback turtle as she diligently laid her eggs. There were rules of course: No torches unless they were red, no flashes unless the guide said it was permissible, no loud noises or talking (there might be a third post in this series in which I’ll talk more about rules and reality), keep together and keep away from the head. So it goes without saying (read my previous post) that trying to be successful and ethical photographer in company of others is a challenge to say the least – mostly a challenge to my sanity. As a professional photographer I know how best to work the light, little as it might be. As an understanding and ethical viewer in nature, I want to. Flash is disruptive, even to animals accustomed to it (don’t let anyone tell you it’s like lightening and animals don’t know the difference. You think animals, even as prehistoric as turtles don’t know when it is about to rain? Seriously!!). So I want to use flash, as little as possible (few flashes the better) and as unobtrusively as possible (de-powered, balanced and subtle). I do this because I am a professional, I know how to, and I am intelligent and respectful.

So what do the non-DSLR users do? They take pictures. Lots of them. And repeatedly. Do they depower the flash output on their iPad, mobile phone or point-and-shoot? Do they gently take a picture or two, then step back, not just to get out of the way, but more importantly to respectfully give the turtle space? No! They crowd and they snap and they flash away like every egg being laid needs its own picture. The people have got to be in it too, “Don’t forget about me. Here I am, smiling and crouched while the eggs arrive”. Now, with fabricated fascination I place my mouth into an ‘O’ then shovel it away again to ask, “Did you get that…? Take another one, just in case”. And then, like this is some kind of two-rand kiddies ride “Do you want a turn?” And that was when it hit me: I realised that I don’t hate iPads, mobile phones or point-and-shoot cameras. I hate their users. 

*It is with a degree of jest and tongue in cheek that I mask the identities of my fellow turtlers. They are not hated.

What I learnt from a Turtle Tour: Part 1 “Half a loaf is better than none”.

Watching turtles haul themselves onto the beaches of their birth to lay eggs in the dead of night, then heave themselves, exhausted, back towards the sea is a wildlife experiential mega tick. For me it was right up there with trekking with gorillas and means that diving with sharks (sans cage) and tracking tigers each move up a notch. But man was I disappointed!

Canon EOS 7D. Sigma 18-50mm lens at 18mm. ISO 400. f/5.6 @ 1 sec. Flash bounced of dunes and depowered to 1/8th

Don’t get me wrong the turtles (leatherback and loggerhead), the seeing (at night from about 8pm till 11.30pm), the laying (about 80-120 spherical eggs, each a little larger than a golf ball), the effort (120m each way) and the odds (2-3 hatchings in every 1000 surviving to adulthood) is truly humbling. But man was I disappointed!

My biggest disappointment was with myself. I was reminded of something I knew already, but I was somehow not able to apply my own advice: “Sometimes it is okay not to take pictures”. I always tell my students that sometimes things don’t work out, conditions are too far gone and you have just got to enjoy the experience and be anything other than a photographer. Easier said than done!

The conditions, photographically speaking were terrible: overcast, no moon, wind, flash was only occasionally allowed and nowhere near the head (more detail on this in Part 2) and red torches only. Also, I was with another group of four and I detest front row camera competitiveness (this is why I have seldom, and have no aspiration to derive income from political photojournalism). Furthermore, having my photographic roots in the safari industry, I also fiercely hold to ethical and respectful treatment in every situation and in all wildlife encounters. I also expect others to.

Canon Eos 7D. Sigma 18-50mm lens at 18mm. ISO 400. f/2.8 @70secs. 3sec light paint with hand held torch.

So what was the problem? I’ll give you the photographic answer first: Long exposures, tripod, de-powered fill flash and deep breaths. The problem is trying to get all red torches (and the rest!) turned off and everyone’s flashes to pause and everyone out the shot, or to stop moving about, or standing in the way or… you get the picture (pun intended). Setting up a shot in generous darkness is tricky, finicky to say the least and obviously takes a while. People don’t have the patience to wait when they feel they’re there to watch (which they are). The more I fussed the harder it became and the angrier I got. And this meant simply that I forgot to enjoy myself, I forgot to revel in the experience, the sights, the smells the sounds the privilege. I was fixated on what photographs I was missing. I should have just put my camera away and been a grateful observer. Because I didn’t, I didn’t get the pictures and I also didn’t get the experience. As the Shona in Zimbabwe sometimes say, “half a loaf is better than none”. 

The solution? Go turtle watching twice. Once with a group. Leave your camera at home and just soak it in. It’s a privilege. Second time round go on your own, or perhaps with a likeminded professional photo buddy. You can then be photographers, do the work you love to do, get the results you want and in so doing compliment and swell the experience you’ve already had.

Canon EOS 7D. Sigma 18-50mm lens. ISO 800. f/11 @ 81 secs. Light painted with handheld torch.