Vice's Picture Perfect with Patrick Brown

I just picked up the latest issue of Vice, and while flipping through it I saw one of their ads - for one of their own productions. This ad is for one their online video series called Picture Perfect(presented by Incase), where Vice goes behind the scenes with their favorite documentary photographers. The images on the ad struck me, as well as the concept of documentary about photographers' work so I curiously went to Vice.com and looked for the newest episode featuring Patrick Brown, whose images were on the ad. In this 21 minute video Patrick Brown, based in Bankok, Thailand for the past 12 years talk about his perspective on photography as a craft and we see the last year of his 10 year long project in which he is documenting the illegal trade of endangered animals in Asia for a book to be called Trading to Extinction.

At his studio space Brown gives us his perspective,  saying that his photographs are different from him, they are records of what's been happening in front, they are not his constructions, and if he is able to give a voice for that situation then he has achieved his objective.
Brown confesses that photography was the best visa, taking him in and out of societies he otherwise wouldn't have been able to, he's been with homeless, drug addicts, and royalty.
With Brown who came up as a tool maker and loving to work with his hands, he doesn't just like taking photos as a craft, but the process of making a unique hand printed photograph in the darkroom. This is definitely a certain trait most film photographers carry, not just that they like grain or the distinct image quality of film -  Bex Finch and Ian Ruhter also bring this up in their work.

Brown admits himself as naive when he was younger about what documentary photography could do. He explains that when he came across a section in the newspaper about the only surgeon in Africa for 2.5 million people that was when Brown decided to sell his car and surfboard and spend 6 weeks to photograph how that situation was. When he Brown returned home to Australia he had an exhibition of the photos which raised a lot of money for the surgeon, Dr. Robert Weeden, and raised awareness in Australia. From that trip and the impact the photos generated, Brown realized you could actually make a difference with a photograph.

When Brown moved from Australia to Asia he met Burmese refugees who gave him access that he would have never been able to get to. That experience opened up his eyes to a world he didn't know existed to the extent that it did, a world that was the Burmese boarder - where smuggling happens.
His current project, Trading to Extinction, about the animal trade started back in 2002. Brown didn't know much about the animal trade, thinking it was just small critters, and in some way that's what the rest of the world thinks of it too, but 4 years ago made as much as some of the biggest electronic industries with 52 billion dollars. To place a physical boundary for Trading to Extinction, Brown's focus on the project was South East Asian, nearer to where he lives.

Brown shares stories and photos from some of his trips, like the first story he did on anti-poaching in Cambodia and Nepal with a team of anit-poachers who most of which were ex-poachers. Brown says that he has a lot of empathy for the poachers because they are just doing what their ancestors have done for hundreds of years, which is hunting, and they make little money for every animals and have little knowledge of where the animals go.

Switching gears, the video shows us Brown's recent trip and experience with the animal trade scene in Guangzhou, China - the economic powerhouse in the south west region of China. Due to the wealth in this area in China it has been a popular place for the animal trade. Brown was in Guangzhou 5 years ago for the 10 year long project and decided to come back to see how things are. Although Brown didn't believe that that trade decrease, he feels the traders have gotten smarter about hiding it because they are less confident since they know the issue of trade is beyond China and are more paranoid about people with cameras.

Slightly off the issue of trade Brown touches on him never asking for permission on taking photos, since he has only a small window of opportunity, people don't act the same when you start asking for permission, and even says that when people(the traders) don't want photos taken it's because they know they are doing something wrong. Brown describes the hardest thing to capture in a photo is an emotion so if he is able to get an angry person it adds another dimension to the body of work. I found this particularly interesting that Brown has this aggressive attitude for taking photos because he isn't concerning himself with being particularly polite, Brown's concern is the photo and the real story.

When Brown goes into a fish store the worker openly says that most of the fish were smuggled in through Hong Kong from different countries. Brown called the sellers "untouchables" because of the way they are not on the radar of criminal activity and not a priority of law enforcement. I also think a component to the traders' openness on details of animals may come from their wanting to impress potential buyers on what they have to offer.

Brown talks more about the different restaurants, shops, and tourist spots. The wildlife game for food he describes has a lot to do with the idea that you are what you eat, so predators like tigers and alligators are popular but also mostly all of the animal is used, whether for creams or soups. On zoos, Brown says the ones that are legitimate are great institutions and highly educational, but most in the region are not so legitimate. The zoos and circuses with rarer collections of animals attract more people and make a lot of money, but caged animals are just like prisoners - and especially when one institutions has about half the population White Tigers, one of the most rare species, there is something wrong.

Brown says that he is not an animal activist, that his work is more about exposing subcultures in society. It isn't about showcasing the animals, it's about what is happening to the animals. The cause is the subculture of smugglers and poachers. When I watched the video for the first time this really struck me as a younger photographer, and it ties back to what Brown says in the beginning about his objective being to give a voice to a situation.
Brown discusses his decision to shoot the project in black and white film. This project not being shot in color by Brown discouraged some publishers financially and also wouldn't have been able to be printed right away. Brown says his decision was simply based on his understanding black and white film photography. He feels black and white to be a more powerful tool, it allowing people to on a more subconscious level to get a sense of placement - their imagination can go further than if they were looking at a color photograph.

According to Brown the trade industry is driven by naivety and greed, naivety in the sense of lack of education in terms of health benefits some products from animals have and greed comes from the idea of delicacies that the animals are.
While in Guangzhou a man even goes up to Brown and his translator while the cameras are rolling to try to sell bile from a bear that came from Tibet (or Nepal), which had never happened before to Brown - like it was nothing. This showed Brown just how much traders would go just to sell small items for a lot of money (1000 dollars for two small items of bear bile).

This video focuses on Brown's documentary photography perspective in his project, but really I think it's his generally perspective. With the project coming to an end, he says "my book will soon be in people's hands and it will no longer be my book, it will be their book." I think Brown says that because he knows that the people who get the book will have and appreciation of Brown's work or have a sense of why the trade is an important issue. I personally have sub-interest in animal photography, but even more so as a photographer look up to the way Brown just wants to use his photography to give a voice and by the way he realized it can make a difference and applies it for  his documentary photography.

To see additional information on Trading to Extinction and to support check here.

Silver & Light, Wet Plate Photography by Ian Ruhter

This new video of Ian Ruhter's project with large scale wet plate photography was released a few weeks ago.
Although Ian grew up with the global transition from traditional to digital photography he has always stuck to his roots of his traditional work.
The video presents Ian's new project of wet plate silver photography, where he and his team have converted a large truck into a functional camera to produce wet plate images.
As Ian says, his project wasn't about making actual images or building the world's largest camera, but more about making sacrifices to hold on to the thing he loved the most. Wet Plate photography has given him the chance to use his hands, use raw materials to create his own film and one of a kind images.
The project was not just making everything largest but having to redesign everything of camera and film so it worked on a larger scale.
We see the difficulties Ian faced, it's not a case luck or of trial and error, but rather learning how to get produce and reproduce great images with the camera and wet plates.
I think what can be frustrating so much when it comes to non-digital photography, is making mistakes, because of course you want to get a great images, you don't expect to make mistakes and especially when you're so passionate about creating something and it does not work out right and it's even worse when you don't know why it didn't work(when there are many variables that come into play).
Ian's self realization that the only limitations are the ones he puts on himself continue drive him in producing these large scale wet plate images with his own funds and all his emotional investment.
What Ian has already done and will do with the camera is worth all the sacrifice and efforts he has put into this project.
Other photographers and groups do similar work as Ian's such as the 6 foot negatives for The Vanishing Cultures project by Dennis Manarchy and also Photobooth's tintype portraits we saw with Bex Finch's feature on American Hipster Presents.




Follow the project's twitter account here and more of Ian's work on his tumblr here.

Bex Finch Featured on American Hipster

On my ride to school today I was scrolling my instagram feed where I saw San Francisco-based photographer Bex Finche's post.
Bex, a film photographer, re-posted a photo from a few months ago taken on a rainy day with a person standing and holding their umbrella that flipped inside out from the wind, writing that this morning a video was released from that day.
That man holding his umbrella flipped is Paavo Steinkamp, host of American Hipster Presents, a new documentary - "Video Portraits of American Trendsetters"from 10 cities across the country.
Today's episode features Bex, her photography, iphoneography, where she talks specifically about instagram and her project documenting her father's alzheimer's disease.

Bex talks about instagram in a way I haven't looked at before. She says that she uses it as practice, composing her photos every time she uses it each day. For the most part I thought instagram as more of a  scenes to people's lives or behind the scenes of companies and brands. That's not the way Bex has used IG, and not why I was so attracted to her that I began following her some time last year. Bex uses instagram as if it were a quick platform for digital photos from her daily scenes, but being as serious as if it were photography-just with a phone. Since she is  heavy film photographer generally her only digital shots would be from her phone that go to her instagram. It makes perfect sense that as a film photographer she uses her phone as a tool for quicker results while still using her fundamentals of composition and light that she definitely uses in her film work. Which is why her instagram looks better than most.
Bex says she prefers using film because of the way it is more intentional, where she is thinking more about about composing things versus just shooting away with digital. She says that film cameras are reliable, give beautiful photos, have a forgiving quality, give different tones, have a more tangible component to them, and allow room to make work more convenient or better but require a little more effort and time.

She also discusses her father's alzheimer's and it's impact on her photography, which has hertrying to emulate him - his condition and state, bringing the idea of being disconnected from the environment, and having listless mood reflected in her work. The continuation of taking self-portraits and taking photos of her father as his condition continues parallel one another, and can be seen as she is trying to understand what is happening to him and trying to put herself in his position to understand what he is going through.



The way Bex talked about the different quality and nature of film reminds me of film photographer who are clear example of what she talks about, work from those who I especially enjoy and follow inlcude Jeff of 12fv and Sisilia Piring, The Sunday Huddle, Extra Bigger, and the blog Terroriss.

Bex's project on her dad is similar to other long term projects that photographers take on where they document people as they change and grow, but specifically observing them through the photos they take. Elizabeth Weinberg has done this with her younger sister and Irina Werning has done something similar with her Back to the Future projects where she take portraits of people in a way that compares themselves of their youth and as adults.

For more on Bex Finch see her website and her instagram @bexfinch.

Youtube Ride Channel, How to Skate Vids - Composition with Michael Burnnet, Part Two

In yesterday's released part two of the 'In Focus' series by Ride, Michael Burnett explains composition with more detail and specifics on skate photography.

He explains giving enough room in photos, and not cropping subjects to the minimum, which makes obstacles larger and adds more drama to the trick and rider.
Burnett also talks about using a shallow depth of field for portraits and other still shots, by using a large aperture like f2.8, which will have the subject in focus and the background out of focus. A large aperture is definitely used in various way and reasons in all photography, good element to experiment and play with.
Depending on available context, surrounding and what story you want to tell with your photos, he also explains that you should only fit what you need in your photos by filling up the frame, by getting close up to the skater, but if there is from to work with like spectators you may want to be farther away from the skate to include that as context to the photo.
Fish eye lenses are the most distinctly popular used with skate and other action sport photography for their distorted effects that can easily emphasize scale while still remaining close up to the skater and subjects.
Alternatively, Burnett shows how a longer lens can compress distances and also be effective.
He talks about something I've used before, but never thinking how much more effective it can be when applied to skate photography and similar motive objects, panning with mixed lighting. This is when you shoot with a secondary light source and have a slow shutter speed which results in a focused subject by your the flash and while you pan the background blurs.

What is great and absolutely helpful about these In Focus videos  is that Michael talks about these tips and shows past photos where they were applied, but then also at the end he does some live shooting with some of the pointers.
At the end of this video he is also encouraging to all photographers, even reaching out to beginners.

Youtube Ride Channel, How to Skate Vids - Composition with Michael Burnnet

I just came across this video from the Ride's Youtube Skate Channel.

In this part 1 video from a series of 2 called "In Focus" Thrasher Magazine's Michael Burnett explains composition for skateboard photography.

He points out several tips, from above and below angles, plain backgrounds, and geometric shapes and patterns.
Some of these elements can also be applied to street photography and inspire ideas for any other kind of photography.

6 foot Negatives for Vanishing Cultures

When I first skimmed NPR's first page on my phone about Dennis Manarchy making 6 foot negatives portraits I was beyond interested and impressed. To hear about a photographer using a camera that big to make that size film negatives sounds insane, especially considering the whole process of building the camera and developing that size negative. As digital becomes more widely used in print and online industries, it's a small amount of photographers that continue to use film and even few that push the limits and see what new things can be done. I remember last year when I came across the short video on Darren's Great Big Camera and was even blown away by that idea.  

Once I was able to go back to the NPR post and read more on why Manarchy was even doing anything with this scale of film I saw that this was more than just himself as a photographer, but a project to document historical Americans. For now, Manarchy is using a prototype 35 foot long camera, but is hoping to raise funds with his kickstarter page to build a polished product for the project Vanishing Cultures. Manarchy's project will take him around the states to photograph people and cultures of America's history.



With the help of his team, Manarchy is certainly taking up a great project that is socially significant in remembering these people and documenting their portraits like never before, as well as literally huge in the photography community, especially with the camera's 200th year anniversary coming up. I cannot wait to see more from this project and see how this will inspire other photographer with large format film and what other creative projects will come.