I suppose I should tell you why I have decided to devote some time to learning proper video technique. The reason is pretty simple actually. It is because it is becoming increasingly apparent these days that video is an expected part of every website, presentation or promotion. And not just any video- high quality, professionally shot with professional audio. So if I want to continue to do book projects and promote myself professionally video is a necessary piece of the process.

Back to the gas station. When last I blogged I was off to a local gas station to try to shoot a short 30 to 60 second promotional piece. We had already done a video of an interview of a long time customer (Bob) using two cameras and three mics so we had a story line to follow. Basically, we were trying to illustrate the interview.

As easy as that sounds the madness is in the details. Just the act of pulling up to the pump was shot five different ways: with a camera behind the driver for a point of view shot, with a camera hanging out the left side passenger window on a counter-balancing steadying device, with a camera magnetically attached to the left side of the car behind the front tire, with a wide angle lens in front of the car that moved to the right as the car pulled up to the pump, and with a fisheye lens in front of the car that made it look like the car was about to drive right off the screen.

All those shots we used for maybe 8 seconds of video.

Then we needed shots of Bob rolling down the window to talk to the attendant- one shot from inside the car, one shot from outside in front and one shot from looking over the shoulder of the attendant. Did I mention shots of handing and also of taking the credit card? Of opening the fuel door? Of taking out the gas cap, of picking up the nozzle, of placing the nozzle in the gas tank, of taking out the nozzle from the gas tank? Of washing the windows (from inside and out) of the attendant walking to and away from the car and on and on and on? Oy, this stuff is hard!!

We did all this shooting in 25 minutes with lots of redos, comic errors, horrendous shots, people walking into the shot, cameras appearing out of nowhere, misfocusing and the uncomfortable cutting of important appendages. We also included just pieces of appendages that were equally uncomfortable. Oy, this stuff is hard!!

The result, expertly edited by Bob, was a truly and quite remarkably mediocre video. I am being kind actually. It was bad. But it was our bad and our first bad so that made it…well, still bad.

We are going back tomorrow to shoot in the garage. Bob is sending what we did to them tonight. I’m figuring by then we will be greeted by a swarm of flying wrenches. How many shots of that do you think we will need?

My brain is about to explode! And no, it is not because my NY Giants are actually in the Super Bowl with a half-way decent chance to win. It is something even harder to fully comprehend- video! Not the simple amateurish-looking video you see on U-Tube but the lush, almost cinematic video with deep rich sound and wonderfully storytelling you see…well, you hardly see at all. The place I always see it is on Bob Krist’s website and that is why right now I am at Bob’s house trying to get my cognitive arms around this completely different and confounding animal called video.

Turns out, there is very little overlap between shooting stills and shooting video. At their most basic both remain being about capturing light- the prettier the light the prettier the still and video. Both can also be done these days with digital cameras, even inexpensive digital camera, and get great results. In fact, one of the best Nikon cameras for video is the D5100, a $750 camera. When shot next to my D3s, a $5000 camera, the D5100 produces far superior video. Bob also showed us the little SONY HV9X, a point and shoot camera that he has used to take beautiful video clips. The BBC even uses it for some of their news footage. Just like with still photography, you don’t have to spend loads of money to get great images.

That’s where the similarities end as far as I can tell. When shooting video, it is all about the passage of time, something still shooters never think about. Every video you have ever seen starts at the beginning of something and goes to an end of that something. You haven’t noticed it before because when done right the passage of time is seamless and invisible. For me, so far, capturing the passage of time is as seamless as a patchwork quilt and as invisible as the Empire State building. Oy, this stuff is hard.

So after 30 years of photographing stills I am adding video to my repertoire and trying to learn to think completely differently about telling a story. Rather than 100 images to tell the story about a farm or a lobsterman or whatever in a book or a presentation with video you get 3 to 4 minutes. With 15 – 20 clips per minute that’s 45 to 120 three to four second clips. A clip is a single action or scene. 100 of them! Oy, this stuff is hard.

Oops, class is about to start again. We are going to a local gas station to try a video about filling up a car with gas. Sounds easy doesn’t it? It no longer does to me! I’ll give you a complete report on my next blog.

This pair of photos was taken about 10 minutes apart while I waited for something to happen at Wonder Lake in Denali National Park. Unfortunately, not everyone waited until the last possible moment. They was a non existent sunset and figured nothing was going to happen. Oops! So here is the rule for the new year: if you are waiting for sunset wait the whole time, don’t leave early because you are hungry or bored or impatient. My best sunsets have occurred when the sun poked out just at the horizon and lit the sky up with fantastic colors. Slow down, take a breath, relax. You may just get lucky!

Denali

Denali

Great Horned Owl

So here is the result of all that scanning that was done by the Scan Cafe- I found many of my old friends! Images that I hadn’t seen in many years that used to be my favorites and that had been hidden in the dark alleys of past technologies were suddenly in my computer, up on my screen and slapping me in my face saying “Remember me!!”

It’s interesting looking at the pictures I took 10 to 20 years ago. I was pretty good back then! Not as good as I am now but not horrendous either. The difference in my photography is small but important; I am much more aware of subtle aspects of composition and subject choice now then I was then. Almost all of the old images have some minor flaw that I now would’ve corrected before I pushed the shutter but that I wasn’t aware of then. This is to be expected. The process of mastery in any pursuit is the process of increased awareness to ever smaller details. And besides, you want to look back and realize that you are better now then you were then. This means that you are still learning, still improving, still climbing the curve. If you look back and realize that back then you were better than you are now then you have already crested the hill and you are rolling downhill, regressing to less mastery. Not a good thing.

Looking back on these old friends also made me realize all the places I used to go and loved but that I haven’t been to in a very long time. Texas wildflowers, Oregon Cascade old-growth forests, polar bears, Denali, etc, etc are all spectacular places that I haven’t photographed in more than a decade. It’s time to go back and say hi to old haunts.

So those of you with piles of slides stuffed away in dark corners take the time to root through them and see what is there. I bet you will find some old friends of yours and find some old desires to go back to those places and photographing them again. Besides, it’s January, what else are you doing on a cold winter’s day?

[Show as slideshow]

David Middleton’s 2012 Photography Workshop Schedule

Available Light Travel Photography March 28^th – April 1^st Santa Fe, New Mexico

Santa Fe Workshops: www.santafeworkshops.com/photography-workshops

This is a practical workshop on how to take beautiful travel photographs without all the annoyance of strobes and cords and battery packs. Based on the techniques I have used during my last three books I will share the tips and procedures that allow you to concentrate on taking great pictures. Daily critiques and shooting sessions in and around Santa Fe are included. Remember, it is not the gear you use but the techniques you use!

Tofino and Pacific Rim National Park May 8^th – 13^th Tofino, British Columbia

For complete information contact Brenda Berry-   bberrygreen@gmail.com

One of my all time favorite workshops because of the stunning variety of habitats and subjects, Tofino is a nature photographer’s paradise. Located on the wild west coast of Vancouver Island this workshop will explore ancient cedar groves, magnificent tide pools, beaches miles long, fascinating working harbors and rocky coastlines. We will also spend a morning photographing the low tide shorelines of the back bays in search of the area’s wonderfully cooperative black bears. Taught with my great friend and fellow pro, Brenda Berry.

Thinking and Shooting Like a Pro June 17^th – 23^rd Manchester Center, Vermont

For complete information contact Scott Rouse-  scott@scottrousedigital.com

This unique workshop, taught with my friend and digital guru Scott Rouse, is the best way I know to amp up your photography. Over the week Scott and I cover all aspects of pro-level photography from capture to processing to presentation. We also emphasize the benefits and joys of adding purpose to your photography by way of a photography project. For further information see my blog and contact Scott for a more detailed description.

The Oregon Coast July 18^th – 22^nd Newport, Oregon

Santa Fe Workshops: www.santafeworkshops.com/photography-workshops

Now really, can you think of a better place to be in July than the Oregon Coast? Crashing waves, working harbors, long beaches, beautiful lighthouses and bizarre sea creatures and colorful tide pools all close by and all easy to get to. Plus great sunsets and a fun seaside community. Taught with my great friend and fellow pro, Brenda Berry.

Fall in Vermont October 10^th – 14^th Manchester Center, Vermont

Santa Fe Workshops: www.santafeworkshops.com/photography-workshops

I call this my backyard workshop because, well, it is done in my (greater) backyard. Taught with my great friends and fellow pros Jeff Wendorff and Lisa Cueman, I take the class to all my favorite locations- tumbling mountain streams, misty ponds, colorful meadows and old barns. We also go to the wonderful old dairy farm that I did an entire book on to photograph the old-time Vermont of generations past. As a special treat we will also photograph two magnificent horses- running against a background of colorful trees and portraits of them with a dramatic black background.

Fall on the Maine Coast October 17^th – 21^st Bar Harbor, Acadia National Park

Santa Fe Workshops: www.santafeworkshops.com/photography-workshops

I have been going to Acadia National Park and the headlands of Down East for more than 20 years and every time I go there I find more things to photograph. Now after doing three books on the coast of Maine I appreciate the area even more. From the beautiful working harbors to the hidden ponds surrounded with color to the birch forests thick with ferns there are endless subjects to photograph. Don’t go with a group to all the standard places that everyone else has images of, come with us and get unique shots of a unique and beautiful part of our country. Taught with my great friend and fellow pro, Brenda Berry.

I wanted to report on my experience of sending slides off to a remote company to have them scanned. I have 100,000 slides in my office and since I haven’t used them or even looked at them in several years I decided it was time to either get rid of them all (more on that later) or at least scan the ones I might use later. So I went through a few filing drawers and picked 726 images and sent them to the Scan  Cafe. I chose the highest resolution in TIFF format. It took about 8 weeks (I was in no hurry) and cost about 60 cents/slide total.

The result? I am very happy. First I would never have taken the time to scan 726 images myself so to have these images now at my fingertips is wonderful. The images were cleaned and well scanned. With the Scan Cafe you get to preview and approve the scans before you pay for them. I approved them all and was not disappointed. Overall they are maybe a third to half a stop dark and some are flipped horizontally but otherwise they are, with 30 seconds of additional processing on part, ready to go. They came back on CDs so they are easy to download into my computer. As soon as I get back to my office I am going to root around for another 7 or 8 hundred and send them off again.

What am I going to do with the rest of the thousands of my slides still in filing drawers? Well, the only thing I can think of is to eventually make a big pile in the driveway and set them ablaze. Nobody wants them and they are taking up space so up in flames they go! I’m not quite there yet but I’m close.

If anybody want a few thousands slides I’ll post when the pyre is to be lit. But be careful, some of my really old ones probably deserve to be torched!

Dory

Tis the season, the season to look back and take stock of the year past as we look forward to the year to come. And I have had a year that requires much looking back upon. From the joys of a new book and new students to the quite literal heartbreak of a mid-year heart attack my year has been nothing if not eventful.

My heart attack snuck up on me in July and it continues to sneak around my subconscious and my conscious mind. There are days when its residue is but the lightest of breezes but there are also days when it is the stiffest of head winds that blocks any path I might wander. When I try to embrace what happened my arms don’t yet seem to be quite long enough but when I try to battle the ‘Bastard’ as I call it,  my heart just doesn’t seem to be in it.

I now realize that my heart attack wasn’t a single hideous event but rather just another day in what I hope to be many years of days. I see it more as a gift now- both a wake up call to a more healthy life and a reminder of all that I have and all that I might be.

This is not to say that I have discounted my heart attack or trivialized it in any way. The person that was wheeled into the operating

Pemaquid Point

room early that Saturday July morning was a different person that walked out 30 hours later. Crumbled was the edifice of invincibility that I had constructed and honed for 40 years since I first learned about heart disease and my family when I was 16. Gone was the hubris of health, the fallacy of fitness that I had held on to for four decades. And in its place? Well, I’m still not sure.

I suppose I am a bit more humble about my health now and certainly more grateful. I seem to feel things now before I am even aware they exist and my appreciation and awareness of all things- good, bad or indifferent- grows daily. This is not to say that my critiques are going to be any more pleasant or that my workshops might actually be fun now. It was a heart attack remember, not a miracle.

The last five months have been a journey of many, many days; my creative mind and open heart often not working in synchrony and often just plain not working. But now, with the help of my close friends, lots of love and the support of you my students and readers I see horizons that I haven’t seen for a long, long time.

Sunrise

I have a new cardiologist now who actually listens to me, laughs at my lame jokes and scolds me when I try to get away with something.  I also have a big new project that excites me more than I have been excited in a long, long time. Words are again trickling into my creative soul and images to capture now linger in my mind and memory cards.

But this doesn’t just have to my wake up call. Let’s pretend I took one for the team and you, my dear, patient reader, are part of this team. It’s the holidays now, a time of presents and celebration, of an inspiring story and pledges of forgiveness and joy. Any presents you might want to give yourself? Any forgiveness you might want to extend to yourself. Any inspiring story you might want to start about you?

I give you permission to try, to feel, to forgive in the days and weeks and months to come. I also give you permission to celebrate and to find joy everyday. It is my gift to me that I pass on to you. A re-gift if you like but a present nonetheless. You, of course, don’t need my permission for any of this but that’s okay, take it anyway. And if your days brighten just a little bit and your horizons become just a little bit clearer don’t thank me; thank yourself. You deserve it, just as I did.

Top of Killington Peak, Vermont

Happy Holidays to Everyone Wide and Far!!!!

May your f-stops be plentiful,

your shutter speeds accurate

and your ISO noise-free!

And may you have the courage to try something completely different this year

and the joy to laugh at your mistakes and celebrate your successes.

Change

Lobster Captain Benner

“Change is a tonic.” Boy, I wish I had written that. But, I didn’t. Just another example of the many pithy things my small but perfectly formed brain has missed. It was written by William Zinsser, the author of the best book about writing (On Writing Well) and it rang true as soon as I read it.

What he was getting at was that for all creative types (yes, that includes you), trying something different is creatively refreshing, creatively healthy and even creatively necessary. And by different, he means really different. A change is not trying a vertical composition instead of your usual horizontal or working on tulips instead daisies. A change is a radical departure from what you normally do. Think of a politician telling the whole truth or Brittany Spears going to a library.

I took Zinsser’s advice and stepped bravely into a new world. For me the change was both exhilarating and reinvigorating. It was also darn scary. But I am now photographing subjects I had either overlooked or outright avoided my entire professional career. And, this is the important part, I am now more excited about my photography, I am a more skilled photographer and my pictures are better than ever.

So, what was my change? I went from being a pure nature photographer – no hand of man, no people, no way- to all hand of man, all people. For 25 years I photographed all things nature, from grizzlies to wildflowers, from sweeping landscapes to dew drops on spider webs and I spent considerable time and effort getting power lines and rooftops, roads and contrails out of my pictures. And I was good at it, darn good.

Now, I don’t care about power lines or fence lines, rooftops or black tops. If the light is good and the composition is good, I’m good. How liberating is that?! And now, instead of traveling all the time to exotic locales I am photographing 4 miles from my home on just a single square mile of property. How wonderful is that?! My subject? An old Vermont dairy farm. It is very pretty, very close and extremely satisfying.

Here is what change did for me:

First it challenged me. I knew how to approach moose and flowers but I had no idea how to approach a dairy farmer. Do I come in down wind? Should I wear camo? What is dairy camo? Turns out it wasn’t that hard, I just introduced myself. But how do I take a nice picture of a dairy farmer? Turns out you try and fail and try and fail and then you figure it out. It’s a puzzle and figuring it out is the best part of trying something new.

Accepting change forced me to photograph things I had avoided- people, cows and the inside of buildings- and it forced me to take some really, truly dreadful pictures before I learned to take

Hugh Bromley, 92 years old

better ones. But remember-‘digital’ is Latin for ‘its okay to fail’. Without great failure you will never find great success.

Photographing different subjects forced me to learn to use my camera differently. I shoot at high ISOs now. I handhold many compositions now (its tough to set up a tripod on a tractor) so I had to learn how to best do that and I take most of the shots without much forethought now…after all, I can’t ask the farmer to go back and replow that row or remilk that cow. I have to think very fast and react to get the shots I see.

Photographing unfamiliar subjects also forced to change personally. This is the most difficult part, the scariest part and the most wonderful part of change. Photographing people forced me to overcome my innate shyness toward strangers and my hesitancy to put a camera in their face. It took me several months to begin to feel comfortable photographing people and get the strong images I wanted but now I am much more confident and relaxed photographing other people.

Photographing people and where they live and work also forced me to interact with my subjects not just record them from a distance. You don’t get intimate, impactful pictures standing fifty feet away with a long telephoto. And when you start interacting with people you actually become part of their community and not just some odd ball that looks for spider webs and moose tracks and chases rainbows and sunsets.

These are good things, no really they are. I know I am talking to a bunch of oddballs about this (remember, I am one too) but every so often it is good to spend more time with a human than with your hard drive. And even if you try this ‘change’ thing and fail miserably what have you lost? Nothing! Your flowers and sunsets will still be there for you. Besides, you might like it! So go ahead, try something different. You have my permission. It won’t hurt. Try it. Its okay.

Portland Head Light, Cape Elizabeth, Maine

Dories, Maine

The hardest part of the class, Shooting and Thinking like a Pro, that I teach with Scott Rouse and Jeff Wendorff is coming up with a title that captures everything that we do in the class. I have taught the class for more than 15 years and it must have had half a dozen titles- Going Pro, Shooting Like a Pro, Earning Money with Photography, Thinking like a Pro, Getting Seen, What Next?, and the truly dreary, Career Development. Each one captures a piece of what we teach but none actually is completely descriptive.

I suppose I could just combine all the titles- The Tricks to Shooting and Thinking Like a Professional Photographer With The Thought of Going Pro or At Least Earning Money or Even Getting Seen Since You Have All These Images and You Don’t Know What Next To Do With Your Photography or Career Development- better known as the TTTSATLAPPWTTOGPOALEMOEGSSYHATIAYDKWNTDWYPOCD class. I think I’ll stick with SATLAP (see above).

I guess I should just be content in telling you that the point of the class is to help the participants realize that there is more to photography than just compiling a huge pile of random, unrelated images. In fact, the quest for the ever prettier individual image is an empty journey and ultimately an unfulfilling one in my mind. Trying to out-pretty yourself or your camera club friends all the time leads nowhere in the end other than to a big pile of images on your computer or to a picture covered hallway in your house.

Don’t get me wrong, its great practice and it is always good to try to improve but what is the end result? Where is your photography going? What is your purpose?

This class is about giving you a purpose in photography. It is about helping you realize the joys and great satisfaction of photographing with a goal in mind, of developing an idea and working on a project that leads to a gallery show or magazine articles or a book project or internet business. It is about learning the skills necessary to take all the kinds of images needed to tell a story- landscapes, macro, wildlife, action, environmental portraits- and the skills necessary to share the story with others- query letters, delivery notices, book proposals, gallery inquiries, calendar submissions and tear sheets, to name a few.

In short, this class is about giving each participant the skills and more importantly the vision and courage to tell and then share a story through photography.  Jeff, Scott and I get the satisfaction of seeing creative light bulbs go off and each student gets the satisfaction of leaving with a personalized project in hand and the excitement of a new purpose to their photography.

This year the class material will be presented on an Apple IPad that is included in the cost of the class.  The class is being held in Manchester Center, Vermont near where I live from the 17^th to the 23^rd of June. The cost is $1650 and includes the above mentioned IPad loaded with teaching and reference material. If you already own an IPad there is a discount in the cost of the class.

If you have any questions about the class please email me and I will be glad to answer them.  To sign up please contact Scott Rouse -scott@scottrousedigital.com