At the cornice

Self-portrait, pandemic isolation at sunset.

In 1969 my sisters took me to Mammoth Mountain to go skiing over Christmas break. The mountain got 32 feet of snow that year, so skiiers on the lifts had to raise their legs in some spots while ascending the mountain, lest they catch an edge and get flipped out of the chair. At the top of the mountain was a run people called the “cornice.” Wind blowing against the face carved the snow into a slight concave bowl. Someone carved a chute through the upper edge, and skiiers would stand at the edge trying to decide whether to step off. Those who did plummeted, weightless, down the mountain before biting into its steep, trecherous surface. A fall often launched the skiier into a bottomless slide. Occasional avalanches added to the danger. I was a novice skier, so I never pushed my luck. I only watched from below.

Now, I stand now at the cornice of my 39-year career in newspapers. I have just one more week in the editor’s chair before hanging it up. As I look over the edge I am both frightened and excited. I worry about leaving behind the comfort of a paycheck, about leaving creative, brave colleagues who are trying to document our world so that we can all make it a better place. Yet I am excited to make my time my own. I am eager to work more on my photography business. It’s a craft I have worked on for many years. I have prepared myself for the risks. Even so, I understand there are no guarantees. I have launched a new career during a pandemic.

You might be feeling the same way, whether by choice or circumstance. One thing the coronavirus has given us is perspective. We are all connected, for good or ill. As you retreat into quarantine or limit your activities to minimize risk, try not to forget that. Equally important, try not to let your loved ones forget. Consider making a portrait with me. Make a statement. You are here, a survivor.

As I waited for my reporters to file their stories last week, I noticed a flurry of activity at my birdfeeder. A record-setting snowfall had just begun. Fortunately, I had filled the feeder and the birds rushed to store up for winter. It reminded me of a zen koan. It goes something like this: A man was chased by a tiger and he fell off a cliff. He stopped his fall by grabbing a branch. He looked up and saw the tiger pacing above him. He saw two mice, one white, one black, circling the limb, gnawing away at it. He looked down and saw another tiger below, licking his chops. The branch was beginning to fail. Just then he noticed a wild strawberry growing out of a crack in the rock an arm’s length away. He plucked the strawberry and slowly bit into it. “How sweet it is!” the man declared.

I hope to see you soon. So do your friends and relatives.

Changes

The season is changing. Can you feel it? Our long battle with the pandemic is entering a new, perhaps more deadly phase. The political system is straining the bonds of decency on the precipace of an election that may be the most important one in our lifetime. There are no guarantees that we will come through this intact. Remember the Anasazi civilization, which flourished from 200 a.d. until 1500 a.d. before mysteriously vanishing? That could be us.

In jujutsu and judo, we learn quickly that falls are inevitable, no matter how good you are. We say, embrace the mat! The key to resilience is standing back up. “Nana korobi ya oki,” a popular Japanese saying, translates as “Fall down seven times, get up eight.” We Americans have our own saying. “If you fall off a horse, get back on.”

Falling is not defeat. Failing to try is defeat.

You may be wondering what this has to do with photography. Whether you are the subject or the photographer, you likely are feeling the enormity of the moment we are passing through. I know I am. We have lost our sense of balance. We are struggling to find meaning as we approach important religious and cultural holidays. It’s hard to think of celebrating when our neighbors are dying around us and some are talking openly about the prospects of a civil war. But it’s up to us to take responsibility for this moment.

The great Persian mathematician and philosopher Omar Khayyam wrote in the Rubiyat:

“The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash away a Word of it.”

What will you remember ten, twenty years from now? There will be losses, but there will be joyous moments as well. Beauty abides, even in the darkest times. Let’s capture some of that together. Let’s make some keepsakes that celebrate this dance called life so that when we look back, we see it in balance.

Chiaroscuro

I began studying art seriously in about the fourth grade. My mother had always wanted to be a painter, and she got me started with a private instructor in Fullerton, California. I painted with oils, often with a heavy use of the palette knife. My instructor, whose name I no longer remember, specialized in charcoal sketches, often of Latinos on Mexican newspaper and treated with a copel varnish. I gave that technique a try and when I was about 11 years old I produced two portraits of Chinese men on Chinese newspaper. My mother loved these two pieces as she said they represented the comedy and tragedy masks of the theatre. After her death, I rescued these pieces and two of my oil paintings: a seascape, seen through a cave, and a basset hound, copied from a flea collar box. I quit painting around age 12 because the lessons and equipment were costly and my eldest sister had taken up lessons as well. My mother would often complain about the cost. A couple of my dad’s friends had offered to buy some of my paintings for what was then substantial sums ($350, as I recall, in 1966-67) but my parents said no, as they did not want me motivated by money. So I quit painting.

Even so, images from the Dutch and Flemish painters stuck with me. I was particularly attracted to the chiaroscuro technique — the use of bright colors against dark backgrounds to draw attention to and through a scene as a way of adding depth to an image. I recently saw some beautiful flowers at a farmer’s market and bought a bouquet with the intention of photographing it. I am primarily a portrait and dance photographer, but in a pandemic we take our subjects where we find them. These flowers were stunning.

I’ve been setting up a small photograpy studio in my basement. This would be my first project there. I arranged the flowers in a cut glass Mikasa vase as best I could and placed them on an old wooden cabinet. I noticed that the base of the vase, where it rested on the table, seemed empty in contrast with the colorful bouquet. So I added some delicata squash and apples around the base to hold the eye within the frame and balance the strong pull from the flowers.

For lighting I started with a beauty dish just slightly off center. The ceilings are a bit low (7.5 feet), so I was limited in the height of my lights. (Note to self: This will be a problem with tall subjects who want standing shots, so I will need to move back upstairs for those.) I shot the flowers against a handpainted background that my daughter made me for my birthday a year ago. It’s green-gray with speckles of gold. The light, a Profoto B10-Plus, seemed too harsh, so I added a diffuser. The light was pleasant on the flowers but too much light spilled onto the background, making it a distraction. I added a grid to narrow the spread of light. By itself, it was too contrasty again, so I put the diffuser over the top of the grid. The combination was beautiful. The light caressed the flowers and fell off quickly enough to leave the background dark. I added a B10 behind the vase to illuminate the background. I experimented with a couple of different grids to constrain the light in a circle behind the flowers. The theme of these images was harvest time, so I added a yellow gel to suggest the warm colors of a fall sunset. I added a reflector to fill the shadows. I tried a white reflector first, then a gold reflector. I rarely use a gold reflector as it’s too warm for portraits, but it looked good on the flowers. I later added a Profoto A1X speedlite with a grid to fill the shadows but I set the power a bit too high and did not like any of the results. I swapped in a lovely cinnamon-brown, handpainted backdrop that I bought on sale and experimented some more with the lights.

In the end, I had a smorgasbord of images that were reasonably good. I preferred the ones with a bright bouquet set aganist a dark background, but I decided to post a variety to my social media accounts to see what others had to say. Opinions varied, but several people mentioned that they liked the ones I liked. If I analyze them, these versions resemble the chiaroscuro and related tenebrism techniques of some 15th-17th Century Dutch masters such as Rachel Ruysch and Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder. I don’t want to misrepresent myself as an art history expert. I am not. But in visiting art galleries I am often drawn to the works of Dutch masters even before I know who painted them. I have a particular affinity for the use of contrast and color in images to evoke emotion and to control eye flow through an image.

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For me, these lighting techniques and color palettes evoke a depth of spirit evident in the faces of my subjects. I can practice with flowers and vegetables but the challenge lies in applying these techniques to people. Finding subjects in a pandemic is challenging.

I have good news for those of you thinking of getting your portrait, headshot, family portrait, dancer portrait, modeling portfolio or holdiay card photos! I will be retiring from my job as a newspaper editor on Dec. 1 and plan to work exclusively on photography. I also am spending down my accumulated “personal time off” by taking off the month of November. So please consider booking a COVID-safe session with me. As an added incentive, I will discount my creative fee by 20% through November 2020.

Family

In 1955, the year I was born, the great photography patriarch Edward Steichen produced an exhibition of 503 images by 273 photographers from 68 countries for the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He titled it, The Family of Man, after a line in one of Carl Sandburg’s book-length poems, The People, Yes. Sandburg wrote a prologue to a book that resulted from the exhibition. Here is an excerpt of the poem from Sanburg’s prologue to The Family of Man:

“There is only one man in the world
and his name is All Men.
There is only one woman in the world
and her name is All Women.
There is only one child in the world
and the child’s name is All Children.”

People sometimes ask if I have a favorite holiday and I always say, Thanksgiving. In the U.S., it’s when family and sometimes a few friends and maybe their families would gather around a table for a feast. I was prepped for the holiday in Catholic school with art projects. We drew pictures of Native Americans and Immigrants, known as pilgrims, gathering to share food and stave off starvation. This was before incoming waves of immigrants stole the land and slaughtered the native peoples. Of course, I knew none of that in grade school. It was a time of innocence and naivete. Back then, I was just one of All Children and it’s that spirit that sticks with me today as I think about family..

I am scheduled to make a family portrait this week. I know the matriarch of this family from my work as a journalist. We have become friends over the years, but I have never met her husband or their two children. I am looking forward to making their family keepsake. To prepare, I asked if they had a favorite place or somewhere meaningful to them. My friend sent me a couple of photos from the campus of St. Catherine University in St. Paul. I scouted the location so that I would know what lenses, light modifiers and stands to bring. The campus is gorgeous at this time of year and presents several locations to work with. I can hardly wait.

Family photos can be tricky. They require direction from the photographer to ensure that the poses keep the viewers’ eyes in the frame. If off-camera flash is used the photographer must be careful not to cast distracting shadows across the subjects. And yet despite the directions and the posing, you want the family members to interact and display natural expressions that reveal their individual personalities. All of this should be done within a reasonable time to avoid wearing out the family members. Add to the mix unpredictable weather and you see the complexity of family portraits. Yet I love making these images.

If home is where the heart is, then family is what you make it. I have many families. There’s the one I started with: Mom, dad (both deceased now) and two older sisters. After a late divorce my dad and his second wife gave me another sister. Then there’s the family I created. My late wife and I had two children. She was from a family of 10 kids, eight of whom are living, and I’m still close with them and their families. Then there is my girlfriend for the past five years and her family. I also have my martial arts families: jujutsu and Aikido, which are distinct but equal. And now I can add my dance family at Cinema Ballroom in St. Paul, Minnesota, and by extension, the ballroom community around the country. Some might think my use of the term family in this context diminishes its meaning. Not for me. I see myself as a member of The Family of Man. I don’t like everyone in the family, but I care for each person and I revere family units of all kinds. Taken together, they make the tapestry stronger and more interesting.

I hope to meet you and your family one day. Perhaps we can make some portraits together. In time, perhaps we can join together to make a better world.

It’s photo season

That’s right, the end of summer is picture season. The fall colors paint the landscape into myriad backdrops. Rising high school seniors fill the parks trailing parents and photographers. And betrothed couples wrap up preparations for that wedding in October, the month that has bumped June for the most marriage ceremonies. Add to that the families hoping for a last group shot before the novel coronavirus and influenza combine forces into a blitzkrieg, and you have the opportunity for portraits.

Whatever your reasons, you will find an army of willing photographers, myself included, ready for your appointments. I don’t shoot weddings, but I am open to just about anything else, including engagements, baptisms and funerals (it’s a growing thing). I’ve had a few family portrait sessions lately and I thoroughly enjoy them. They are challenging because you have to get the lighting and gestures and poses and interactions to line up and yet still appear natural and candid. I love the challenge. So I shoot longer than most portrait photographers. Family portraits really should take at least half a day, including setup and teardown. If that’s not in your budget, no worries. I can and will make accommodations. My preference is to shoot in your homes or at a location that has meaning for you and your family. That could be a favorite park or someplace in the city or countryside. If your favorite countryside requires travel, I’m more than happy to be your personal photographer.

Here’s some tips to prepare for your photo session this season:

1. Pick a photographer who’s work you like but equally important, whose personality fits with yours.

2. Have a clear understanding of what you expect, but be open to other possibilities suggested by the photographer.

3. Discuss the clothing you will wear. It should be clean, free of wrinkles, lint and pet hair. Solid colors and simple patterns are best. Avoid narrowly striped shirts. If the rules don’t suit you and your family, break them! Just do it deliberately.

4. Do your nails. Consider a haircut or even hiring a hair stylist. If you wear makeup, do so for the shoot. Avoid shiny textures. Consider using blotting papers to tone down hot spots.

5. Let the photographer know if anyone in your party has special needs or considerations.

6. If it’s a group shot, include everyone in your planning. If younger children are involved, have toys or even a nanny available to help out.

7. Expect to pay the photographer a non-refundable reservation fee that applies toward your overall package, or half of the contract fee, up front. Regardless of the terms, make sure you understand them. Some photographers only supply prints. Some only supply digital images. Some limit your usage. Ask questions!

8. Consider the weather when scheduling an event. Professional photographers can and will make anything work, but some days are better than others. Plan for the unexpected by choosing an area that has indoor cover nearby in case a storm blows in.

9. If you’re shooting in a public location, check to see if there are fees for photographers. Some places also require reservations.

10. Consider stacking your order. If you’re getting a family portrait, ask the photographer to do some professional headshots as well, or individual portraits. And don’t forget holiday photos! It’s OK to ask for a discount for these services.

11. If you’re nervous about being photographed, tell the photographer. Do you have some favorite music that would help put you at ease? Are you concerned about your weight or skin blemishes? You’d be surprised what a professional photographer can do to help you look your best through poses, lighting and if necessary, minor retouching.

12. Do you have a particular style in mind, or a favorite photographer or artist you admire? Share that with your photographer but allow the person you hire to express themselves in their own style as well. Portraiture is a collaboration.

When you’re ready for your photo session, I hope you will consider me and my work. Regardless, I hope you find what you’re looking for before the season turns.

Milestones

I celebrated a milestone birthday yesterday. After two ballroom dance lessons to help me prepare for a competition in a few days, I spent hours trying to get my computer and new cable modem to speak to one another. It wore me down. I bought some Italian takeout food for me and my two adult kids. They gave me some awesome gifts to feed my passion for photography. And then my girlfiend Linda surprised me with some lisianthus flowers. "Maybe you could photograph them,” she said.

After another dance lesson this morning I got down to business. I like the look of flowers agaist a dark background, so I set up a charcoal gray paper backdrop next to my black marble topped kitchen island. For the main light, I used a Profoto B10 plus with a reflector and 10-degree grid to focus on the delicate flowers from camera right. There was too much black in the photo, so I added a B10 with 20-degree grid as a rim light, placing it behind the flowers, camera left. There still was too little light hitting the base of the vase, even with a reflector. So I added a third B10 in a 1x3’ softbox. I tried putting the softbox vertically, which was all right, but I liked it better when it was horizontal, just skimming the front of the vase at about table height. I added a reflector to throw some light into the darket shadows.

This is the process we follow in most studio shots. We gradually build up the light so that we know exactly what each one is contributing. I started out by shooting into my camera but soon tethered into my laptop using Capture One Pro, a software package designed for the process. It enables me to see far more details when I am shooting. That can save hours of post-processing time because you notice stray shadows or glints of light that you can fix in-camera rather than trying to fix the images later.

I would much rather photograph people, but these lisianthus flowers captivated me with their papery petals and their dance-like stems. I used a Mexican vase that my sister bought me years ago for another birthday. It had just the right size opening to hold the flowers in place. I noticed one flower had a yellow stamen showing, so I tried adding some bananas and lemons to bring out the colors and connect the table to the scene so that it wouldn’t look like the vase was floating in space. In portraiture, we would add a scarf, a flower, a hat or some other accessories to do something similar. I tell my subjects to bring what they like when they come. One brought a small animal skull. We tried to use it but ultimately found it too confusing. We want the images to tell a story. That’s why I added some peppers to the shot of the lisianthus flowers. They made the scene more Mexican, which tells you something about me.

I will keep this short, as I have two more hours of dance practice ahead of me tonight. Stay safe. Be positive. Give thanks.

Family time

I got a call a couple of weeks ago from a woman I haven’t seen in years. She saw some of my photos on Facebook and wondered whether I would agree to make a headshot for her. We got together for coffee to talk about her goals and to catch up on life. She’s a whiz in the rarefied field of nanotechnology. Her husband is an accountant who has morphed into an SQL superuser. They have two boys, ages 7 and 4. By the time we were done with coffee, she asked if I would make her husband’s headshot also, and take some family portraits as well. It felt like Christmas in July!

I was thrilled to be asked. The coronavirus has everyone feeling cramped up. I offered to do the shoot at their home. After a couple of weeks, we worked out a time. They had a flood in their basement and just had new flooring put down. When I got there, I discovered that the room they wanted to use was very small, maybe 12 feet square. She wanted the shots against a white background. It’s more challenging because you have to light both the background and the subjects and you must get the ratio of the lights just so. Too much light on the background, and you wrap around the faces of the subjects, or you blow out their hair. Too little light and the background will appear gray. I worked it out, but the low, 7-foot ceiling made placement of the key light exceedingly difficult. I just couldn’t get much height with a softbox on my strobe. An umbrella with a diffuser proved more flexible, but less than ideal. The shiny paint on the walls reflected ribbons of light in unexpected places. I tried to set up my V-flats to block the stray light, but they just wouldn’t fit in the small room. Photography requires on-the-spot problem-solving. In this case, I restorted to the blitzkrieg method: I took hundreds of photos.

After we got what we needed from the backdrop the storm outside let up and we managed to get some nice candid shots in their yard. Their boys played on some tree swings and climbed a backyard fort. By the time we wrapped up I had spent four hours on the shoot and took more than 650 photos. The editing took me several days, partly because I decided to do it in Camera One Pro, a fantastic raw image processing software. I could have sped things up in Lightroom, which I know pretty well, but I wanted to practice using Capture One. The thing about that program, you are tempted to spend more time on each image because you can do so much with it. After about 15 hours of editing, I finally sent the photos to my clients. I won’t charge them for the extra work. I will just bank the experience.

I am committed to making an assignment work, regardless of the obstacles I encounter. Some of the photos I took disappointed me. I had not noticed the stray collar flipping up, here, or the glossy goop forming under the 4-year-old’s lower lip there. I could fix some of these oversights but not others. Fortunately, I had plenty of good shots and came away with some additions for my ever expanding list of things to check before I leave for a session. My clients say they were thrilled with the work and they plan to send me a list of images that they want printed. When I got back to my day job as an editor I found an email from another friend asking if I was available to take some family portraits. Absolutely!

On death and dying

In 1969, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her seminal work on the five stages of grief in her book, On Death and Dying. Others have tried to refine it, but it remains a landmark of scientific observation. The stages and sequence she observed are: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and Acceptance. I think the novel coronavirus has pushed us — and perhaps the world economy — to the edge of depression.

It’s time like these that I recall Dylan Thomas’ poem for his dying father, Do Not Go Gentle into the Night. Is it better to just accept our fate or to take Thomas’ advice and rage, rage against the dying of the light?

I am a photographer. I cannot do anything without light, so I bring my own. I apply light to my subjects to cast shadows just so. If I have done well you will emerge from the session with images that reveal an essence behind the mask that you share with the world. People who see these photographs will say yes, that is you!

How do we prepare for these sessions? First, we talk. We will discuss what you want and expect from your portrait or your headshot. The portrait of a high school graduate or a mother and child should not look like the portrait of a dancer or someone launching a new career. I will advise you on what to expect from me and of course, the price. I want to meet your expectations but if I cannot, I will say so and help you find someone else.

For starters, you should consider what you plan to do with the photos. Do you want a large centerpiece for your room to hang above your couch? Or do you want a headshot to help you get an interview? Do you want publicity photos for an advertising campaign? Or do you want to memorialize a rite of passage, such as a graduation or an an engagement? Do you want candid shots or formal portraits?

Next, you should prepare for our time together. The most important thing you will wear is your expression. But clothes do matter. Pick as many outfits as you like. From those, we will select several items together. Do you want your photos to be bright and airy? Maybe you want to share some drama or passion. Clothing helps carry the message. Regardless, the clothes should be ironed and free of lint and hair. We want to eliminate the need for elaborate retouching, which takes time and can add cost.

Women will want to take special care with their makeup and fingernails. Consider hiring hair and/or makeup sylists, and possibly a wardrobe consultant. If you don’t have one, I can help you find them but you will pay any of these professionals directly, as I take no markup. Gentlemen should also consider their appearance. Shave, or trim your facial hair. Consider getting a haircut before the session unless you want a rougher, natural look. Pick clothing that expresses the image you want to project but not something that draws attention from your expression. If we are including children, dress them however you like and let them know what’s in store. Make it lighthearted, and have treats or rewards available to keep them going. Tell them it will take some time but they will be rewarded for good behavior. If you have a family pet, invite them to join us. And please, have everyone brush their teeth before we shoot, or consider getting your teeth cleaned.

I require signed model releases for my photos so that I can share them in my portfolio. (Note: If we are shooting a commercial assignment and the photos will be used for advertising, we will negotiate terms for the use of your likeness.) I will give you a questionaire describing my services; you can use it to help you decide what you want from your session.

We can shoot outdoors, in my home studio, in larger rental studios, in your home, office or other indoor locations. If we are shooting outdoors, it’s best to start early and wrap up by 11 a.m., or to start after 2-3 p.m. and end just after sunset. If we’re shooting indoors, the time is irrelevant. If we’re shooting an event, it will dictate the time. I do not shoot weddings at this time but I am happy to shoot most any other event, ranging from birthdays to graduations, live performances, even celebrations of life that we know as wakes or funerals.

The photo session is just part of your package. I will cull the images and together we will select the best ones. Generally, this will happen within two weeks of our session together. If you need something sooner, we can arrange it. Rush jobs may incur an additional fee. I will do the initial processing and routine reouching, but if you need specialized retouching, I will help you find a professional retoucher. If you want headshots I will deliver digital images formatted for sharing on the internet. But if you want portraits, you will be ordering prints. All printing will be done at a professional lab and the price will depend on the paper and size you select, as well as any presentation formats, such as books, print boxes, framing, etc.

Take the advice of Dylan Thomas: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Give me a call and let’s talk about your project: 612-655-5020.

Keep the celebrations going…

Most of us have been locked indoors for months now in an attempt to keep the coronavirus outside our homes. Many of our most cherished rites of passage have been put on hold. Graduations, weddings, backyard BBQs. As the numbers of infections dropped, many states began to loosen restrictions and we dared to venture outside into the sunshine again. Then Minneapolis police killed a man named George Floyd by pinning him to the ground during an arrest, and all hell broke loose in Minneapolis and around the world. It’s hard to celebrate a birth or a life passing away when confronted with our inhumanity to our fellow man.

We all have light and dark sides. It’s the portrait photographer’s role to show them off in an honest and respectful way. A high school graduation session is all about the promise that lies ahead as our subject stands on the transom. We find ways to illustrate both the accomplishment completed and those yet to come. These photos are light, airy. If we are photographing a memorial we seek to pay homage to the life that passed, noting the bad without dwelling on it, and savoring the good that came of the person’s life.

In both celebrating and mourning, and in every milestone in between, we must remember that nothing is permanent. Photogaphs can help memorialize those events. Images that today document an event or a mood will be viewed many years hence with a different perspective, marking a waypoint on our becoming. Don’t let that slip away unnoticed.. Continue to celebrate your life and the lives of those around you, in good times and in bad.

I hope you will let me be a part of that journey.

“Lost time is never found again.” — Benjamin Franklin

I am celebrating a recent photo shoot, a high school graduation of sorts. My client, Jessie Kleitz, wanted to mark the end of her high school education as so many before her have done. But we live in a time of a novel coronavirus and a quarantine that has all but stopped ordinary life. Graduation ceremonies and photographic renderings of the occasions have been postponed or abandoned. Even so, Jessie wanted a record of the moment. She painted a string of baby blue forget-me-nots around the edges of her cap and slipped on the black robe that proclaims success. So off we went to find a location that would speak to her big moment as she crossed the threshold to her future.

Photographers sometimes speak of photographs as “captures.” They say that photographers capture light, preserving the three-dimensional world in a two-dimensional artifact. They say photographs preserve time the way amber preserves ancient dragonflies. Yet that is an illusion. Photographers use light to create something new, a representation of the interaction between themselves and their subjects. Photographers use light to etch an image that lives in the present whenever viewers imbue it with meaning or simply glance at it and scroll past.

When I photographed Jessie I saw a young woman of great promise embarking into an unsteady world. A few weeks ago, George Floyd, a black man, died while in the custody of the Minneapolis police, pinned to the ground by a white, veteran officer for nearly nine minutes despite Floyd’s desperate pleas that he could not breathe. Since then, riots and looting and protests have raged worldwide. Against that background, here before me was a young woman with stunning blue eyes, rich red hair and skin like a French bisque doll who must make sense of it all and find her place in the smoldering aftermath.

What would my images record? What would she see in them 50 years hence, if she stumbles across them in a drawer? What will I see of myself when I process these photos as I edge away from my forty years as a newspaper journalist and step toward the future as a photographer?

Photographs are like kaleidoscopes. You never see the same image twice. That’s because photographs record an illusion of time, measured in fractions of a second. They allow us to see what we remember of time, but always through our own lenses, which themselves are constantly changing.

I watched a video today of Prof. Robert Hudson, one of my jujutsu instructors, explaining a proper “natural stance" (shizen tai in Japanese). It’s a static position, standing on both feet with the spine erect in a plumb line, perched over a spot just behind the ball of the foot, a point known in acupuncture as kidney one. As you stand in this position you realize that you are never perfectly stationary. You waver ever so slightly as the muscles and nervous system adjust to the constantly rotating earth and your own reaction to gravity. This, I thought, is like releasing the shutter. It merely appears to freeze time.

Congratulations, Jessie, on your accomplishment and best wishes on your future. Thank you for for bringing me out of quarantine, and for helping to teach me about time and the speed of light.

Les Miserables

A 2019 memorial for Philando Castille, who was shot to death by a police officer for driving while black less than a block from my home in Falcon Heights, Minnesota. They are trying to plant a “peace garden in his memory,” yet the Twin Cities is burning in the wake of another killing of a black man in police custody.

Beneath the face masks, behind the milk used to wash away the tear gas, you can see the rage that animated Victor Hugo’s classic work, Les Miserables. Minneapolis is on fire, enraged by the injustice of a white police officer who on Memorial Day callously pinned 46-year-old George Floyd, an African-American, to the ground with his knee. Officer Derek Chauvin, a 19-year veteran of the Minneapolis Police force, ignored Floyd’s desperate pleas for help — “I can’t breate.” “Mama.” — for nearly nine minutes. He pinned Floyd to the pavement for nearly three minutes after he had passed out. He ignored a fellow officer who, worried about Floyd’s health, asked if they should turn him onto his side. Chauvin ignored the pleas of the growing crowd. Floyd died after being taken by ambulance to a hospital.

Now, Chauvin faces charges of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, as well as a federal investigation into the incident. His wife announced she was divorcing him. The city of Minneapolis erupted into flame. Protesters burned down the Third Precinct police building. Dozens of stores have been looted and torched. Rumors are running wild. Gov. Tim Walz, visibly shaken, has called in the Minnesota National Guard. Mayors across the Twin Cities have imposed curfews, which protesters ignored without consequence. More violence ensued. Now, President Donald Trump is threatening to bring in the military.

Victor Hugo saw this coming.

So what does this have to do with photography?

Photography is writing with light, but it is shadow that gives it form. When a strong light is blocked by an object it creates what we call “hard light.” It enhances texture, which works wonders on the bark of a tree or the wrinkles of an elder’s face. But it creates dissonance on the face of a young and beautiful model who looks forward to a life of love and plenty. Photographers can use that to create interest or intrigue. It might not suit a portait of a young mother and child, however, or the pimply face of a teenager. To create softer light, photographers push it through diffusion material, which stretches the penumbra — the line between light and dark — creating a gradual transition. Carried too far we call this flat lighting because it eliminates the shadows that make the image appear three dimensional.

Photography also takes place in time. It can freeze time or it can show movement through motion blur. It might then reflect a moment, or a period in which it was taken. Which brings me back to the convulsions erupting in Minneapolis and across the United States.

The photojournalists documenting the riots and their aftermath have risked their health and their lives to record these events. They have trained their eyes and their lenses on the carnage and the writhing humanity that is calling out for justice. They are shooting the raw, harsh light that dilineates the violence, and they are using the soft, diffused light to show the common grief of protesters and neighbors demanding peace and justice for George Floyd. I long to join my photojournalist colleagues but for a variety of personal and professional reasons, I am stuck at home. I realize, too, that I mostly want to make portraits., to penetrate the masks we all wear and display my subject’s essence. Yet that seems irrelevent now.

I fear what’s coming. Jean Valjean, the protagonist of Les Miserables, dies in the end. Victor Hugo makes his death palatable by resurrecting him into heaven. The conflict that claims his life coincides with the beginning of the French Revolution. The people cry, “Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death.” Ultimately, a great many of them died so that we descendents would have our liberty. Alas, some more than others. Which brings me back to George Floyd and the protesters and rioters who call out his name.

“No justice, no peace,” their signs say. The destruction that got the world to pay attention to George Floyd’s death is dark indeed. It cuts like a bandsaw between black and white. and demands to know: Who’s side are you on?

Life has taught me that there are no sides, really. There is light and dark, and each contains within it the seeds of the other. What is done to one is done to us all. The family-owned drug store down the road from my house, which looters set afire, is no less innocent than was George Floyd. The looters stealing diapers and cigarettes from a corner store are no less human than the police officers who watched helplessly from across the street.

This cannot go on. And yet it has for hundreds of years. The darkness today will yield to light tomorrow and return in time to shadow. This is the human condition here on earth. Let’s hope there is a heaven where Jean Valjean and George Floyd are rejoicing as God frees all oppressed people. Until then, photographers must bear witness without fear or favor.

I need you

Grand Marais, Minnesota

If you haven’t read Waiting for Godot, I suggest you do so. Samuel Beckett’s play features two characters, Vladimir and Estragon, who are stuck in a lifeless space waiting for the arrival of someone named Godot, who never arrives. Written shortly after World War II, it’s strangely prescient of our COVID-19 lockdown. We live inside our homes, afraid some invisible pathogen will claim us and our loved ones. Yet we grow weary of our lives in isolation. The routine grates on us. We tire of our own company.

Netflix and YouTube videos only go so far.

I miss holding my girlfriend in a long, silent embrace. I miss dancing with my friends at Cinema Ballroom in St. Paul (the best darned dance studio in the Midwest). I miss my friends from jujutsu and Aikido, though we have not tossed one another around in long time. And I miss the opportunity to make portraits.

I have tried to keep creating. I have shot glassware and self-portraits, still lifes and abstracts, my dog and the cardinals who munch sunflower seeds from a plastic bird feeder that my late wife bought. All of those photographs were good for me; they taught me new skills. More important, they made me dig into my creative wellspring, to look and to see. But let’s be honest: it’s getting old. I need human subjects

I need you.

I recently watched a YouTube video featuring the famous magazine photographer Joe McNally, whose work I admire. He often speaks reverently about John Loengard, his former photo editor at Life magazine. McNally recommended Loengard’s book, As I See It, which encompasses 50 years of his images from the golden age of magazine photography. I ordered a cheap, used hardcover copy, which arrived today. Inside was a handwritten note from the bookseller thanking me for my purchase. She added, “A signed copy, no less!” Sure enough, Loengard had signed the title page. I cracked the book with some additional reverence and made my way through it, savoring each black and white photo.

From the Preface: “As I see it, my photographs, when gathered up, form a mixed bouquet. They have no single subject or topic. If commentary binds them them together, so much the better.”

And from his commentary about a photo of one of those steel coin-operated binoculars that tourists feed at scenic lookouts: “I took a picture of the amusement pier at Old Orchard Beach, intending to show how the hand of man had already altered the Maine coast. The tanker scheme — [a proposal to dock supertankers for offloading in Maine’s deepwater bays] — was soon forgotten and so was what was written. Old news is an oxymoron, but old photograps can hold our attention.”

I considered each photograph in his book and wondered what it was about them that made them live on. Many had historic significance or captured moments of great personalities. Yet others, of ordinary people and places, simply expressed Loegard’s gratitude.

I am ready for Godot to walk through my front door. Yet I know tomorrow will be the same as today, Endless hours waiting for that All-Clear sign. Eventually we will emerge from this crisis and recover our footing. Life will move on, leaving the tens of thousands of corpses in the history books and deep scars in the survivors’ lives. Those of us left standing will be grateful, for awhile, to have survived this plague. But our gratitude will fade as we busy ourselves with work and play and insatiable consumption. Such is the human condition.

For now, I fill my time editing newspaper stories from my dining room. In my spare time, and there is much of it, I am learning to use Capture One photo processing software, studying online lessons on lighting, and how to run a photography business without going broke. I try the photo challenges cooked up by the photographers working for Adorama, a New York photography superstore. How to make in-camera multiple exposures. How to create golden hour in broad daylight. How to make self-portraits with light modifiers you build from ordinary objects like pizza boxes or a white sheet.

But what if Godot never comes? What if this is it, and I fall to COVID-19, the illness caused by a novel coronavirus? Can I leave photographs that will hold your attention?

I wonder.

Zanshin — Remaining mind

University of Minnesota neurosurgery residents work to repair a patient’s faulty brain.

Friday, May 1, 2020. I am on furlough from work at my job as a newspaper editor, but my life’s work goes on. So today I am diving into my well.

Sometime when I was a young boy, I closed my eyes tight, sealing out the light, I thought. But then I saw a light within. An afterimage of my iris, perhaps? I am sure there’s a scientific explanation. But to the young boy it was just light, and when I opened my eyes it rose slowly before fading away. Raised Catholic, I was convinced I had seen a manifestation of Christ, ascending into heaven. And who can say otherwise? It was my own experience. No one else was there. It cannot be put to any test. It’s whatever I wanted to make of it. For me, it was a religious experience.

I thought about becoming a priest. A shocking experience at a Boy Scouts Jamboree, held at a seminary, drove me away from both scouting and the Church. But my interest in all things spiritual persisted. I picked up a book by Kahlil Gibran and found something I was looking for. Then came Herman Hesse’s book Siddhartha, about the boy who would become the Buddha. I found that light I was seeking, and chased it down the path through Friedrich Nietzsche, Carl Jung, Alan Watts, Carlos Castaneda, D.T. Suzuki, Saint Augustine, and so many others. I realized at some point that I was chasing an afterimage. Noumena. I wanted the source. I thought I had found it in a physical activity — phenomena — called Danzan Ryu jujutsu. (A note to readers: It’s not like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which is so popular today. Danzan Ryu is an modern iteration of an ancient form, koryu jujutsu, that defines its purpose as perfection of character.) I told one of my professors, an instructor of a senior seminar on zen Buddhism, that I did not want to study about satori (enlightenment); I sought satori itself. I dove deeper into Danzan Ryu and it would captivate me for the rest of my life. It animates everything I do today, including my photography. I am still chasing that light.

Zanshin, remaining mind/spirit, is a way of talking about it. Light, the raw material of photography, travels infinitely in a straight line. When it strikes an object it illuminates it and then bounces off at a predicatble angle. We photographers cite a law of physics known as the Law of Reflection: The angle of reflection is equal to the angle of incidence. Knowing this, we can stay with the light (zanshin) and use it to express an image from the world around us. But it is not the world in itself. It is a reflection of our interaction with the external world. So we take another picture, and another, chasing the light. Pausing to reflect, we lose sight of it. Yet we have sight of the reflection: the image itself.

Many years ago, I lived in the Mission Beach area of San Diego. I surfed every day, whether there was a suitable swell or not. I drew on that experience to write a poem about a surfer who gets “tubed..” Inside the the hollow of a wave, the walls are steep and trecherous. The surfer must keep the inside edge of the board angled just so to keep from slipping sideways into the cascading wave. If you can stay tucked into the tube long enough, the wave will eventually spit you out. My poem was about this experience, and how the circling water resembles being inside an egg; the eruption at the end is like a chick breaking out into the world. Afterward, paddling out to friends awaiting the next swell, the surfer in the poem is overcome with a desire to talk about the experience. The poem ends there with the line, Again, happiness runs aground. Had the surfer stayed with the moment — zanshin — he might have experienced the paddling itself. In short, he lost touch with reality and merely reflected it. I turned this into a short story with a different ending. The surfer gets tubed, but the wave crashes around him in a violent turbelence, white water everywhere. When it subsides, he’s inside a white globe. After resting, he chips his way through, finding himself among a group of seagulls, the reincarnated forms of long lost friends and relatives. They said they had been waiting for him.

Today I will do some grocery shopping, then clean my basement and assess whether it can be converted to a photography studio, though the low ceilings may make that difficult. Later, I will shoot some photographs using found objects from around the house as light modifiers. It’s part of a challenge from the photographer/educator Daniel Norton. Then tonight I will gather with my jujutsu ohana (family) via Zoom, and present my thoughts on Fudochi Shinmyo Roku, the Divine Record of Immovable Wisdom. You can think of this as zanshin.

Be well. - Dan

COVID-19

Self-portrait.

I’ve been lucky. So many people have lost their jobs because of the novel coronavirus pandemic, many of whom also lost their health insurance, Yet I am still working. My newspaper sent everyone home to work remotely when Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz issued his stay-at-home order in March. Journalists were deemed essential employees, so we did not have to stay home. But Walz encouraged those who can to do so, and my management wisely agreed.

It’s not easy working from home, but it’s not terrible, either. As an editor, I have periods of dead time and periods where everything comes flying at me. This is often when the technology we use fails us, and the stress flies along with the swear words. But in between we can read or do other projects. I mostly read the New York Times and Washington Post, but also scan FaceBook and Instagram and occasionally, Twitter. I have learned a great deal about my fellow man. Much of is is good, but too much of it is not.

I also squeeze in short YouTube videos. I am learning to use Capture One Pro, which I like a great deal,, and I’m learning new tricks on Lightroom Classic and Photoshop. I also tackle occasional photo challenges suggested by photographers like Daniel Norton, Seth Miranda, Gavin Hoey, Mark Wallace, Vanessa Joy and Lindsay Adler. Sometimes, I just marvel at the work by working photographers I admire, like Rachel Neville, Haze Kware, and Alex Cuarezma, to name a fracton of the great artists out there. Or I ponder philosophical or professional issues presented by Daniel Norton, Sean Tucker and Hugh Brownstone.

In short, I am making use of my time. I am preparing myself for some future release, assuming I don’t fall prey to the disease. I look forward to the day when I can shoot again. Dance. Portraits. Martial arts. Fine art. I look forward to the time when I retire from the newsroom and write in a different medium: light. The stories I want to tell now are visual, composed of shapes defined by light and shadow, bent by pathos and passion into the human form.

'Through One's Eyes'

I came to photography early in life. In my teens, I went through some of my parents’ drawers and found a stack of black and white proofs. I didn’t know it before, but my dad had been a professional photographer as he studied for his degree in electrical engineering at the University of Kentucky. He’d go door-to-door with a swatch of black velvet and convince the woman of the house to drape it around her bare shoulders for a portrait. He chuckled when he recalled the story. Seeing my interest, he gave me the Minolta 35mm film camera he had at the time and taught me the basics.

I had some artistic talent. As a child, I took lessons in oil painting and drawing faces with charcoal. People who saw my “work” encouraged me, and I dug in deeper. When I turned to photography, my dad built a black-and-white darkroom in our family room, and I learned the magic of developing film. Around 1971 or so, I took a photography class taught by a local dentist named Donald Huntsman, who excelled at fine art photography. Don was on speaking terms with Ansel Adams and Minor White. I studied the Zone System and composition with him and a small group of enthusiasts. My favorite photographers at the time included Adams, White, Paul Strand, and Edward Weston. My parents bought me the 14-volume series on photography by Time-Life books, and I poured through them again and again. I read about the WPA photographers, and I read Edward Weston’s daybooks.

Don curated a show in 1973 at the Muckenthaler Cultural Center in Fullerton, California, titled, “Through One’s Eyes,” a phrase Weston had used in his Daybook No. 2. The exhibit coincided with my graduation from high school. Seeing prints from the masters — including Ruth Bernhard, Wynn Bullock, Henry Gilpin, Eliot Porter, Aaron Siskind, Jerry Uelsmann, and Minor White — stunned me. I wanted nothing more than to shoot photos.

I considered the Brooks Institute but didn’t think we could afford it. So I moved away to Cal State Chico. I lost touch with Don after that, but I still have the booklet from the exhibition. Don’s love of light and shadow stuck with me.

I continued taking photos through college, earning my undergraduate degree in religious studies (primarily Eastern). I tried to find the zen in photography, without much success. A few years later I went to graduate school at the University of Oregon with plans to study photojournalism, but my father convinced me to study print reporting, which he considered more intellectually challenging. I earned a couple of master’s degrees in journalism and became adept at data analysis and its use for reporting. I made it my mission to investigate malfeasance and misfeasance, and made a decent living writing and editing for newspapers.

But I never lost my desire to make photographs.

I had worked for awhile in Singapore and bought several thousand dollars worth of photographic equipment. I managed to freelance some photos to the Singapore Straits-Times, and I sold a few stories and photo packages to Black Belt magazine. But my photojournalism over the years was sporadic at best. Then, it came to a halt in 1989, when all of my gear was stolen. I lacked insurance and couldn’t afford to replace it.

I married in 1990 and started a family. Over the years, I bought an early edition Canon Rebel film camera, and a used Canon G4 digital camera. I shot mostly snapshots and family mementos. My sister Diana felt sorry for me and in 2000 or so, she gave me a Canon DSLR and I began to shoot seriously again.

In 2012, my wife got sick with a fatal disease called frontotemporal dementia. After she passed, I bought a Canon 70D and a couple of cheap kit lenses and began making progress. I eventually replaced it with a Canon 5D Mark IV and a bunch of used lenses from my photojournalist colleagues. I shot my friends in martial arts and ballroom dancing, gradually improving my skills.

Then a couple of years ago, I discovered Daniel Norton and Seth Miranda LastXWitness on Adorama’s YouTube channel. I became obsessed with learning studio portraiture and off-camera lighting. I bought inexpensive softboxes and speedlights, eventually replacing them with Profoto gear. I finally got the nerve to ask people to sit for me. This, I decided, is what I want to do. So I formed Danzante Photography LLC and planned to quit my journalism job this year to pursue photography full time.

The novel coronavirus COVID-19 abruptly changed my plans. I’m still a working journalist in Minneapolis. But once we get through this I plan to retire and go full time with my photography business. Meantime, stay healthy. I hope to see you then.