Preparing traffic lights for installation.

Asia is great for photography, especially photojournalistic photography. You can always find people on the streets and, from a Western perspective, there is always something interesting going on. Having just returned to the United States, I have to adjust to the new situation, adjust to the rhythms and patterns of the American culture, to be able to catch those photos which can portray life and work and reality in the United States.

This photograph was really quite important for me. The biggest adjustment to do everyday documentary photography is that I am driving from place to place instead of walking, and when I see something to photograph, I cannot just aim and shoot as if I were on a sidewalk in China.

I had just left the grocery store and these guys were working on the intersection at the edge of the parking lot, on the busiest street in Temple, Texas. Perfect: opportunity and I am not driving 60MPH. Not only was I able to take some shots of everyday work and life (which marked a re-entry into my favorite kind of photography now that I am back in the United States), but I settled some old questions, found new information, and met an interesting guy.

Just trusty aluminum

I had been told traffic lights were incredibly heavy, maybe in the hundreds of pounds. I never could figure out how those poles, regardless of their construction or the materials used, could hold up such weight, especially in high winds. Well, he said they were 60lbs. And the poles were in the neighborhood of 3000lbs. Ok, I am all clear now; I can believe that.

They were installing the video cameras. Having lived in China under the watchful eye of “the authorities”, cameras in public piqued my interest. He explained, however, that the cameras are not for surveillance or even for auto-camera-ticketing, but simply as the eye of the system so that the lights could detect traffic and increase efficiency at low traffic hours. High traffic hours would not even use the cameras, because the system is on a pre-set timing, coordinated with other lights.

So, I have officially entered the American documentary photography scene…well, officially for myself, anyway. Especially since I have lived in China for ten years, and thus see my own home culture from a very different perspective now, I look forward to documenting what I see and trying to explain what the culture and society of the United States is really like.

He says in the film, “We must look at it, we’re required to look at it, we’re required to do what we can. If we don’t, who will?”

This film is not about a man who pushes to the front lines and is right in the middle of the decisive moment even when the bullet are flying just for personal glory, more prizes, or the photo with the most edge so he can beat out the competition for the front page. The theme that comes through over and over again is that he goes out so he can capture the essence of what is happening around this world, because he believes people want to know, that people want to do something, and in so doing, he is trying to write terms of peace.

I have been questioning the purpose of photography lately, and this is a breath of fresh air. Why even take photos? Why would I go through contortions just to take a beautiful, unique photo of a flower or landscape instead of just enjoy it with my own two eyes and be fully present in the moment? Personal glory? Why do I attempt documentary photography when the photos’ meanings can be so subjective and the story manipulated (by me or others)? Why not just write about it? Am I trying to entertain? Am I seeking personal glory again?

Then I think about my use of Twitter, which for many, including me, is often just “getting my work out there”…i.e. it is all about me and my personal glory. Ich! That may not be a problem for you, but it is certainly easy to do for me. Sure, there are great uses of Twitter and Facebook or blogs (oops!), but it is a matter of the heart.

If am to continue to be a photographer, what is my responsibility? What is my responsibility to my conscience, my God, my culture? James Nachtwey provides a little glimpse in that quote, maybe not the full answer, because that will be different in different situations and for different people, but at least a sign post to get us headed the right direction: “to do what we can”.

What can I do? Well, as much as I would love to begin to rationalize it, I am not going to be able to leave my family for a self-glorious life of photography around the world. So, am I ok…can I just take my flower pictures now? Not quite…at least, that does not begin to console my conscience.

There are plenty of issues close to home too. There are plenty of issues that never hit the main stream media: little injustices around us or maybe even praises of those who are stepping up and doing what they can. There are churches feeding the poor, there are teachers sacrificing financial security to educate, there is the beggar in the intersection, or the lady dying from cancer with a life of experience to pass on.

I agree with James Nachtwey: I think people want to know. There are plenty of people out there, I believe, who are willing to take out the ear buds and reengage society around them. Let’s not entertain or seek our (ill-fated) photographic glory; we do not have the humility to keep it going anyway. Let’s just do what we can.

Is objectivity an illusion? What does objectivity mean to you? Is it something journalists should strive for? Why or why not?
[Ami Vitale said...] “Yes, I believe objectivity is an illusion but I also believe that there are a multitude of viewpoints and that no one “Truth” exists. I believe that unless we understand and give voice to these perspectives, reason remains veiled. Ignorance in each other’s stories leads us to assume we know them. It allows us to maintain perceptions of differences based on our own preconceived notions.”

I mostly agree with that. The phrase “no one ‘Truth’ exists” really threw me at first. Actually, I started writing this post to contradict what she said, but now having read it again a couple times, I think I see it a little differently. To start, I would make that a small t…but that is nit picking and most people would not catch the subtle difference.

If read in the context of covering stories and trying to understand others’ perspectives, I would agree that there is no one truth. Meaning, there is not that perfect set of photographs or those perfect words that say everything just exactly as it truly is, was, and will be. Who would deny that? It is a matter of wording, to some degree.

Going back to the big T Truth, though, this quote touches on a deeper reality. Reality, and thus truth, is extremely difficult to nail down, in a photo or with words, and I would not even say that is the end goal of photojournalism anyway. So, let’s just leave photojournalism for a moment.

Let’s call this spiritual photography. There is a reality, a Truth, present at all times and in every place, filling all things. So, is it possible to photograph that? I would say no. However, surely it is possible to photograph certain facets, images, reflections, or indicators of that true reality, though.

I do not seek to bring this out in every single photo. Sometimes it is good enough to just take a cute photo or a snapshot, but I still seek that reality. I want my photos not to force my point of view (which is more what I think Ami Vitale is talking about anyway…and trying to not do), but to try to dig for the deeper reality, call it the backstory or the Grand Mystery of Things. It is not about what I want my photos to communicate, but rather that I want my photos to make a hard link between the beauty of Truth and the viewer of the photo.

Scrap Iron Office

This week, due to changes in the fire code, I have had to remove the wooden staircase from my coffee house and replace it with something non-flammable in order to obtain my fire permit. So, I have had several visits to this little metal-working store front to order a metal staircase to be made, though “store” is a little misleading. This place is more like a man-made cave connected to the street.

Here they are, writing out the receipt for my deposit. That light is the only light in the dismal, iron powder coated, cavernous work space. I just love these kinds of places. You sure can find them back home, but if you walk around in the right parts of town, you can find all kinds of interesting trades. I still have the cave-like barber shop to photograph, but I will save that for another day.

My boy is utterly fascinated with the moon.

All day long, though he knows it is rarely visible in the day, my boy is asking about the “mooyn”. Every circle is a moon, not a ball or even a sun…it is a moon. Even my SmugMug camera strap, which features a simple smiley face (two dot eyes and a crescent looking mouth) is a moon and two stars to him.

I rarely post family-related photos here, because I want to keep my focus. I make this exception, because my focus has changed! I making more of an effort to use documentary photography, telling the stories of life around me instead of just taking isolated, nice-looking shots. Well, when I’m 64, I sure hope I can look back with pride at having told the most important story to my very best: my family.

I take photos of my boy lining up his toy cars; it describes how he thinks. I take photos of his sweat drenched head with a little chuck of fried chicken stuck to his forehead. I know my little girl smiles, and I want to have a photo to show to her grandmother (who lives on the other side of the world). I even have silly things like a photo of the first time my boy clapped his hands.

As a quick aside, I feel very sorry for my children when they have to put together one of those wedding slide shows…it will take them months to work through even the favorites…that is, if I have told those stories well!

It is great experience too. I experiment a lot on my family. In the shot above, I was playing around with the lighting balance between my boy (simple bounce flash off the balcony walls) and the sunset. I should have started earlier, but still managed to squeeze a little sunset out. I was also trying out different angles, trying to use the geometry of the photo to draw more attention to my subject, but also itself to tell more of the story.

So, that is all to say, in my quest to tell the stories of life, I cannot overlook the stories I know the best, to which I have complete access, and which will probably mean the most, in the end: the story of my family.

“Photojournalism” is probably the most well know of those terms. We think of news photographers, war photographers, and the like. That one, even if it does have some other definition, already has a practical definition in the minds of common man.

As with many of the definitions these days, though, I think the lines are blurring. It goes along with issues like professional and amateur. If that blatantly uncreative studio portrait dude in our local Whatever-Mart is a photography professional, then I am the first to despair in this wonderful art of photography. Similarly, I am utterly shocked with the caliber of photos I see from “amateurs” with a little browsing around Flickr and the like. Maybe Whatever-Mart could not handle them! Let’s get back to our definitions in question.

Now, I would be the last to know, because I am not “in the industry”, but maybe the appearance of “editorial” and “documentary” came from the inadequacy of one word to cover so many meanings. Maybe they designate a particular focus within photojournalism, something more specific. And maybe some guy just thought he would come up with a clever new word as a marketing ploy. I don’t know.

All I can do is look at the words themselves and let the English language tell me what they mean…I might add, like most people out there will have to do to try to understand what photographers are talking about. “Photojournalism” says to me, “using photos to chronicle” something. “Editorial” says “I work for the news media and want to say what I want to say, my way”. And “documentary” brings all the connotations of documentary film and seems to say “I use photos to dig to the roots of a story, to understand and explain it to others”. And “photo story”…this one is easy, is “telling a story with photos”.

So, where do I, Cooper Strange, fit in and what kind of photos do I shoot? Well, not that I really care to have one appellation or another, but it depends on the day (or maybe how good my coffee tasted!). I think I am a little of all those, except for maybe editorial, sometimes more than one, and sometimes none of the above.

I am just thinking out loud. I cannot find any good definitions, but maybe some of you out there know. I would love to be corrected or instructed on the differences. So, here’s to Journo-edi-docu-story-ism. That is my kind of photography!

Buddha's robe gets a fresh coat.

There I was, driving along the moat road in Chiangmai, Thailand, and I saw a new Buddha statue/shrine/idol (take your pick) being erected a one of the many temples here in town. Since this was one of those few times I was driving alone, I instantly realized my wife would not even have to put up with me for stopping this time. I could not pass up such a good opportunity.

The truck was stopped. I was up the stairs in seconds. The workers could not have been more happy to let me observe for a few minutes. You can see a couple more images on my Flickr site, if you are interested.

The scene fit so perfectly into what I am really trying to capture. My whole approach to photography is to capture the true reality of a situation. I know, ‘true’ and ‘reality’ are basically synonymous, but the word ‘truth’ is commonly redefined by mankind, and has been for thousands of years, so it needs a little clarification from time to time. I only mean to say the real one…ha, as if I were the one to say.

We forget to ask the questions that really matter and really lead us to truth, even though so many seek it. If God is true, how can I know he is really here? How can I know he is the true True God? When everybody claims to be right, how can we know who really is?

These are important questions, all of which have answers, if we really want to find them. And no, that does not mean “we all have our own truth” or any such garbage. It is quite evident from watching the news any one day that “our own truth” does not work and is not, indeed, true at all. If I say it is right to massacre people because of creed or color, is it true because I say it is? Of course not. So, what is the standard of truth? That takes us right back to the original question of how we know when we have really found the truth.

And that is what I want to photograph. I want to visually capture the moments when everyday life reveals truth. I capture it so I (and we) can sit and look at it, because for me and for most of us, we pass the facts by all day long and just accept some spoon fed reality or ignore the truly important facts. What is <b>really</b> going on here?

In this photo, we have a story unfolding. For years and years to come, this statue will be decorated, worshipped, and given sacrifices of incense. Here we see the true beginnings of this object of worship. More clearly, we see this god’s creation, as opposed to seeking out the non-created god. It is painted concrete. It has scaffolding to allow workmen to climb around it and get it ready for service. And one day, this yellow paint will fade. What is the true reality behind the perceived reality?

I never intended to actually use the photos. More than likely, I thought I would browse them, glean a few storying pointers, and file them away. And that is what I did.

To further develop the story, I would want people. I was able to follow the string into gutters and wrapped around spirit houses, mixed among the already busy power lines and webbed in trees, but to really make the story interesting, I want to know who put them there, why they put them there, how much time and money it cost, and maybe how many people were involved…because this stuff was everywhere I went in an hour long walk!

Honestly, knowing I was not going to process the photos any more than browsing through them freed me to shoot and experiment. I do not want to waste time on the photos, because it was not the photos which were important, but the opportunity to follow a story. I learned some technical pointers (maybe for another blog post) and, as I have already said, what ingredients I would need to tell this story more fully.

It was a fun, learning project.

Feel free to leave your own comments below. And please, leave some negative comments. Positive comments are only good for buffering the hard stuff.

Looking for the Time Card

This was her favorite. Good thing, because I like to start strong. She liked the action, watching this guy hunt for his time card. She also likes (foreshadowing her dislikes) that he does not know I am there, primarily because she does not want think about a photographer in the scene, but to just be a part of the scene.

She also liked the framing. When she mentioned it, I realized the door looked very distorted. My mind started thinking through if it was barrel distortion because of the lens or just a strange angle that caused it, and then how to fix it. She liked it precisely because it was curved. It was not interesting if straight. Ok. I will leave it.

Punching In

I was personally waiting to see if the hand was too hard to notice, if a glace would pass right over it, but she did not have any problem there. She did not want to be this close in, though. She wanted to see the person checking in, not the hand only. She felt the focus was the clock and not the people. It made her feel like this person knows the photographer is right there, and it took her out of the story.

Talking Before the Shift

This was my personal favorite, but not my wife’s. Actually…the more I look, the less I like this one…do not know why. Again, she felt these two were almost posing. They know the photographer is there and are not natural. Interesting comment. It is totally natural. They knew I was there, yes, but were just talking. I do not know what other think, but I still find the comment interesting, because often the truth does not matter, the perception of what is going on is truth to the viewer.

Heading into the Factory

Her only complaint here was she wanted to see more people. Just one person did not cut it. I liked the lonliness of it…it is the midnight shift, after all, but I could not convince her.

Midnight Means Going Home for Many

Again, she wanted more people. I did too, for this one, but they left one by one, so there was little I could do. She did not dig the foreground parked motorcycle.

Standing Guard Till Morning Comes

Again, she felt like these two guys were almost posing. Again, they knew I was there, but I am pretty sure they did not know I was taking a photo. She (nor I) was very fond of the lack of action or their stance or whatever you want to call it instead of pose. They walked out and walked in. I thought I was going to get something else, but it just did not happen.

Overall, this story could be much stronger if I hit the shift change a few nights in a row. All these reflect about 20 minutes outside, with a good 15 minutes sitting around waiting for the shift change bell and some movement to happen. It was a helpful experiment for me, though, and is one more step in developing those story telling muscles.

I have been thinking a lot about why I shoot. It could be the frequent reminders from my wonderful wife to keep my priorities in check (Wouldn’t it be horrible to have a wife who adored photography and did not ever question my over zealous investment of time in it?). That helps, but I do not think that is it. It is a long progression of thought, beginning a decade or so ago, and now leading me down this interesting new path.

When I was traipsing around the Chinese countryside with my all-manual film camera and my 50mm lens, I remember some of my thinking toward my photography: I wanted to capture the things I saw that nobody else saw. I did not want fancy lenses to add some effect. I simply wanted a lens that captured what I saw.

When I moved to digital in late 2003, I think I lost sight a little bit. Not until early 2007 did the juices really get flowing again. I have developing my approach a little, but my thoughts now are clearly decended from my film days in the Chinese countryside.

The other day, though, while reading an e-mail (posted online) between the Strobist and the dude at Momenta Workshops (which I have already talked about), something really began to dawn on me. As the Momenta dude explained their approach to teaching young documentarians, I kept hearing him talking about me. A desire to capture that “decisive moment”. A love of telling stories. A passion for the stories around me, which will go untold if I do not tell them.

So, if you have been reading the past few weeks, you have heard me talking about telling stories through photos and not just taking one super shot here and one pretty picture there. It has led me to a decision, though.

As a photographer, I need to learn more and more about telling stories, yes, with photos, but certainly not limited to photos alone. This blog will reflect that focus. Up till now, the only theme to the blog would be the random thoughts from my head that might be useful to other photographers out there. That is not very focused, obviously.

I have probably also been riding a horse a bit too big for me. In other words, accidentally talking as if I knew anything. It is way to easy to slowly create an online alter ego, to begin thinking of ourselves as pro photographers, when really we are two-bit amateurs. To quote Chief Red Garnett (Clint Eastwood) in A Perfect World: “I don’t know nothin’…not one damn thing.” Spoken like a truly experienced pro.

So, I am starting over. I am an amateur photographer. I want to explore the art of telling a story through my photography. And I figure some of what I learn might be of benefit to others out there, so I will share excerpts of my adventure in learning here. It helps to think out loud sometimes; I cannot count the number of times I have realized something as I wrote it here in the blog. So, it is a creative outlet and tool in my learning process, and you are welcome to come along for the ride to learn along with me.

To me, focusing on a Cartier-Bresson style basically frees the photographer from the need of much gear. You need a camera, and the smaller the better. Therefore, the supersized SLRs are really fighting against you on this point. Though point and shoot cameras are smaller, I think they can almost be totally disqualified for another reason: you need instant response. When you press the button, the camera fires. Period.

Even the most basic DSLRs will do that. I would suggest that frames per minute, or how fast you could take these shots, does not really matter much either. It may help at times, but more than likely, you will slowly get lazy, knowing you can fire off five or six shots, in hopes that the decisive moment was in there somewhere and that you might have hit it. You simply need to be able to release that shutter when your instincts say the moment is going to happen.

As for lenses, a variety of lenses in the bag can help, but speaking of Cartier-Bresson who basically only used a 50mm, you do not necessarily even need anything more than a 50mm f/1.8 or f/1.4. For years, I captured photos on an all-manual film camera with my one 50mm f/1.7 lens, and I still feel the photos I took then have something my newer photos do not…but that gets into another topic. Why use me as an example, though. You have Cartier-Bresson and a host of other greats.

It is more about the moment than the gear. I have looked at some incredible photos. They were overly contrasty, full of grain, and out of focus, but they caught that moment. You know the famous Normandy Beach photo, right? I cannot think of a better example. Vietnam has it’s share, too.

I will not get into the rangerfinder versus SLR debate, but from the criteria above, clearly, both have a place, both have inherent strengths and weaknesses. Use what you have. Focus on capturing that moment instead of what gear you need.