This is long overdue, but I thought I’d make a brief post about some of my experiences in New Zealand recently. I had the opportunity to visit Weta studios to see footage from Steven Spielberg’s latest film, The Adventures of Tintin. You can find my full write-up by clicking here, as well as a partial transcript of a conversation I participated in with Spielberg and Peter Jackson (part 1 and part 2).
After the set visit, I took the opportunity to drive along the South Island of New Zealand. The rental car cost me about $450 for three days (including gas, which costs about $8/gallon in New Zealand), and I had to drive all by myself for about 1,000 miles, but I saw sights that are so beautiful that they simply can’t be matched anywhere else on earth. For this trip, I used a combination of my Canon 50D with a 50mm f/1.8 lens, my Fuji X100, and my iPhone mostly using the Pano app:
I’ve done nature photography in the past, but in general, I find it to be a challenging enterprise. On a very basic level, the technology is limiting. The human eye’s dynamic range is vastly higher than that of even the most advanced dSLR on the market. Therefore, when you’re photographing images like this one…
…it can be challenging to determine the correct exposure level. And even if I got something usable, some post work would be required (as it was in this image). Fortunately, as I’ve pointed out in the past, the Fuji X100’s dynamic range is spectacular. Obviously HDR is a solution for some of these problems, but I’m still not sure I want my images to look so obviously manipulated.
When you’re photographing a human being, it’s pretty easy to figure out how to compose an image; maybe stick to the rule of thirds, and if you have interesting background elements, use them to frame your subject in a unique way. But with nature photography, you have to be more conscious of how different elements fill the frame, how the eye is drawn to them, and how the eye moves through the image. You also have a lot less flexibility in terms of which angle you are shooting from.
Despite the challenges, I’d like to think I was able to capture a small fraction of the beauty that’s present in New Zealand. Hopefully, you feel the same way.
[A special thanks to Sam and to Sid from New Zealand for their help in allowing me to capture these images!]
Jenna Sauers, writing astutely about French fashion sensation Thylane Loubry Blondeau:
Even posing questions like these about the sexualization of children is discomfiting. To ask is this child too sexy is to put a child’s body under a kind of scrutiny that is (and should be) strange and unnatural, and that’s not a thing that should be taken lightly. But it’s one thing for a parent to take a photo of his or her little girl while she’s running around a beach in a pair of swimsuit bottoms. It’s another for a fashion magazine to take a photo of a 10-year-old sitting topless on a bed and publish it for a global audience.
The above photograph was published on a front page story in The New York Times on August 2nd, 2011. It is shocking, and it stirs the soul in ways that words most likely could not. Salon breaks down why the newspaper decided to run it, and whether it will have any impact on the debate (or lack thereof) over the situation in Somalia:
The graphic quality of Hicks’ photo certainly matches the stark portrait painted by Gettleman’s reporting. And executive editor Bill Keller told Salon that the choice to feature the image so prominently was uncontroversial in the Times newsroom: “We’d already decided to front Jeffrey’s powerful story, and it would have felt like journalistic malfeasance not to include Tyler’s powerful photography,” he said. “I know many readers found the picture disturbing. That’s good. The deaths of thousands of Somali children ought to disturb us, at least.”
Arrived in Wellington, NZ last night after 24 hours of brutalizing travel. Spent the day yesterday trying to stay awake, but I was able to wander around Wellington and try to capture the local flavor through my lens. The following were taken using my Canon 50D and my Fuji X100:
Big thanks to /Filmcast listener Sam for taking me around, and being incredibly patient with me as I got increasingly loopy.
I’m fascinated by the legal intricacies of Fair Use, and I love me my photography, so when I first heard about the battle over Andy Baio’s pixelated rendition of Jay Maisel’s iconic Miles Davis photograph (seen above), I was intrigued. The short version is that Maisel took a great photo, Baio repurposed it –creating a pixelated version that he believed was covered under Fair Use — and Maisel sued his ass off. People on the internets got pretty upset because they thought that Maisel was stifling art and generally being a dick. This internet mob had real-life consequences for Maisel, who found himself as the unfortunate target of harassment and online character assassination.
Was it justified? Jeremy Nicholl has weighed in with an in-depth assessment, and he’s not kind to Baio, nor one of his defenders, Thomas Hawk:
Andy Baio, a man with a history of breaking and encouraging others to break intellectual property laws, made a considerable amount of money selling his intellectual property to Yahoo […] His account of his dispute with Jay Maisel provided an ammunition dump for those who wished to attack the photographer for defending his work under the same laws that allowed Baio to profit. And Andrew Peterson / Thomas Hawk has gleefully raided that dump to conduct a campaign of defamation and vilification against Maisel, neglecting to disclose his own recent history of being caught out for copyright infringement and libel.
I mean that in every sense of the word. Not only is Ghionis one of the world’s best wedding photographers (as evidenced by his voluminous list of accolades and awards), he’s an amazing salesman and a phenomenal educator as well.
Readers of this blog will know that I’ve been investing heavily (both in time and resources) in my photography recently. When I learned that Ghionis would be in Boston for a five-day seminar, I was enticed until I saw the price: $2,200. I debated for quite awhile whether or not the seminar would be the best way for me to spend my money at this stage in my photography career. In fact, I agonized over this expenditure. But two separate people I spoke with (Evgenia and Tim Cook) described the seminar as “life-changing.” Plus, I heard that people frequently traveled here from out of the country to attend Ghionis’ seminars. Could I really turn down an opportunity to learn from the master in my own backyard? The answer was no.
In early June, I pulled the trigger. I was the last person to get a spot in the 20-person seminar. What follows is a description of the structure of the seminar, some reflections on what I learned, and my general impression as to whether Ghionis’ seminars are worth the cost.
The Schedule
Ghionis’ seminar lasted five days and four nights. On Day 1, all of the photographers arrived at the Boston Radisson, fresh and eager to have their minds filled. Many had traveled across state lines to be here, and one had flew here from Puerto Rico to take the seminar. It is not a stretch to say that I was the least experienced photographer in the entire room; many of the students had wedding photography businesses that were decades old (more on this later).
Day 1 consisted almost completely of critiques of images that people brought in (each photographer was instructed to bring in 15 images that were representative of their work). Many photographers, including myself, found these critiques to be fairly brutal. Ghionis’ is incredibly gracious, but it doesn’t change the fact that one’s work is being laid bare and objectively evaluated for all to see. It was during this critique that we learned many of Ghionis’ principles and “rules” governing his photography, rules such as:
Always shoot on the shadow side of the face
The leg closest to the camera should be the one that is bent
Females hands should always be relaxed and softened
And countless others. All in all, it was an educational experience that helped to set the stage for the rest of the workshop. It also gave each of us the tools to critique our own work in the future.
It was Day 2 that my mind really started to get blown. After completing the previous day’s critiques, Ghionis went more in depth into his posing and lighting techniques using real-life models. Then, everyone slung their cameras around their shoulders and we left the room to go out and shoot. First, though, Ghionis used some areas in the hotel to demonstrate some of his lighting principles. For instance, here’s an area just outside of the hotel bathroom that Ghionis thought had some cool light:
Here’s a resulting shot that I was able to get from this set-up:
It is pretty remarkable how Ghionis was able to take ordinary objects and situations and render them into extraordinary photographs.
As we departed the hotel and wandered around Boston, Ghionis only used one camera and one lens (a Nikon D3s with a 70-200mm, although prior to the workshop, Ghionis frequently sported the Canon 5D Mark II), but the images that he was able to obtain were amazing. Here are a few images of the class wandering around the streets of Boston, with Ghionis explaining his techniques:
As you can see, Ghionis will position himself in any way to get just the right shot, which was inspiring to witness. Here are some of the shots I was able to obtain from the day. [Please note that all of the following shots were not set up/posed by me, and thus, do not represent my work nor belong to my portfolio.]
Part of Day 2 also involved each student getting 10 minutes with two of the models. Each of us was instructed to produce a shot that demonstrated what we had learned. Here is mine (though again, the following was produced for workshop purposes only and does not belong to my portfolio):
It was a pretty nerve-racking 10 minutes, trying to remember all that Ghionis had taught us in the previous 24 hours, but I had learned so much that I found my own personal improvement to be dramatic.
One of the many revelations I had during the course of the week was the importance of getting things right “in-camera.” Unlike myself and many photographers I know, Ghionis doesn’t shoot very much during the course of a wedding day; rather than fixing things in Photoshop later, he opts to compose the image and get the exposure correct immediately. This is such a simple principle, but it saves so much time and forces a degree of creativity that wouldn’t really be necessary otherwise. It’s certainly something I now think about every single time I put a viewfinder to my face.
Day 2 began at 10 am in the morning, but did not conclude until about 11:30 pm that night (9 hours of which was spent walking around Boston). By that point, most of the members in class were tired and sweaty; our feet hurt and we wanted to go home. Not Ghionis, though, who was tireless and seemed intent on giving us our money’s worth. It was an extraordinary, revelatory day and I will count it as a formative one in the development of my photographic style.
Day 3 involved critiques of the images we’d obtained from the previous day, and continued with Ghionis discussing some of his techniques for getting emotion out of his subjects to achieve those perfect, how-in-the-heck-was-he-there-at-the-right-place-and-the-right-time shots. We then went out on the town again for some more improvisation with light and more shots with models. It concluded (relatively) early at 6 pm.
On Day 4, we put the cameras away and after a morning critique of the previous day’s images, we discussed album design, pricing, and branding. Ghionis is old school; he believes in the emotional power of a physical album. After you hear him describe it, you will believe too. One of Ghionis’ principles is to shoot the wedding with the intention of making the photographs tell a story through the album. A great beauty and a great economy of images is achieved in this fashion.
For many individuals, if their house were on fire, the first thing they would save is their wedding album. How, then, should we think of its value to clients? How valuable should it be to us as wedding photographers? Ghionis instilled this sense of value in all the students on the room. He does not believe “upselling” is a dirty word, and there’s good reason for it; spoiling people, or allowing them to spoil themselves shouldn’t be thought of in a negative fashion.
The evening concluded with in-depth critiques of students’ existing branding materials. This session was even more brutal than the initial critiques of people’s images, as Ghionis emphasized how important it was to make a good impression on people. Does your branding/logo scream elegance and luxury? Or does it reek of desperation and amateurishness? The difference between the former and the latter is thousands of dollars worth of sales. Many students made decisions this evening that would change the course of their businesses, and possibly their lives.
Finally, on Day 5, we discussed marketing ideas. Ghionis knows how to market the hell out of himself and his tips were extremely useful. Whatever Ghionis was selling, I was buying (literally! I walked out of the seminar having spent an additional $400 on his materials).
At the end of the day, Ghionis asked us to go around the room and discuss what we had learned that week. The breadth of people’s shared knowledge was staggering, but what surprised and impressed me were the emotional epiphanies that people had. People left the seminar feeling empowered to be the best photographers and businesspeople that they could be. Ultimately, that seemed to be worth more than any photography tips Ghionis could muster from his formidable background.
Ghionis’ Style
If you’ve seen any of Ghionis’ videos, you may already know that his personality is magnetic. He has loads of charisma, he’s incredibly knowledgeable, and he has a great (and sometimes crude, but hilariously so) sense of humor. He also has enormous amounts of patience, which helps when one is dealing with endless questions from a bunch of less experienced photographers.
The only shortcomings of the seminar didn’t actually come from Ghionis, but from some of the other photographers. Let me get this out of the way: the overwhelmingly vast majority of people in the seminar were totally awesome and great, and I feel like I have formed some lasting friendships with several of them. All that being said, I had a strong distaste for students’ who used the seminar as their own private therapy session, repeatedly going into detail (unprompted) about struggles with their own businesses. Equally vexing were those students who seemed to believe that they were also supposed to be teaching the seminar. When I’m taking a night class at a community college, this type of behavior is totally fine, but when I’m forking over $2200 for an intensive 5-day workshop, this takes away time from the master photographer I actually spent money and time to hear.
A lesser teacher would have gotten flustered and possibly allowed these people to derail the conversation. But Ghionis proved himself a master in more ways than one, always keeping things on track and never rebuking students, even when it was clear that others in the class wanted to do so. The man has endless depths of patience, and earned my respect many times over.
[I also must note that Ghionis’ wife, Melissa, helps him run his business/seminar, and she is possibly one of the nicest people I have ever met. She made me feel welcome and addressed many of my questions with warmth and grace. The two make for an unstoppable partnership.]
Conclusion
The ultimate goal of Ghionis’ seminar is to get people to the point where they can charge whatever they want to shoot weddings. And while he offers practical tips to get to this point, his seminar is just as much about self-empowerment as it is about wedding photography. There was something incredibly refreshing and animating about that. Ghionis provides struggling and aspiring entrepreneurs the tools with which to take control of their destiny. And as a result, I have nothing but admiration for the man.
So is the Jerry Ghionis seminar worth it?
In one week, Ghionis forever changed the way I look at lighting…and it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that he changed the way I look at life itself. I don’t agree with all aspects of Ghionis’ style but he’s given me the tools to create stunning photographs; now all I need to do is practice them. He also made me re-evaluate my values, and how I might position myself as a wedding photographer. He made me think about the incredible service that wedding photographers provide to couples, and taught us how to be proud of the work we do.
In other words, not only was the seminar worth every penny, I can’t wait to go to another one!
Epilogue
The day after the seminar was over, I asked my colleague Rachell if she would allow me to photograph her using the new techniques I had learned. I decided to challenge myself by shooting in direct sunlight, a lighting situation I absolutely hate. Here are the photos that resulted:
There are still a lot of things I would fix about these photos, but I think they represent a marked improvement over my photography prior to this point. I look forward to continuing my photographic journey and was grateful that Mr. Ghionis was a part of it.
I had the opportunity to shoot two events this past weekend: Soccer Nights, held by Vineyard’s Cambridge church, and my friend Matt’s graduation party in Western, MA. For Soccer Nights, I took my trusty old 70-200mm f/2.8 on my Canon 7D, but I also packed along my new Fuji X100.
Soccer Nights is such an awesome, inspiring program. Volunteers from all over the city come to give kids a place to have community with each other. I was blown away both by the organizers and all the people who donated time to make this event as fun as it was:
All the wide-angle shots in the above photo set are taken with the Fuji, while everything close-up is done using the Canon 7D.
Quality-wise, I think you’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two cameras. And as I am fond of mentioning, the Fuji X100 even gets better low-light performance than the 7D in many instances.
Focusing on the Fuji stinks. The manual focus (via focusing ring) is essentially unusable, but using regular autofocus is also a pain in the neck because you need to manually select “Macro” mode to focus on anything close up. I leave it in manual focus but hit the “AFL” button, which makes the camera automatically determine whether or not to enter macro mode or not. In low-light situations, this can still be problematic.
The dynamic range on the Fuji X100 is incredible. Images like this provide detail in both the sky and on the ground, in a way that my DSLRs simply do not do:
The Fuji X100 requires a lot more careful composing than other cameras. Since auto focus is slow, you need to choose your shots and your moments carefully. It helps when people generally don’t mind you taking photos of them, as was the case this past weekend at Matt’s graduation party (at which I used the Fuji X100 exclusively):
Overall, I still love this camera and how tack sharp some of these images can be. I just wish the focusing would suck a little bit less, and that the controls were a little bit more responsive.
