The End of a Chapter

It's the end of a chapter. On Friday 28th October my last course at RMSP was rounded off with a graduation ceremony, so I'm no longer a student at RMSP but one of many alumni who have spent time in Missoula learning about photography - and about themselves. It's been an amazing summer, though once in a while, when there were project deadlines looming for example, it didn't seem like that.

Unlike the majority of students I also had the opportunity to observe the life and language of another country - one of the benefits of being here as an "alien". I also had an unexpected opportunity to explore more of the USA than I'd hoped for so I've extended my stay to the end of November when my visa expires.

The USA is a beautiful country - a huge one at that. I recently spoke to a Brit who lives in Tucson and works for a photographic printing lab there. He said the only way he could relate to the size and diversity in the USA was to imagine it as if it were Europe - with each state as a different country but with everyone speaking the same language. That description works for me too.

The great advantage of being here for a longer period of time is that I get to live in the country as opposed to simply visiting it as a tourist. I'm so used to traffic driving on the right along very wide, straight roads that I'm expecting my first day or so back in Blighty to be a bit of a culture shock.

Since leaving RMSP I've had the opportunity to see some of the natural wonders of the USA. I visited Yellowstone and saw Old Faithful and several other of the amazing features there. I visited some of the national and state parks in Utah to see huge natural archways eroded in stone, rivers winding in deep horseshoe shaped valleys, and looked up to (and down from) huge mesas. Later, in Arizona I saw the amazing landscape around Sedona, and made a brief visit to the Grand Canyon, seeing it at dusk and at dawn. As magnificent as the landforms are in the USA it is the size that impressed me most. Coming from a country where you are never more than 70 miles from the coast and the drive from Land's End to John O'Groats (i.e. top to bottom of the UK mainland) is around 840 miles it is quite something to drive for days and days through various types of desert scenery.

If the scenery has amazed me, the language and way of life have in turn amused and saddened me. But we all speak English, right? Well... we can all understand each other but some of the words and ways of saying them are so very different. I've had many happy conversations about language differences with my landlady - thank you Carol for being such a wonderful host. For the record, any artist visiting here from the UK should be sure to ask for an eraser if they want something to correct their pencil drawings. And any American lady visiting the UK should refer to those convenient belt pouches as bum bags.

The saddest part of being in the USA has been what I've observed about health. The US diet is probably very tasty but it is not at all healthy, and while the spending per person on health care here is greater than any other nation, this is not reflected in the health of the nation. Some figures from the internet: The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked the US health care system as the highest in cost and 72nd in terms of overall health. In 2006 the US was top in terms of health care spending but 39th in infant mortality, 43rd for adult female mortality, 42nd for adult male mortality, and 36th for life expectancy. I still find it hard to understand how a country so rich in resources can have over 16.7% (over 50 million) of its residents uninsured for health.

Much harder to understand is how doctors and nutritionists in the US who have discovered cures (yes cures) for cancers that use changes in diet and lifestyle and avoid destructive surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation are forced to practice in Mexico or lose their license to practice since their treatments - essentially a healthy diet - are banned at home. Treatment using a healthy diet and lifestyle has also had great success in curing many people suffering from degenerative diseases such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and MS - sometimes in spite of attempts by US authorities to limit the work or restrict supplemental resources.

On a more positive note I'm finding the benefits of a wiser way of eating. I never realised how tasty salads can be... and I'm not talking a tomato and a couple of slices of iceberg lettuce. There's a vegetarian restaurant in Tucson that has such an amazing variety of VERY tasty veggie food.... hmmm!  And the results of this change of diet? Much more energy and a lot less waistline.

I'm excited to get back home and start in earnest on the next stage of my photography. I'll miss the many friends I've made.

And I'll be back sometime for sure!

Days away from change

"Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" : John Lennon.

If you'd asked me two weeks ago what I was going to do when I left Missoula I'd have given you a pretty comprehensive answer, at least as far as the photography goes. Ask me today and you'd get a more cautious answer. It would be rather vague as I am still working it out, it would also be an answer that was more passionate and a truer reflection of myself I'm sure.

One of the early posts on this blog featured a song that a fellow student had posted on the student bulletin board. It came to mean a lot to a few folks here. With one week to go on the last of the five courses here at RMSP I realise the song and the moment have come round again and I'm once more only days away from change. Here it is again.. click to listen.

So what's happened? Well over the course of this summer we've had a range of photography based professionals come to talk to us. It was during a couple of these talks in the past two weeks that I realised I need more than just skill with a camera. I need to connect my vision and a passion if I am to be different. Cameras tend to reveal what's inside you as well as what's in front of the lens. And looking at some photos I had to show in class I was reminded of the vision and passion that have been with me for a few years now... and which in a way I'd lost sight of in my rush to plan. I also realised that bringing those qualities to the types of photo work I want to do are not just nice to have, they are essential. That's why I'll set about the list of things I have to do back home with a different emphasis and with revised priorities.

There won't be too many more blog posts in this blog, and with all the work and other changes there have been less than I'd expected over recent weeks. I'll carry on writing though, sometimes they'll be as posts in my other blog, seenfrommycorner.blogspot.com, as and when things catch my eye. I also have in mind a new blog on my new photography website which I'm working to set up at the moment.

A sense of direction

For now it's time to rest as the final week at school starts tomorrow.

Wonderful World

Sometimes life brings along unexpected surprises as well as frustrations that often aren't as bad as they seem. Take last week's video classes for instance.

First surprise: after many weeks of getting to be pretty much at ease with my camera I switched it to video mode and felt like I was back in a photographic kindergarten. It wasn't the first time I'd switched the camera to video mode; of course it wasn't  - you can't have a button on a camera and NOT try it out pretty early on. The difference this time was that I had someone teaching me how to do it properly, and it did feel like I was learning the camera all over again.

Second surprise: I liked it. Kids in kindergarten play and that was the beauty of this class - I didn't know what I didn't know and simply played and enjoyed the discovery, for the most part at least - the enjoyment increased as the week wore on.

And the frustrations? Well a laptop is not quite the thing for editing video so there was a lot of being patient and learning to go with the flow. Getting hot under the collar wasn't going to make the computer work any faster that's for sure.

Will I play with video again? Yes, for fun mostly. I had a great time playing and discovering this whole new set of toys, and coming to it with no preconceived ideas I had a great time. Here's one of the videos from this week to prove it. Enjoy!

(The video was shot in 1080 HD mode but due to limitations of file uploads here it is a lot smaller)

Counting crumbs

They say variety is the spice of life, well if it is then my life is pretty well spiced right now. I've completed three weeks of Professional Studies at RMSP and I'm now into the final course here. It's called Advanced Intensive, and lives up to its name.

Studying three specialist subjects in the Pro Studies classes was fun and I learned a lot. It was especially good that the instructors in each case were among the top professionals in their respective fields and were able to give lots of good advice about working in those areas.

• Outdoor Photography: Darrell Gulin gulinphoto.com
• Documentary Photography: Ed Kashi edkashi.com
• Food and Product Photography: Joe Lavine www.lavinephotography.com

The Sandwich

In fact the whole summer has been filled with classes led by educators who are also professional photographers, but whereas the Summer Intensive course was about technique and appreciation of photography for the most part, these later courses are about putting it all into practice as a professional photographer and adding even more skills to the toolbox... or paints to the paintbox.

So what have I been up to?

My previous post covered the start of the outdoor photography class at the Lee Metcalf Wildlife Refuge.

Lee Metcalf Wildlife Refuge

That week continued on a high with trips to the National Bison Range and to an old town called Philipsburg. Interestingly the assignments were not simply to come back with pictures but pictures and the story.

National Bison Range

Philipsburg

Documentary Photography continued in the same vein with pictures and stories from an assisted living home where I interviewed and photographed a Native American man who is from the Blackfoot nation. Next evening the class descended on a local truck stop and interviewed truck drivers and staff and took lots of photographs. The final evening of shooting started at a local baseball game and then went on to a small open air musical event in a Missoula side street.

Truck stop

The Food and Product Photography didn't require a story, just a whole bunch of ingredients and a lot of patience. Some of the food was even edible after we'd finished with it.

Pasta

Shooting pasta is not quite as simple as: cook pasta, pour sauce over the pasta, serve up and shoot. If it hadn't been cold when we started it would have been by the time we'd finished chasing crumbs of cheese round the set. There's an art to crumb wrangling... it involves odd numbers of crumbs, a fine implement of some sort, and a lot of patience. In contrast to this the sandwiches we made and shot one day were rather less than edible. If only we'd used organic vaseline to coat the bread before adding the mayo instead of the regular stuff, it could have made all the difference! Maybe we could have used organic cotton wool balls to pad out the delicately folded slices of meat, but least the cocktail sticks adding structure to the sandwich were sustainably sourced. It looked wonderful, at least so long as it stayed on the plate.

Fortunately the location shoot at the James Bar featured food prepared by their chef and real wine... which meant it was all fit to eat and very tasty even after we'd done with using it as a prop.

Edible, hot and tasty, even after it had posed for a photo!

This week has flown by, and at the end of it I know lots of new techniques to try in Photoshop (like a kid with that new box of crayons). I know a little about printing on alternative surfaces - you name the surface and there's sure to be a process out there for putting a photograph onto it. I know about animation and time lapse and 3D images and I'm starting to get ideas for playing with those too. Next week we start on shooting video.

Despite there being lots to do in the remaining five weeks there is a sense of the time coming to an end. It's matched by a distinct autumnal air and cooler temperatures, in the morning. Gone are the days when I could cycle to class in a short sleeved shirt - I'm already thinking of buying some gloves!

Stepping up

I usually write blog posts at the weekend but today is an exception. After spending last week relaxing in Texas this week is the first of three Professional Studies courses, and if the first two days of this course are anything to go by it will be a time of working hard and learning lots.

Yesterday we worked in class from 9:30 a.m. to around 6:30 p.m. This morning we started at 6:30 a.m. at a nature reserve about 45 minutes drive away and finished at 6.00 p.m. Tomorrow we start at 6:30 a.m. at a different nature reserve just over an hour away. Thursday we get to sleep in - class starts at 8.00 a.m. at a town an hour and a quarter's drive away. Despite the early starts the class, The Business of Outdoor Photography, is really enjoyable and well worth it. Friday is a normal class day - at least as far as the hours go.

As with other courses at RMSP the teacher, Darrel Gulin is someone who is out there doing photography and has been marketing his work for 25 years, 19 of them full time. Getting the benefit of that much experience from someone who is an excellent teacher is pretty cool. The class assistant, Jimmy White who is an RMSP graduate from 2009, also takes a pretty mean picture and is a great help and encouragement.

So, bleary eyed, we turn up at the Lee Metcalf National Wildlife Refuge while it is still dark and then shoot pictures from first light. We then head back to class, select the best 5 photos, process them, and then hand them in by noon ready for them to be shown later in the afternoon. Considering we were all in a very small area of the park at the same time and seeing essentially the same things we had a great variety of interpretations of what we saw and the photos we all turned in were very impressive. I'm getting to enjoy outdoor photography a lot. Here's my take on Lee Metcalf.

Time now for a bit of homework, recharging the batteries (mine and the cameras), and then an early night.

Tea, Time Out, and Texas

There's an art to cooking on an outdoor grill. Speaking as someone who's outdoor cooking leans more towards cremation than culinary prowess I really did appreciate the cooked ribs and chicken I had this week... not to mention the wine, the travel, the endless cups of tea, and the conversation (in English).

I'm back in Missoula now, having spent the past week in the company of some wonderful Brits - in Texas of all places. The Brits are all from the Midlands (the area of the UK where I grew up) and have made me feel very welcome - thank you all for your very generous hospitality.

Of course I picked an interesting time to go to Texas. The temperature was over 100F (around 38 to 41C) during the day - and has been so for several weeks now. Night time temps have been similar to day time temps here in Missoula. Those ribs and chicken pieces would probably have cooked by themselves if left out during the day!

An eatery on San Antonio's River Walk that does a really nice bangers and mash.
What's that quote about mad dogs, Englishmen, and the midday sun?

So why go to Texas? Well...  after 11 weeks of working hard at Summer Intensive I needed to get away for a break and to relax before launching into the next part of my photo studies and I had the opportunity to visit a friend who grew up about 20 miles from my home town. It's funny how activity can be relaxing when it's somewhere new and trips to Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, and south east Oklahoma made the week go by very quickly. I also saw signs of Texan wildlife, past and present.

Not native wildlife but a lot better suited to the heat than I was. Pics taken in a wildlife park.

All that separates my foot from this dinosaur footprint is a few million years.
Which is fortunate cos I'm not sure bear spray would have worked on these beasts!

More dinosaur footprints preserved in stone.

Part of the old Fort Worth stock yards

Views from the top, Oklahoma

High up in Oklahoma at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Reserve

The last time I posted here I had just two days to go on the SI course. Those two days saw my final project completed at last, and then the RMSP Summer Intensive graduation. They also saw a lot of goodbyes to a bunch of really lovely people who have shared, and made, my summer. In many cases it was all I could do to give a hug - any attempt to say anything would have tipped me over the edge. Some wonderful friendships have been made in SI and will continue. One of the things that struck me at the graduation was the quality of the photographs we had to show - easily of professional standard. We've learnt a lot about photography and about ourselves.

Many of my fellow students will be back for some or all of the Pro Studies courses and the Advanced Intensive which follows. I'll be studying one week courses in "The business of outdoor photography", "Documentary photography", and "Food and product photography", followed by the six week Advanced Intensive course. It's back to class tomorrow.

Almost there - part 1

There are only two days to go on the SI course. Today I get to show my final project and tomorrow is the final lecture followed by graduation.

The past 10 days have been busy and interesting with the main focus (for everyone) being the final project. There were the continuing lectures, mostly on the software we use to process digital photographs, with additional lectures on night photography, career related topics, the business of photography, and film (yes, there are many who still use that and interest seems to be on the increase). There have been days when I didn't pick my camera up and one where I didn't seem to put it down. It's been good and I've had some fun times.

The pace has continued, and that is good too. In part it's self imposed.  I mean, there was no one forcing me to end a busy day last Friday with a trip out to shoot the stars but that's what I did. Friday morning: work on final project (technically I should have been at a lecture but I had it in mind it was an optional lab session - I worked at home all the same). Friday afternoon: lecture on Photoshop software. Friday evening: print lab - printing the pics for my final project, and getting home at about 10.00 pm. Friday 10.45pm: head off to shoot the full moon, shoot star trails, watch shooting stars, draw light pictures, and generally have a brilliant time till 2 am.

A team effort with each of us doing one letter (I did the letter "I") we used Cindy's camera. 

Ghost writers (I'm the one with the hat)

Some of the other light painting creations were....

Night flower

Creature of the night. I think I had it in mind to draw a bear but pig, donkey or cow would also work as a description

I also turned my attention to the sky and shot this...

Full Moon: ISO 100, f9.0, 1/160th sec, 280mm lens on crop sensor camera (effectively a 480mm lens)

.... and these...

Moon behind the trees with a longer exposure

Star trails - with the moon lighting up the sky even though it was around midnight

It looks more like the middle of the day rather than middle of the night with the full moon and an almost clear sky

Moonlight with the added light from a passing car

You wouldn't think you could have so much fun and laughter out taking photos in the dead of night but we did, and the folk I was with were and are brilliant company. I shall miss them.

With all this activity it was good to be able to sleep in on Saturday morning, and just as well since I spent Saturday afternoon and evening at the State Fair in town shooting the fairground rides, some livestock, and a concert.  More of that in part 2 - with all the activity this week on my final project I've not had chance to look at the 600 plus pics I took at the fair let alone pick out some good ones (I hope there are some good ones in there!). Besides which it's morning and I could do with some breakfast and a shower before I head in to show the world, or at least Group D, my final project.

Weekend Down Time

Written on Saturday & Sunday

Saturday:

Not two minutes ago, or so it seems, I was winding up my previous weekend and thinking "I'll write my blog post on Monday". Well, now it's the next weekend and today, Saturday, is a day for downtime. Not that I intended it to be downtime. Nor that I've been working so hard there's been no downtime at all, it's just that today worked out to be time away from photography. Other than for a while thinking I should be doing SOMETHING to further the cause (for which read final project) and getting out the hard drive with my photos I've done nothing. Well I did take a fruitless wander round a local craft store for final project supplies, but aside from that it never got past the thinking stage. I've taken a day off and holed up instead... probably the first non-photo day since the course began.

Peace

Most days since I got here have involved studying photography (lots of class time), doing photography for myself (sometimes I think not nearly enough), or working on photographs on the computer in some shape or form. Today the nearest I got - aside from the craft store - was thinking about it. Instead I watched a film... and shortly I'll watch another. OK, so maybe if I finish writing this blog today (Saturday) I'll put some photos in here though I suspect that will wait till tomorrow. But I did make soup and do laundry and go to the food store - does that count as productivity
:-)

No shortage of these in Montana

It's odd the way time has flown by. As a former student described it to me in an email the other day, "Time felt very different too. It's as if it slowed down and sped up all at the same time", and it does seem that way as the end of SI approaches. She also described the approaching end of term as "bittersweet", which it is.

I'm looking forward to the end of the course and some time away... not to mention getting that final project finished and getting out to explore photography on my own. At the same time I'm aware that it will also be the last time I get to hang out with some really lovely people. Some will be back for Professional Studies and Advanced (And Even More) Intensive but others will not. Yes, there is the phone and there is Skype, but it's not the same as studying together in a local cafe (highly recommended and a place I often go if I want to get work done), or doing a late night photo shoot with multiple flashes and multiple students in a Missoula back alley, or experimenting with second curtain sync flash with a bike and fellow student. Those are times when photography seems fun, in fact it's all been fun, but, like chocolate cake, you can have too much of a good thing. Which is why I'm content to leave the camera in its bag and chill out for a day. Charging my own batteries if you like.

A dark night in a back street of Missoula... a bunch of students armed with flashes... and a dog

Sunday.

Yesterday's break from photography worked well, as did watching a couple of films once I'd let go of the idea of doing anything else and was able to relax. This morning I've been out bowling and had a great time, and now I feel ready for work on photography.

Architectural detail from the Missoula Art Museum

So what have I been up to these past two weeks? There have been the many photographs I took of various crafts people for my final project... I'll be working on them next. There have been photos of the Celtic Festival held in Missoula recently, there have been photos of some of the scenery nearby, pics of architectural detail inside the local art museum, general photos of life in and around the downtown area. I've also revisited the Saturday Farmer's Market with my camera and sound recorder to put together another slide show (see below).

Celtic Festival performers - audience view

Celtic Festival performers - view over stage into Caras Park

Sound technician's view

Celtic Festival

Thirst was well catered for

Ok, so I like details :-)

Looking back over the past couple of weeks I realise how much has been recorded as video files on my point and shoot... albeit a more advanced one typically used for still pics in manual mode and raw format. I've also started to use my sound recorder to capture ambient sounds from the market.

Missoula Farmers Market - slide show of random pictures and ambient sounds recorded at the Missoula Farmers Market. Click here once to download (it's a 32Mb file size so give it a minute to finish downloading.  It should start by itself when ready).

Here are some of the other things that have caught my eye over the past two weeks...

Blue skies

Farmer's Market

Riding Brennan's Wave

Perspectives

Steps