February 2008 Archives

Cheers: Eric Larson

I've been waiting several months since this fall's bourbon road trip to write an official "cheers" post about my friend Eric Larson, namely to give a plug for his sweet new site and branding that is still yet to be launched, but this week's big help on a quick job in Orlando for ESPN the Magazine is forcing my hand. Larson, seen above, was not only kind enough to assist me, but he also let me rent his gear, crash on the new office couch, pick me up AND drop me off at the airport, cook us breakfast, and even share some single malt scotch! Talk about a go-to guy!

Eric assisting me is pretty laughable because he's the first person I call when I have a question about just about anything. So cheers to you, Eric Larson! Thank you for your friendship, passion, dedication, undeniable talent, bitchin' taste in all things edible and liquid, very cool wife (Judyta says hi, Jen), and for truly being an inspiration for how to be a complete professional in this industry.

It was because of Eric's help that Tuesday was on its way to being an extremely good day at JLPFL, in what could have gone terribly wrong (two shoots in two cities, with a tight schedule). We got to Ilseworth Country Club right on time for the ESPN shoot early and had an easy set-up with the white seamless of golfer Charles Howell III, who was not only on time but also a really nice guy. We quickly got everything we needed and were out the door in amazing time, so much so that I was able to jump on an earlier flight back to Miami to gain a bit more time for an early afternoon shoot.

The lighting and background was already set up and ready to go for the corporate portrait shoot in the afternoon, and it was looking like a perfect day as I waited with my regular assistant Erica for the subject to arrive... and then the spell broke. The subject completely flaked out and cancelled the shoot on set moments before it was to start. What's more about 15 minutes later the sky literally opened up and it started to POUR. It was the first time that a shoot was killed on set for me, but the client is going to eat it to the tune of 100% of the estimated fees (plus earn the distinction of going on my "never again" list). Only time and the check's delivery will tell if the day actually did end perfectly (getting paid well to take a nap).

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Expert

Last fall I was prepping files for a new promo card and noticed a couple of new FAQ links my printer had posted on tips for image quality. While waiting for everything to upload to their servers I clicked on a tutorial on sharpening best practices in Photoshop and was stunned that I didn't already know the information. I actually grinned at my realization that even though I have used Photoshop daily for 15+ years I really don't have a fucking clue about 97% of the features, especially in their evolution since PS 3.0 back when I was in high school.

In the spirit of this little lesson that I decided to begin the new year with a sort of mandate to better immerse myself in the applications and techniques of the ever-changing photography universe. The idea was to simply become a more knowledgeable user of programs that I use every day (Photoshop, Lightroom, Dreamweaver, Expression Media, InDesign, Excel) and also begin building a foundation for newer applications that I want to embrace (Flash, Final Cut, Garage Band/Pro Tools). I would try to learn more about the tools I use through research on new camera and lighting techniques, and hopefully also get my newly acquired Super Speed Graphic 4x5 up and running and on assignment for a client.

In short I wanted to move closer to becoming an expert in various parts of my working life.

Thus far, about 200 hours of tutorials (mostly lynda.com) and exercises later, jammed into a very busy opening 8 weeks of the year, I'm experiencing way more mental strain than joy, even though I have learned a few things. I wasn't expecting anything to happen overnight, but the process had led to some interesting internal debates about the cost of expertise.

A case in point is my education towards learning CSS (cascading style sheets), which are used to separate the style and content of a web site. I've always designed my own sites and over the last couple of years it has become very obvious that I'm behind web standards which have deeply embraced CSS. And so I set about to learn more about CSS design with the goal of revamping the internal structure of johnloomis.com and implementing a modest new feature. After 50 hours of learning and tinkering I was really not much further along than before except for a broader understanding of the theory. But what is worse is that I can easily see that 50 more hours will not get me there either, and that 100 hours together is probably not worth my time.

The effort to learn CSS has brought up the larger question of what is it that I want to spend my time learning and doing. Is it web site design? No, it's not. I love design but I don't want it to interfere and confuse my photography goals, because ultimately my interest in design is really only to better present my love of photography. If it was a matter of 100 hours then maybe it would be worth it to become an CSS design expert. But it's probably closer to 1000, or even 5000 hours.

Since having these realizations and debates I've been able to see more clearly the many ways in which I scatter my mental attention and efforts to things which are outside of my core passion. Partly its a way to distract attention from the parts of photography which really aren't that much fun, and partly its the way that we live and work these days... constantly trying to become an expert in everything in order to get the most of it it. I'd like to know more than 3% of Photoshop, but I certainly don't need to know 100% of it because its not really applicable to my work.

I'm not giving up on my experiment but I have refocused it on the applications and techniques that can improve my photography instead of distract it. As for the web site I've decided that I'm better off hiring a professional designer to work on it with me, just like I already have in years past with taxes. Those decisions can be expensive ones but its worth it to keep our eyes on the larger goal.

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Clip, clean, clip

It's a rainy week down in South Florida and I've been spending the time between gigs trying to find my desk under the stacks of junk, bills, invoices, notes on hotel stationery, and magazines. Somewhere buried in all of this are a couple of new clips that I'm proud of and wanted to share.

The first is a portrait of nurse Fonza Jones (who I wrote about last month) in the yet to be released March issue of Mother Jones (thanks Mark for giving me the go ahead to post). I've already explained how great it was to meet Fonza which makes it even better now to see the clip and feel like I was able to make an interesting portrait that their design team presented in a clean and authentic way, making the final version that much better.

Thankfully it's much the same story with the second clip, a portrait of environmental rockstar and physicist Amory Lovins made in December for The Guardian's Weekend magazine and their cover story on the 50 people that can save the Earth (woah, big time!). We shot this on a tight schedule in a busy, busy week for both Amory and myself, but it worked out really well since we both love banyan trees (thanks Libby for the scouting). The first time I shot for Weekend I felt like I had hit a home run and was rewarded with a postage stamp sized clip in the resulting story. I fared much finer this time though unsurprisingly a fake (I think, right... they didn't get Leonardo to Greenland or someplace for that cover shot, did they?!) cover of a movie star beat out my images of a real scientist. Someday, Caroline, someday!

As always, here are a few more from the cutting room floor:

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Monday poem: David Lee

David Lee | "Tuesday Morning, Loading Pigs"

The worse goddam job of all
sez John pushing a thick slat
in front of the posts
behind the sow in the loading chute
so when she balked and backed up
she couldn't turn and get away
I never seen a sow or a hog load easy
some boars will
mebbe it's because they got balls
or something I don't know
but I seen them do it
that Brown feller the FFA
he's got this boar he just opens the trailer door
he comes and gets in
course he mebbe knows what
he's being loaded up for

it was this Ivie boy back home
the best I ever seen for loading
he wasn't scared of nothing
he'd get right in and shove them up
he put sixteen top hogs
in the back of a Studebaker pickup
by hisself I seen it
when he was a boy he opened up
the tank on the tractor
smelling gas
made his brains go soft they sed
he failed fifth grade
but it wasn't his fault
he could load up hogs

I always had to at home
cause I was the youngest
I sed then it was two things
I wouldn't do when I grown up
warsh no dishes or load up hogs
by god they can set in the sink
a month before I'll warsh them
a man's got to have a principle
he can live by is what I say
now you grab her ears and pull
I'll push from back here
we'll get that sonofabitch in the truck.

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Semper fit

February may end up being a nice big month of firsts at JLPFL. There was this week's first assignment to Costa Rica, and today I stopped by the bookstore to pick up the new issue of Men's Health which features my first ever pull-out poster (ooooh-rah!) of Colonel Brian McGuire, A.T.C., head of the USMC's sports-medicine and injury prevention program at Quantico.

The assignment was really fun and worked out incredibly well in what could have been a high-stress slot (I shot it the day before Thanksgiving). All of the Marines were super great to work with and just watching them do their core training exercises caused me to lose 5 pounds.

Obviously this is a different side of my work. I was a little nervous to shoot the poster and "hero" sort of vibe after I got a stack of their previous posters, but I rolled with it and had fun trying to make it work. I think it looks solid but certainly not as "me" as the rest of the images they used. I hope the "firsts" keep on rolling...

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On Assignment: Monteverde

A sunset panoramic view from just outside of Monteverde, Costa Rica, looking out towards the Pacific Ocean. Click on the image for a (much) larger version.

As excited as I was to head down to Costa Rica this week to work on a pair of stories for The New York Times, the thrill did not register until our van left the even pavement of the Pan-American Highway and started its steep, winding ascent up to Monteverde. As is often the case, not until I'm on the ground and engaged are most of my trips anything but logistical puzzles nagging to be solved. And when I'm already really busy, as 2008 has been thus far at JLPFL headquarters, its all I can do to stay focused on each day and job without looking ahead.

My planning for a week-long travel job like this starts with simple assumptions and then backing them up with worst-case scenarios options. Even though my first assignment to hike through the Children's Eternal Rainforest with a group of CEOs, successful and environmentally conscious business leaders mostly in their 40's and 50's, was likely to be pretty tame, I didn't want to chance it. And so thank god for the single Boy Scouts meeting that I attended as a kid. I basically went overboard on preparation and bought a ton of gear (new photo bag (Crumpler's Whickey and Cox), hiking pants, socks, moisture wicking shirts, under shirts, and boxers, time-release DEET, mosquito net, permetherin treatment for net and clothes, malarone, etc.), as well as get a few vaccinations, as per instructions by the trip organizers, NYT, and CDC. So after all of the buying and re-buying (hiking shit is always sized weirdly) and shots I really wasn't that jazzed about the gig. But that all changed with the first night's sunset seen above.

Monteverde is purposefully hard to get to to help keep the tourism industry at bay at the door of one of the too few cloud forests left in Central America. All of the roads leading to it are dirt and studded with holes and rocks with very little encouragement (road signs) along the way. But once you arrive you find a nice little village that has grown to benefit from the eco-tourism revolution, and we arrived to a great lodge and an amazingly warm dinner with the group and local representatives of the Bosque Eterno de los Niños. It was immediately clear that all of the CEOs, environmentalists, and support staff were all just really amazing people to be around. It also started to become clear that the hike was not going to be a stroll through the forest.

I prefer to pack light and had especially gone out of my way on this assignment to make sure that everything I was carrying on my back was needed. But even then I had to ensure I would be able to carry out my job as a professional; so there was no getting a heavy pack. Ultimately the Whickey (which I chose because it doesn't look like a photo bag, has adequate storage but a smallish profile, and because you can screen off equipment from clothes or a laptop.

And so officially, as I woke up with the sun to set out, here is what I had in the bag: rain jacket, 4 extra pairs of lightweight hiking socks, 2 extra dri-fit t-shirts and underwear, camping towel, assorted drugs and DEET, 8 energy bars, pocket knife, Leatherman, thin nylon rope, mosquito net, passport, notepad, 2 pens, 1 Sharpie, deodorant, toothpaste & toothbrush, Jimi wallet & cash, 1Ds Mark II, 5d, 6 batteries (3 each), 28/1.8, 50/1.2, 100/2, case w/ four 4GB CF cards, backup 2 GB SD card, lens wipe, HyperDrive 120GB backup drive w/ charger, 4 extra rechargeable AA's, LED headlamp, 3 extra AAA's, Shure headphones, iPod shuffle, iPhone (off the whole time), a large silica gel pack, and a wooden walking stick that was given to us just before leaving (which ended up being priceless).

It became clear halfway into our first day that the hike was not going to be tame... at all. But it was beautiful and fun and as we stopped for lunch next to a small shack along a river I was feeling good. Later that day my body began to revolt that I'm such a lazy ass who spends countless hours in front of a computer, and not at all in shape. I began burning way too many calories and growing less hungry all of the time. Muscles were cramping up badly despite lots of stretching and my pace slowed over the 15 km we covered on day 1. Arriving to the refuge we would sleep at that night a half hour before sunset, and just after nearly stepping onto an extremely poisonous snake, I was exhausted (all but 2 of us non-locals were, and several people didn't get in until well after dark) and began to get worried about the following day's hike.

After a freezing cold shower and change into clean socks and underwear I felt better and made pictures of our group eating dinner and setting up mosquito nets by headlamp. No other pictures were possible because there was no electricity, and I couldn't afford the weight or size of a flash in my pack. I was disappointed in what I had been able to shoot the first day because I had to focus so much on my own energy and hiking but even if I had been in perfect shape the group was so spread out over the mountains that many of the shots I hoped for just never happened. So it goes on these kind of assignments.

The next day began at dawn and I was shaky, sore, and tight. I had been careful about my feet the day before and was in much better blister shape than many others. I wanted to get out on the trail ASAP and try to take it slow and easy. In the morning there was a presentation of donations to the Monteverde Conservation League by Whole Foods and New Chapter to help preserve and expand the Children's Eternal Rainforest for generations to come, which was followed by the hard news that the day's hike was going to be just as long as the first day. We set out and I began to find my stride but early on realized that my water bottle had been jarred out of my back somewhere in the first hour (potential disaster). Luckily someone else had a small extra bottle, but it meant that I was going to have to refill using stream or river water the entire day (personally I didn't mind, but I don't want to endanger getting sick while on assignment).

Luckily the hardest part of the last half of the hike was in the first 3 hours as we climbed up steeply to the ridge line. The images still came very slowly (mostly because the rainforest has almost not open parts to see any scale or volume) but I was feeling better and stronger. The hike ended for me at an incredibly beautiful lake 2 hours before sunset and my small group swam and laid out in the grass. I was honestly just too tired to raise a camera to photograph the others. After waiting for some additional hikers we made our way to the Luna Nuevos Extractos de Costa Rica organic spice farm where the fast group was waiting with a warm welcome, hot shower, great food, beer, and a hot tub. I turned in shortly after dinner and was dead to the world until we (awesome guy and stud reporter Andrew Martin and I) had to wake up very early to travel south and meet up with Starbucks for our second assignment in Costa Rica on farmer education.

It was a great and beautiful and exhausting experience. Photographically I was just too drained to think as clearly as normal, though I think that I got what we needed and more. The experience was far more personally rewarding though and I had a ton of time to think about the important things in my life and ways I want to live and be known. I'm now all the more in awe of the adventure photographers out there who shoot incredible images on much, much more rigorous treks in more extreme locations. I'd have to get in shape and train for years to get to that level where I could perform as a professional while enduring the mental and physical strain.

Now at the San Jose airport waiting for my return flight after 2 days visiting farms around the country that Starbucks works with to become more sustainable and higher quality I'm feeling about 90% better. Two nights of staying in plush Marriott beds does a lot of good, as does the light hiking around that we did on the farms, easing out my sore legs. The coffee farms were also beautiful but we sort of missed the right time of year to be here (due to last year's rainfall the harvest came early this year). Yesterday afternoon we stood on a dirt road overlooking a valley of coffee named for the two grandmothers of the Vargas family who owns them. Hawks circled overhead in the late day sun that stretched across the trees and sky towards the Pacific. I made a portrait of Carlos Rodriguez, who is the director of Starbucks agronomy department, and have satisfied myself was ready to come home. Many, many thanks to all of my new amazing friends from the hike and farms.

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