bill sullivan

If it's just a walk, or a drive in my car someplace, and not a real photoshoot, the one lens I carry depends on the conditions and terrain I expect to encounter, and what I intend to shoot. For big skies and narrow canyons, I like my 28mm lens (I use a film camera), especially if the terrain is not that interesting. On the other hand, I sometimes find myself tiring of shooting wide-angle pictures only. I don't like the way they put things so far away. I like a good big subject in a picture, a frame-filling picture, like the portraits on your Web site.

 

I have recently wished I had brought my 50mm lens when climbing some narrow mountain ridges. I was carrying a 100mm lens and was too close to the subject and couldn't back up without stepping off a cliff. I fell in love with my 50mm lens all over again a couple of years ago on a boat ride through the fiords of southeast Alaska. It seemed a perfect match for the tall mountains beside the water. It's a fast lens (f1.7) which was helpful under Alaska's gray skies.

 

I mostly carry a 100mm macro lens on my walks which are mostly in desert or desert mountain terrain. I might choose differently if walking someplace else, like in a forest full of tall trees. When walking by the seashore, I carry a 200mm lens with good glass and a 100-300mm zoom (not as good) for shooting up and down the coast and also for portraits of birds and sea lions.

 

Thinking about it, I probably could or even should carry a zoom lens, manufactured by my camera's manufacturer, and covering the wide angle to short or medium telephoto ranges, up to 100mm or 135mm. I might also look for something from a reputable third party. I moved from zoom lenses to primes several years ago, because of quality, but I believe that zoom lenses as a category have made advancements since then.

When I first moved to San Diego 35 years ago, I was lucky enough to pick up a small paperback called Introduction to the Natural History of Southern California by Edmund C. Jaeger and Arthur C. Smith. It was published in 1966 by the University of California Press, but unfortunately it is no longer in print. I still keep my copy on a shelf by my desk and I continue to refer to it. Even if you can't find one in a bookstore, it's worth trying to buy second hand or checking out of a library. You might also visit the UC Press Web site and look for categories that match your interests.

 

If you are interested in the mountains (our tallest is 6,533') you might look for Nature Guide to the Mountains of Southern California by Bill Havert and Gary Gray. It too seems to be out of print, but Google it anyway.

 

For the desert, look for the Anza-Borrego Desert Region by Lowell and Diana Lindsay. It is published by Wilderness Press and you should check their Web site for other titles. The Lindsay book is available in the bookstores of institutions like the Anza-Borrego Desert Natural History Association and the San Diego Natural History Association (more sites to check) and in stores for the outdoor-minded such as REI and Adventure-16.

 

I don't have any books about the coast, but a good place to look would be http://aquarium.ucsd.edu/ which is the Birch Aquarium of Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a branch of the University of California at San Diego in La Jolla. You can click your way to their bookstore.

 

I don't know about secret areas for mostly landscape photography. It's kind of hard to keep secrets around here, but we do have 4,262 square miles in the county and a lot more territory in the rest of California and more yet down in Baja California. I would think it would be worth your while to find books (or Web material) on the geology of this area. If you are going to do landscapes, you might find it helpful to know how the land is being formed. A favorite title is The Rise and Fall of San Diego: 150 Million Years of History Recorded in Sedimentary Rocks, by Patrick L. Abbott. The publisher is Sunbelt Publications, http://www.sunbeltpub.com/. Sunbelt has other titles that should interest you as well.

Other common names for it are Norfolk Island Pine and Star Pine. I am surprised you found it so far north. Its natural habitat is in the subtropic or tropic latitudes.

For the Point Reyes National Seashore, you might go to Amazon.com and pick up a copy of Point Reyes Seashore: A Hiking and Nature Guide, by Don and Kay Martin. It's only 8 bucks. Of particular interest is appendix A1 with 3 best foggy day trails, 3 best beach trails, 3 best flora trails, 3 best birding areas, 3 best view trails, 3 best creeks and waterfall trails, 3 best wildflower trails, and 3 best beginner trails. Appendix A2 recommends trails for each season. It's got 22 appendixes in all, and 37 hikes with maps.

 

Be careful of the poison oak, and remember the sun rises over the hills to the east and sinks over the ocean to the west. This is apparently a concept that mystifies certain easterners when they come here-).

One of my favorite California towns. It depends on what you want to photograph. You've got the coast to the west, the redwoods to the north, the Wine Country to the east, and San Francisco to the south. You will be in Sonoma County just south of the Russian River. You could drive the Russian River road to the coast and then go south to Marin County. Marin, where Point Reyes National Seashore is, is the next county south. (Get a copy of Rowell's Bay Area Wild if you need ideas). Muir Woods, Mount Tamalpais, and the San Andreas Fault are down there too. Or, if you were inclined, you could drive north on US101 to the redwoods. In Mendocino County, the coastal communities are Mendocino and Ft. Bragg which you could get to via state route 128 out of Cloverdale and which also takes you through the smallish Anderson Valley wine country (Navarro, Husch). You might enjoy spending a night at the Point Arena Lighthouse, which has a Web site. Or, you might enjoy going up US 101 to Willits and taking the Skunk Railroad to the coast, or you could continue north into Humboldt County where there are some remote and isolated old roads to the coast and remote communities like Shelter Cove, which you get to by driving from Humboldt Redwoods State Park north of Garberville (the Benbow Inn is in Garberville -- nice place to stay). US101 runs through Humboldt Redwoods State Park, but they have also retained the old two-lane blacktop and that is what you probably should take for photography. Get a book or a brochure. There are a number of groves where you can park and walk into the woods. Bring a tripod. It's dark in some spots. Coastal California by John Doerper might be helpful to you. Why don't you see if you can take an extra week?

Two things. First, your terminology, starting with the word "new." Magazines with art are hardly new, depending on how you define art (but what about people like Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans back in the Depression?) Then "mainstream." How do you yourself define mainstream? Mainstream to me is something involving a lot of people, like the audiences for Seinfeld or the Super Bowl. Magazines today that I think of are mostly for special interests, not the mainstream.

 

Next, rather than talk about magazines generally, I think your paper would be a lot sharper if you talked about fields such as magazines publishing sports photography, magazines publishing fashion photography, etcetera and so forth. I think you should cite the circulation figures for the leading magazines in each field, and I think you should find a way to compare them to comparable television audience numbers. I suspect, for example, that more people watch Queer Eye for the Straight Guy than look at GQ, and I am sure more people watch sporting events on television than read Sports Illustrated. It's possible that my city's sports talk radio station has better numbers locally than Sports Illustrated.

 

Somewhere in there you may find that most magazines aren't mainstream but special interest. Forty or 50 years ago, there were mainstream magazines like Life, Look, and the Saturday Evening Post, with circulations in the 6 ot 8 million range. But then television came along and that was that.

 

If I was to look for the new "mainstream" art galleries were, I would look at television (not least, MTV), not to mention the movies. I just don't see the mainstream tide flowing toward anyplace else, and certainly not to magazines. Have you got numbers that prove anything else?

Nathaniel,

 

Thanks for the good report. Glad the trip was a success.

Did you have a specific question, or are you just expressing your thoughts? If it's the latter and you are seeking feedback, yes, I would tend to agree. A photograph for a gallery wall can have the impact of size, although a group of framed snapshot-size phots can have impact, too. I go to a gallery expecting to look into the picture in some way, looking for the photographer's message perhaps, applying my own thoughts perhaps. In a book (or a Web site, which you don't mention) the photograph can (it doesn't have to but it can) take on the role of supporting the text and making it clear. In a gallery, a picture may inspire a thousand thoughts, but when supporting text it can clarify a thousand words. I suspect Susan Sontag may have touched on this but I'm not sure.

You wrote: "Guess I am getting a bit frustrated feeling I do not have enough creative talent. My feelings are that many of the photos here on photo.net are better than what I see on the artphotogallery website. I guess I like and can appreciate abstract and landscape photos but fine art hurts my brain."

 

I wouldn't feel bad. There are a lot of us who like and can appreciate abstract and landscape photos but whose brains are hurt by what is passes for fine art.

 

I also wouldn't feel bad because you think you lack creative talent. Maybe it's just enough to take pictures that do things like show stuff to people, that explain or describe things, that provide something to remember, that give warm feelings to yourself or people you know. Look for the good and useful things you can do with your camera. Let the "creative" part take care of itself and come naturally, as it likely will.

 

Find your center. Find what you can do. Climb the tree from the bottom, not the top.

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Speaking from my own hard-headedness and resistance to the rules, when I take pictures I want to be free. I am a Liberal Arts person. To be liberal means to be free. I want to be unstructured and unformatted. I don't want to live under a dictator. I don't want to be put into a straight-jacket. I just want to take my pictures, and you can love them or leave them. People likely to buy pictures, like art directors, editors and gallery owners, make me sick when they enforce "the rules," and especially when they only know one rule and insist that it be followed. Got it? The world already has enough rules, as far as I am concerned.

 

That's one attitude, the creative one if you will. When I calm down a bit and let my hard-headedness mellow a little, I sometimes lapse into commercial mode, thinking that sales or pleasing an audience may be important. Here is where I often find the rules or guidelines valuable. Sometimes I go with them, and sometimes I don't.

 

One exercise I would suggest for your readers is that they take a picture more than once. Let the first shot be of the scene as it grabbed and inspired them. Suggest that they take follow-up shots where they are more careful about rules or guidelines, even returning to the scene when the light is different, or when there is a different sky (if that's applicable). Tell them to wait a week or two, and then go back to their pictures and make up their own minds. Be liberal. Let them be free. Give them the option to make the choice, not on site on the spur of the moment, but later when they can regard their work with the same cool eyes that their audiences and potential buyers will. That is, if they care about audiences and potential buyers.

 

Once upon a time, an old British writer named Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch gave a lecture about writing. He said: "Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it -- whole-heartedly -- and delete it before sending your manuscripts to press. Murder your darlings."

 

I suspect that would be good advice for a lot of photographers as well.

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Dear Dark Matter:

 

Wait a minute. Hold everything. In a PS to your original message you mention John Ganis. I went to the John Ganis Web site. That changes everything. John Ganis doesn't just take photographs. He makes statements. I have seen a lot of work in this vein at the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego. I am sorry I can't remember the names of photographers. You might take your question (an email or a phone call) to the museum which is known as MOPA. The director is Arthur Ollman who is a pretty good photographer in his own right. If you can't get through to Ollman himself, ask to talk to the bookstore. Tell them you are interested in photographers whose works speaks about the desecration of the environment. I am sure someone there will be able to help you. Good luck.

One book that I have treasured for a number of years is The Expressionist Landscape: A Master Photographer's Approach, by Yuan Li. It was published by Amphoto Books in 1989 and unfortunately may be hard to find.

 

Another secret. Every year I buy myself an engagement calendar with nature photographs. I guess that isn't 100 percent landscape photography, but you get the idea. The Sierra Club has one. Kodak used to have one that I liked a lot. For the last couple of years I have bought the Audubon Engagement Calendar. Every week I turn the page to a nice new photograph. It may or may not be "the best" but I appreciate having them around.

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For help with identifying flowers, I would recommend befriending a knowledgeable working botanist. Second best is to collect books (or brochures) for your area of interest, usually by shopping at park (state and national) bookstores and museums of natural history. Unfortunately, the while the Web can be a good source you really have to hope that what you find is reliable information.

 

I checked you out on the Web and I gather you must live in San Diego County in California. I would recommend you get in touch with the San Diego Museum of Natural History and learn about the Plant Atlas parabotanist program. See http://www.sdnhm.org/plantatlas/index.html or http://www.sdplantatlas.org. Contact Jeannie Gregory or Mary Ann Hawke. I am in this program. It's taught me a lot.

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Check that. Go to http://www.ebparks.org and click Parks& Trails, then look for Tilden. Lots of other stuff, too.

I found a list of Berkeley city parks and marina facilities at http://www.ci.berkeley.ca.us/parks/. My personal favorite as a child growing up in Berkeley was Live Oak Park.

 

Another place that may appeal to you is John Tilden Regional Park. Visit http://www.ebparks.org/parks/tilden.htm.

As to your question about the originality of most nature photography, I can answer that in a couple of ways. One is that if I send a photo to the Photo Critique Forum and it gets only average marks for originality, I don't let it bother me. If I get a couple of ticks above average, I am very happy. (I also look at the individual grades and throw out any 2s or 3s, thinking they probably just came from sarcastic fools anyway.) Bottom line is I don't expect much except that it confirms my belief that I can take above-average but not necessarily brilliant pictures. I can live with that. I don't need to be brilliant.

 

My other thought on originality is that I try to avoid some of the famous cliche places of the world (I haven't revisited Yosemite in years). My favorite place is the Sonoran desert in Southern California. It isn't the ugliest desert, but it isn't the prettiest either. If I get low marks for a photo from here, I tell myself it's a hard sell and lots of people probably just don't understand. Frankly, I like the challenge of photographing a place that many people might not consider photogenic.

 

As for avoiding cliches, let me put it this way. I don't think a person should go into the field and not take a picture because he or she thinks it will be a cliche. Take the picture. Capture the beauty. Make it the best picture you can. Take it as a challenge. Your skills may just carry you through.

Just by way of perspective, I have been taking photographs for over 60 years. In that time, I have gone on exactly one group exercise. I liked it. It was nature-oriented. Mostly I liked it because I had previously admired the work of one of the photographers in the group, and I learned from watching him crawl around to set up his pictures. There were a couple of wildlife photographers I suppose you would call them with big glass lenses. They found themselves a good place to sit and point their tripodded lenses where they thought birds would land, and I was amused by the fact that they didn't look for pictures but waited for the pictures to come to them. I guess that taught me something too. But that once was enough. I might do it again if I could go out with someone whose work I admired. Otherwise, I don't think so. I am a solo-shooting kind of guy, except maybe on the times when I can get my wife out with me. She has a good eye for stuff, and she knows how to move slowly and not be a nuisance, and I appreciate that about her. The karma is terrific.

You have to distinguish between a backpack and a photoshoot and Nathaniel, you have made it clear that this is a backpack and not a photoshoot. You are wisely trying to limit your photo gear to what you have and what you know and what you can afford to carry. People have suggested a p&s camera. What I don't like about this idea is that it would mean learning a new instrument. Those puppies have learning curves! You also have to realize that art may suffer on a backpack. For me at least, part of the "art" of nature photography is that I can take my time and think. I enjoy spontaneity, but I love to think. On a photoshoot, if I come across a landscape that I want to photograph and I don't care for the light, I can wait an hour or a day for the light to be right. I can wait for the wind to stop blowing on a fragile flower. On a fast-moving backpack, I can only photograph what I come upon, if I have my camera ready at that moment. As a result, I may get a lot of record shots or snapshots. But then again, I may also luck out and come across some real keepers. It sounds to me like you are approaching this project wisely, Nathaniel. I hope for the best for you.

Nathaniel, I should have made one of those happy face symbols. I was just trying to pull your chain a little, just trying to keep this conversation on the light side, just trying to let you know that at least somebody on this forum respects what you are doing. I don't think you will be sorry to have the 50mm with you. And do give some thoughts to close-up work, will you? Ask at your camera store about close-up filters, possibly a used set. If you have a feeling for belly flowers, insects, leaves, and raindrops, you may just like to play around with them. Close-up filters are not the ultimate tool for close-up photos, but they are a nice place to start, and maybe someday you will think about picking up a macro lens. But that will be for another walk. --Bill S.