View the backstage video here.
Friends
Photograph Nebraska /
Life Under a Big Red Sky* is great. I am talking about being there but the book of the same name is terrific. I couldn’t possibly be more proud of my Nebraska heritage, and so when the good folks at Photograph Nebraska invited me to join them for a weekend of photography and storytelling I jumped at the chance.
Never mind that it is my little sister’s birthday--and hey, maybe she’ll come see the talk. Plus my Aunt Edith lives pretty close and with luck maybe she will stop in with cookies. And I have a lot friends strung along I-80--or thereabouts-- that I am hoping will come to visit in Hastings for what will be a terrific weekend.
Buy my old friend Joel Sartore’s wonderful book about Nebraskaness, and I will get him to sign it for you. It’s an amazing piece of work. I’ll split the postage with you, Joel’s too cheap to spring for it..........
Olympic Vision /
Filmmaker Bud Greenspan passed today. We’ve lost a giant. His was a singular, unique, powerful vision that brought so many so much joy.
For absent friends....... /
Strolling slowly along the Seine today with my daughter Havana on a blustery, grey afternoon headed to a great little photo bookstore --La Chamber Claire, I chanced to see a postcard rack and in the center of it was the famous image of Che--by the great Cuban photographer Alberto Korda and right next to it an image by my favorite photographer Raul Corrales called La Sueno, which transported me to a very warm afternoon in Habana many years ago talking with the two of them. Wonderful friends, colleagues and fierce competitors. The tension created by the passion they had for life and photography--and frankly for women was palpable.
It was a very different time and place. They are gone now, but their images, their vision, will endure and not just inform, but educate.
This short journey today, led me to consider the longer path I've taken with the things I've gained from the work of other artists. As in all things for me the message-- the image, and the story were tantamount.
Such a great life, so many things I need to see.
The road beckons.
What would Rembrandt do? /
Late last night I was roaming the back streets of ancient Zurich. 24 f 1.4 on a D300s, just appreciating a lovely early autumn time in one of Europe's treasures. Freed of technical limitations--that camera can literally see in the dark-- and it's so small and light, and with that lens attached I feel a connection to an earlier group of photojournalists working the scenes with fast 35 millimeter lenses attached to the smallest film cameras of the day. Romantic maybe, but those who have been on the ground doing this work can feel what I am feeling.
I was thinking about an earlier time in my life--my second trip to Europe--I was in my early 20's and had 18 hours in London enroute to a meeting with a baby orangutang in the Hague. (The trip with the small primate is a story for another day.)
My father was in the Army Air Corps during the second World War, stationed in Sherwood Forest, and always spoke so captivatingly about England.
I was determined to see all of old London town, and capture it on film. So I refused sleep. All night, strolling the city, making long, slow exposures on transparency film and the venerable, omnipresent TriX loaded in my Nikon F2, pentaprism--no meter, no motor drive--with a 24 2.8 attached. Having to make each exposure count--no blasting away hoping. It was about thinking first, knowing the limitations of the film, and then making it work as best I could.
I thought it might be my only chance to see one of the Capitals of Europe--as a young newspaper photographer in the South, visions of globetrotting were not yet on my horizon.
Half a lifetime later, 8 million miles flown, thousands of trips taking their toll on my back, so many visits out of the US to places relatively near and far that I lost count long ago, and I am still restless. Driven to photograph, to get what's in my mind and my heart captured on something--film, a sensor, paper--so that I can share it with the world.
I used to look at things twice, once especially for my Dad. Now I do the same, but now the second look is for Havana, my daughter who always reminds me to take a picture of what I see just for her.
While I was taking that slow walk in this wonderful Swiss city, soaking in everything around me I started thinking about the distant past. The great painters, DaVinci, Bruegel, Rembrandt, and I wondered what they would do with the tools we have now. What could they see, what would they record, where could they drive the art?
Or more recently, Gordon Parks. Imagine what he could have done with these tools. I know I would read his blog every day...........
I love the technology. And I am determined to use it to not do things more easily, but to do things better. To go further.
And those thoughts just pushed me to keep going, and looking. Enjoying.
Old friends, new vision /
Being a Sports Illustrated staff photographer I get type cast--so many people just assume that sports is all I do, and all I want to talk about. Wrong and wrong. So this weekend when I was spending time with my friend Bill Fortney looking at images on his iPad, I was embarrassed to admit I had forgotten what a wonderful range of work the man has done.
His aerial imagery is so superb that I had done to him what I hate being done to me.
It was a treat being reintroduced to the breadth of work he has created.
Dawn to Dusk /
Watched the sun rise over the North Sea between Sweden and Norway this morning, and watched it set lazily over Nevada's Spring Mountains this evening. I spent the weekend with our friends from Nikon Sweden and now I am in Las Vegas at the National Association of Broadcasters.
Legion Photo /
Legion Photo is a collaborative photo agency of the top US military photographers of this generation.
Last week they asked me to do a picture of them in Arlington, VA were they were assembled at the DC Shootout. I was there giving the final presentation of the weekend, showing my multimedia work to the conference.
They're my friends. I was honored by the request.
It was impromptu, but I was coming off a week of portrait shoots so we had the right gear along. A few minutes in a ballroom, and our friends have their first official group photograph.
Langston Rogers /
Thanks for your skill, kindness and professionalism Langston! I'm gonna miss you mightily in the office.
The good news is now we can spend more time at the Ajax.
http://www.olemisssports.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_LANG=C&DB_OEM_ID=2600&ATCLID=204889314
John Ed Bradley wrote a book called The Best There Ever Was --which is terrific by the way--and when I saw the title I thought he was writing about Langston.
But John Ed is an LSU guy so sadly his brilliant book is about something entirely different, but the title could be on Langston's biography.
Usually I write about photography in this space, and in a way this post is too.
For a whole bunch of years Langston has been a great friend to those of us who've worked with him. His knowledge and easy going we will get it done style have helped me make images with an economy of motion.
Cycles /
I’m leaving Amsterdam this morning and I am thinking about cycles. Not the bicycles which are omni present in this city of canals.
But how things repeat constantly, in photography, in life.
I hadn’t visited Amsterdam in years when this summer Laura and I were headed to Berlin. It was meant to be a simple trip. Jacksonville to New York to Berlin for the World Athletics Championships. 14 days in Berlin, followed by road trip through Europe to Rome to work on the Missy story.
We started the day exhausted. We had spent 24 days of July in Australia making “All Over Down Under” for Nikon. We had come back to the Florida on a Tuesday and Wednesday had left for Nebraska to do a shoot for the release of Apple’s Aperture 3.
Anyway, back to the trip to Berlin. Our flight to New York got off the ground late. Then it ran into nasty weather--although we never saw any--and had to divert to Dulles.
We sat on the ground in DC for for 3 hours, causing us to miss our flight from JFK to Berlin.
We were rebooked on a flight leaving for Paris, where we were meant to catch a connection to Berlin.
Then, we were late leaving the gate on our new connection, and by the time we got to Paris, 5 hours late, we missed the connection to Berlin.
Which brings us to my first trip to Schipol--the Airport in Amsterdam--in nearly 10 years. Now instead of going Jacksonville to NYC to Berlin, now we were going Jacksonville to NYC to Paris to Amsterdam to Berlin.
But the airport was kind to us.
Two months later Nikon officially launched their D3s and we were off to Amsterdam, then Edinburgh.
Not three weeks later we landed in Schipol yet again, this time we were visiting Amsterdam to do a seminar with Nikon Europe.
Three months later we were headed home to Florida from Helsinki and sure enough, stopping at Schiphol.
One week later I was back to Amsterdam to judge World Press Photo. I brought along an empty suitcase, just in case. Now it is filled with beautiful books--four of them by my friend Stefan VanFleetern.
And so it continues...