CHRIS JORDAN

Chris Jordan (www.chrisjordan.com), found his future in a pile of garbage.

Jordan, now 44 and living in Seattle, is a former attorney who’s loved photography since early in law school. But he didn’t work up the courage to pursue it full-time until he faced the prospect of marking a major birthday sitting in a corporate law office.

“As I approached 40, a new fear surfaced — the fear of not having lived my life,” he says.

So he quit his job and set out as a photographer, bringing with him a nest egg he hoped would last two years to get established as an artist. He was interested in beautiful images, working with an 8×10 view camera and developing his own theory of color aesthetics.

Then one day Jordan photographed a garbage heap. He was attracted to the colors, finding them an unlikely demonstration of his theories. He made a huge print, hung it in his studio and invited a couple of photographer friends over to see it. The friends “started talking about consumerism,” he recalls. “It was annoying to me because I wanted to talk about my color theory.”

Eventually, though, the idea of the waste of consumer society — the glut of trash, electronics, packaging and the rest discarded daily — broke through. Jordan was fascinated, and horrified. The discovery “was like waking up from The Matrix. I discovered this really important issue. It’s just this shock.”

And his future course of photography was set.

Jordan still strived for beauty, but now it was as a means, not an end. He studied photographers such as Richard Misrach, whose beautiful photos depict the often-ugly effects of humans on the landscape, showing the impact of practice-bombing in the desert or waste dumped into the Mississippi River. Jordan thought the same concept would apply to consumer waste. “Beauty can be a very important tool for drawing the viewer into the conversation,” he says.

Shooting on location (in later photos, in the studio), Jordan would create a pretty image of, say, vast numbers of discarded cell phones, giving them a pretty swirl to evoke a galaxy.

But, concerned that his photos were so attractive that people would ignore the message, Jordan set out to create “the ugliest photo I could ever make.” His subject? Exactly 125,000 cigarette butts, the number discarded around the world every second. He made the image by photographing 5,000 cigarettes over and over again, combining the digital images and printing the result at a huge 5×10 feet. Viewed up close, the fine detail can be disgusting, says Jordan. “You can see the lipstick on a butt.”

Still, when these less-pretty images were first shown in New York and elsewhere, “it turns out that they were by far the most popular images in the series,” he adds.

For Jordan that was a revelation. He plans to keep working along similar lines, shooting the discards of the consumer world and bringing life to statistics — for example, the 426,000 cell phones discarded in the U.S. daily — that might otherwise be too dry to have an impact.

While these images may be beautiful, they won’t be pretty, he says. “My idea of what is beauty has changed a lot.”

CHARLES RUSHTON

Charles Rushton (www.crushton.com), 65, remembers that as a kid in Rochester, MN, in the 1950s, a friend told him something he’d just read in Popular Photography: “‘This guy said there’re enough photographs within a mile of your house to last you a lifetime. What do you think of that?’ I said something like, ‘I don’t think he lives in Rochester.'”

But the idea stuck with him. Now enjoying a second career as an adjunct instructor of digital photography in Norman, OK, Rushton takes his Nikon D80 and an 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 Nikkor lens out on walks, often around the lake near his home.

Sometimes he has a goal when he sets out, but that’s not really important. “I photograph anything that catches my eye — I don’t plan things. Usually I end up photographing something other than what I went out to photograph,” he says. “You need some reason to get out, but once you get out there, you need to remain open to whatever comes your way.”

One day by the lake, Rushton noticed submerged trash, some of it waste from nearby home construction. He took some photos and thought about them. “The little light bulb went off in my head, and I thought, I’m going to do my own personal recycling program by photographing trash and turning it into beauty.”

Waste is a surprising subject for someone who once studied with Arnold Newman and who recently had a book of black-and-white portraits published by a museum.

Rushton once shot a flattened juice can in the snow, thinking it would look great. But later, working with the image on his computer, he found it less interesting. Better results came from an empty roof-shingles bag he saw in the lake. Its watery twists and turns provided striking photos on two successive days. “One day it was a nightmare head, and on another day it was an interesting little man.”

For him, water and ice yield the best effects. “I particularly like the effect of water on trash,” he says. “I’m not that interested in trash itself — I’m interested in how nature transforms it. It’s the action of the water twisting it and shaping it, and the sun fading things. These are the things that make the pictures interesting, I think.”

Once he captures the image, Rushton makes his own contribution to transforming the materials. He shoots in RAW so that he can make dramatic changes to the white balance, contrast, and color saturation.

Where does he find his subjects? In addition to the lake, he likes “the ditch near my house” and “my favorite ditch,” near a mobile-home park. He also recalls the long-ago comment in Popular Photography about there being so much to shoot so close to home.

“I’ve thought about that my whole life, on and off,” Rushton says. “I realized eventually that what it spoke to is the concept of what’s a legitimate subject of a photograph. Once you’ve got over the stereotyped notions of what’s worthy of being photographed, all of a sudden this whole world of images opens up to you.”

CARIN INGALSBE

Carin Ingalsbe (www.cariningalsbe.com) scours the world’s opera, theater, and ballet companies — for dirty laundry. Specifically, old costumes that are torn and stained. Some are centuries old, even royal hand-me-downs. Others have seen decades of use, since a new tutu can cost $10,000. She photographs them, creating large and stunning prints.

When Ingalsbe, 47, arranges to visit a costume archive, she explains what she wants, but it never sinks in. “When I get there, they always have all the perfect dresses out, and I can never work with them,” she says.

So she looks around until she sees an old garment in a plastic bag or dusty box, then asks to shoot it, often to the horror of the wardrobe staff. “The patina and the grunge is a singular road that can only be traveled once,” she says. It records “every pair of hands that has ever touched it. That is a really priceless thing.”

Five years ago, Ingalsbe had no interest in ballet, theater, or costumes. But she had a big car and junk-dealer friends who needed help hauling 200 gowns owned by a retired cabaret singer. She documented them and was surprised by the beauty of her photos.

Shortly after, she read that the New York City Ballet had problems maintaining its costume collection. So she offered to shoot the archive and sell prints, with a portion of the proceeds going to the ballet. The gambit worked: She was even allowed to take two pieces designed by painter Marc Chagall to her studio in Lexington, MA, and her prints were shown in New York’s Lincoln Center.

Since then, she has traveled to Paris, where she found costumes stored in a large stone building “that looks like a barn.” In Stockholm, where she had to fight off pigeons coming through the window she was using as her main light source, garments were arranged in large, acid-free boxes in a way that reminded her of human bodies.

Ingalsbe often stitches together multiple macro shots in Adobe Photoshop to create her big prints. She also uses the software to remove what she calls the “biomatter” in old costumes. But she’s no photo technician — she couldn’t name the camera she used without looking. (It’s a Nikon D80, with which she shoots JPEGs.) She explains she doesn’t want “to get so enamored with the technical stuff that I forget what I’m looking at.”

Her new subject? Gloves. Often made for heavy use (such as boxing or gardening), they get worn out in a way she finds compelling. But buying on eBay presents a typical problem, with a twist: She can’t see the item in detail until it arrives by mail. “A lot of times what I get is not beat up enough, so I can’t use it,” she says. “I actually threw away a bunch of baby shoes yesterday. They weren’t mucked up enough.”

The post Ugly Made Beautiful appeared first on Popular Photography.

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It can be a pretty decent hobby and a reasonably rewarding career. But photography has a remarkable ability to be more than that — to be a force that moves people.

The history of photography from its earliest days is filled with photographers who have used that power to spark reform in urban slums or to save endangered creatures and their habitats. Think of Jacob Riis, whose 1890 book, How the Other Half Lives, led to the closure of police-run poorhouses in New York City. Or William Henry Jackson, whose pioneering landscape photographs helped spark the creation of the world’s first national park, Yellowstone, in 1872.

This tradition is stronger than ever today. We talked with three photographers who take very different kinds of pictures and champion very different causes. What they have in common: an ability to use their cameras to heal the world. Their work and stories are on the pages that follow. And for some ideas about what you can do, turn to page 110.

Stephen Wilkes
stephenwilkes.com

Like many Americans, photographer Stephen Wilkes was riveted to the news in August 2005 as the disaster of Hurricane Katrina unfolded. But unlike many people, he continued to track developments in the months afterward. “I never stopped following the story,” says Wilkes, whose photos often make the covers of major news magazines. “And at the six-month point, when general media had moved on to the next crisis, that’s when I felt like it was a really good time to go down” to the Gulf Coast.

It was an appropriate place for Westport, CT-based Wilkes, who’s “drawn to places that have been forgotten.” He’s probably best known for his five-year project photographing the abandoned hospital wards of Ellis Island. His photos helped lead Congress to appropriate $6.5 million to preserve the buildings.

So last March, Wilkes headed for New Orleans. At a town meeting of survivors — those who remained — he found something unexpected: “There was a thread throughout all the people I met, one of hope,” he says. “They had an unflinching sense of hope that they could rebuild their lives against all odds. I decided to take portraits of these people in the context of their homes and of what they were experiencing.”

He spent the rest of that five-day trip with an assistant in an SUV packed with photo gear, crisscrossing New Orleans’ devastated Lower 9th Ward and Holy Cross neighborhood. He met people who were surrounded by ruin but smiled at what had been spared.

By the time he returned in July, he had used photos from the first excursion to win backing and an exhibit from the World Monuments Fund. That group also suggested he include Bay St. Louis in Mississippi, where Katrina’s storm surge had wiped out all but six of 500 waterside homes.

On both trips, he listened to the survivors; their stories often led to the photos. Melanie Mitchell, in Bay St. Louis, told of coming back to a home obliterated except for its fireplace and chimney. But she looked up and rejoiced — because the storm had left her wedding gown draped in a neighbor’s tree. Wilkes photographed Mitchell in the remains of her home, holding the dress.

By fall the exhibition was up at the World Monuments Fund in New York, with hopes for it to travel and be posted on the web. Marty Hylton, WMF’s initiatives manager, says visitors call Wilkes’ work “compelling” and may be moved to action.

Wilkes believes his photos will build support for restoring and rebuilding. And there’s another message, put forth by one of his subjects, Mark Houan: “In every disaster there’s a bit of grace, if you can find it.”

silvershadowimages.com

Sometimes the call to action comes over the phone. For Shannon Eckstein, a Canadian photographer who’s currently based in Toronto, the voice on the phone was a friend asking her to volunteer to shoot portraits at a gala benefit for a nonprofit organization.

Eckstein resisted, but the friend pressed her. She dutifully photographed at the benefit for Operation Rainbow Canada, whose medical teams provide free surgery and health care for children in developing countries born with cleft lips and palates.

She wasn’t thinking of a long-term relationship. But as Eckstein learned about the group and ran into its founder, Dr. Kimit Rai, a local plastic surgeon, repeatedly at various events, she started thinking about her own work. Her business, photographing children and producing high-quality black-and-white prints, was successful and rewarding, but she wanted to go beyond that. “I just felt like I needed to do more with [photography],” she says.

So Eckstein approached ORC with a proposition: She would go on one of their missions to photograph and use the images to publicize their work. “They hadn’t received a lot of media attention, and I just knew I could handle the job,” says Eckstein. “It involved children, in a third-world country in which I had a lot of experience living and traveling. And it was a story that I thought hadn’t been told, and needed to be told, but in a gentle way.”

The organization agreed. To pay her way, Eckstein raised money through a benefit party of her own. Soon she was off on the multiweek trip to a border town in northern India with 24 other members of Operation Rainbow. Getting there took three days.

Families from all over the region brought their children, and Eckstein came prepared. She had a ready smile, lots of time, and child-friendly goodies like stickers and bubble-blowing materials. Unlike the nurses, who might only see the kids in pre-op or post-op areas, she could follow the kids and their families through the whole process, getting to know them. Eventually the nurses realized they could call for their photographer to help settle a nervous child.

The trip, she says, “exceeded every expectation I had. The ORC team was incredible to work with. Every day they humbled me because of their incredible spirit, sense of team, and dedication to what they were doing.”

Two of Eckstein’s prints were accepted into an Australian photo competition, Women’s Eye on Peace, and she’s hoping to do similar work for other organizations. “I just feel like I need to do something a little more socially conscious,” she says. “I don’t have a lot of money and I don’t know what else to do. Photography is the only thing I have to offer.”

robertglennketchum.com

“I thank God for every hour, minute, second I’ve ever spent in Alaska,” says photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum. “It’s like nothing else on the planet. I’m out there floating rivers, and backpacking, and kayaking, and doing amazing things in amazing places.”

But unlike many other adventurers, Los Angeles-based Ketchum has a special connection with wild places: He’s played a critical role in preserving them. In December 1986, Aperture published Ketchum’s book, The Tongass: Alaska’s Vanishing Rain Forest. It marked the start of an intense three-year lobbying effort that included giving a copy to every member of Congress and led to the signing of the Tongass Timber Reform Act in 1990. The bill, which had been stalled for years, passed with a 99-0 Senate vote, preserving more than a million acres of old-growth forest and creating five new wilderness areas.

Ketchum’s book, which he co-wrote with his first wife, Carey, “did the advocacy job for us,” says environmentalist Steven Kallick. He remembers how he and his colleagues would fill their backpacks or suitcases with copies when they came to Washington. “It was like bringing ammunition to the field.”

Recently named by Audubon as one of 100 people “who shaped the environmental movement of the 20th century,” Ketchum had studied photography and initially worked as a curator. An outdoorsman, he shot several nature projects and curated a photo exhibit for the National Park Foundation. But he wanted a way to combine his photographic skills with his strong views about the environment. He says, “What I really aspired to do was find a way to make them serve each other.”

He found the way with a commission to shoot the Hudson River. “I seized that as an opportunity to view it just not as some sort of pretty guide book, but as a commentary about the 400-year history of the river,” Ketchum says. “And to photograph industrial sites and blue-collar towns and all that other stuff as inclusively as the beautiful, restored forests and the still-existent wetlands.”

The project, which resulted in a book and exhibit, had a success he didn’t expect: A ferry landing-turned-industrial-dump was restored to a lovely park because of one of his prints.

Now Ketchum is focused on Bristol Bay southwest Alaska, where he says a gold mine threatens the nation’s last great wild salmon fishery. He’s also involved in the International League of Conservation Photographers, top photographers who work with leading scientific groups to explore the natural world.

“There are so many ways to use [photography], and so many interesting ways to make statements with it,” he says, “that there can’t be enough concerned people responding.”

Some photographers have the vision to see a problem in society or the environment and focus on it, creating a body of work that brings major reform. But most photographers looking to make a difference in the world will find there’s already a nonprofit group, whether a charity or nongovernmental organization (NGO), in their area of interest. Working with an existing nonprofit may be the best way to go.

Many groups raise money through print auctions and sales, or through auctions of services such as family portraits. Donating your photographs this way translates directly into cash for charities.

Another way to help: Volunteer as a photographer. From small neighborhood groups to big international ones, most nonprofits need photos for everything from newsletters to advertising to thank-you gifts. Not every project requires a huge commitment.

Amnon Gutman, a freelance photojournalist based in Israel, takes time off from work to shoot in places like Mozambique and Uganda for nonprofits. For instance, the Israeli Medical Association sent him to Kampala, the capital of Uganda, to document work being done there by Israeli doctors. In Kampala, an American student volunteer at one of the main hospitals told him about a team of social workers who go to the slums to track former hospital patients who need follow-up care. He spent two weeks with the team, photographing daily life in the slums in order to call attention to the plight of Uganda’s poor, many of whom are suffering from AIDS and tuberculosis.

“My main purpose was to be able to make things happen with my pictures,” Gutman says, “meaning that even if one person donated money to the organization and by that saved one life, then it was worth it.”

How to connect? It can be as easy as a phone call. That’s how James Hall, a photographer from Fairfax, CA, began to set up what turned into a two-and-a-half-month trip working for a variety of NGOs in Cambodia several years ago. “It totally launched my career,” says Hall.

His website, 88zero.com, links to an article he wrote for Transitions Abroad on how to volunteer as a photographer for an NGO overseas. He recommends starting your search for an organization with a visit to interaction.org, the website of InterAction, the American Counsel for Voluntary International Action.

But if it can be easy to connect, there are some practical considerations to look into first.

One is money. Are you going to donate your time, or do you expect financial help? It might seem a no-brainer if you’re looking to volunteer for free, but some photographers argue that your photos will get more attention in the organization and be put to better use if it costs the nonprofit something to get them.

If you’d like the group to cover expenses, you’ll need to produce an accurate estimate of just what those expenses will be. If you cover everything, your expenses probably will be tax-deductible, but you won’t be able to take a deduction for your time and services.

Working with a nonprofit can be incredibly rewarding. After all, how often do you get a chance to do something you love and leave the world a little bit better place at the same time? In the end, you might change not just the world but yourself.

The post Saving the World…One Photo at a Time appeared first on Popular Photography.

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For young photographer Ralph Clevenger it was one of those mountaintop moments-literally. As a shooter breaking into stock photography, he’d gone with his mentor, photographer Craig Aurness, to a high point above the Santa Ynez Valley to get an aerial perspective.

As Clevenger surveyed the scene below him, Aurness asked him, “What’s the money shot?”-the image that would make the whole trek worthwhile.

Clevenger looked around. He had to admit he had no idea.

“Turn around,” his teacher suggested.

Clevenger did so, and he found himself staring in wonder at the twisting path of the dirt road they had taken up to reach their high vantage point. That was the money shot.

Thinking back today-many years and photos later-on that and other lessons he learned from the late National Geographic shooter, Clevenger, who now teaches photography himself, says Aurness “pretty much taught me what I needed to know in order to be successful” as a stock photographer.

Nothing teaches like experience-although, of course, magazines and books can help a lot. But rare is the photographer whose career has not been touched at some point by a gifted teacher.

Photographers have an unusual advantage when it comes to finding instruction. An amateur golfer or business student probably won’t come any closer to a world-class player or a Fortune 500 CEO than the autograph line. But in photography, the very best in the business often give workshops and teach classes open to just about everyone.

Also, those photographers who’ve chosen to teach full-time often still shoot professionally on the side, meaning their experience comes from a lot more than just the classroom. In photography, those who “can do” often teach as well.

Here’s a look at three different teachers of photography. Hailing from different parts of the country and emphasizing different aspects of shooting, all of them offer their students insights needed to push the limits of their art. And they share their tips on the pages that follow.

When Ralph Clevenger’s students step into his classroom at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Barbara, CA to learn nature photography, it doesn’t really matter just what they want to shoot-landscapes, animals, plants, bugs, even people. Their teacher can do it all.

Clevenger remembers how he arrived at the school as a student in 1976, thinking only of learning underwater photography. Nearly three years of study changed that. “The whole outdoors subject matter opened up,” he says. “I was really enlightened about the possibilities.”

A look through Clevenger’s photography shows how true that is. Snakes coil right next to images of the Big Sur coastline. Bikini-clad surfers stride down the beach in one frame, while bees zoom among the flowers in another. An iceberg image shows far more than just the tip. In fact, he doesn’t really draw much distinction between a flower shot and a landscape. “It’s all photography,” he says. “It’s only what you put in front of it [the camera] that changes.”

Clevenger comes by his interest in the outdoors naturally. His father is a lifelong outdoorsman, one who first took his seven-year-old son diving off the coast of North Africa while working in the oil industry there. The younger Clevenger became a diver and biologist for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, CA. Later, after starting his photography career, he worked for renowned nature shooter George Lepp, learning both the business and artistic sides of photography.

So what do Clevenger’s students find in his classes or in the workshops he gives around the world? Though he’s been teaching since 1983, he says he feels he’s in the classroom primarily as a working professional who’s willing to share his knowledge and experiences. “I’m not going to teach you anything,” he says. “I’m just going to provide the opportunity to learn”-an opportunity that he says mainly comes through shooting.

|| |—| | Ralph Clevenger www.ralphclevenger.com | That doesn’t mean he has nothing to offer students beyond a camera and an assignment. Trying to “motivate them by example,” he asks them to study others’ photos and even paintings to develop an eye. In fact, he’s an advocate of taking an Ansel Adams book and going through it-upside down. The reason: “To learn that strong composition doesn’t depend on the subject matter.” (In other words, Adams could have been photographing nudes or buildings; the photos would have been powerful no matter what.)

Clevenger has advice to offer for almost every kind of nature photography. Want to shoot flowers? “Finding a pretty flower is half the battle,” he says. How about animals? “It’s behavior” that makes the photo.

Most of all, he talks about not shooting: “Most great nature photography has to do with patience,” whether waiting for the right light or watching for a snoozing creature to do something interesting.

Clevenger teaches workshops that are open to everyone, but the Brooks Institute is targeted at people who want to earn a living from photography, and he takes pride from helping students do just that. “There’s a lot of satisfaction from seeing a student who goes on to be successful,” he says. “It’s certainly great to know that you had an impact on somebody’s life.”

Nature How-To TipsChange POV. Shooting flora? Try swapping the macro lens for a wide angle, like a 20mm or 14mm. “It’s a whole different way of looking at flowers,” Clevenger says.Capture motion. When photographing animals, “look for behavior. You want your subject doing something besides just sitting there, even if it’s just a yawn.”Get the lay of the land. In landscapes, his rule of thumb: “If it has an interesting foreground, you need to think wide angle. If it has an interesting background, it’s telephoto.”Stay a spell. Don’t shoot on one-night trips, which don’t leave enough time in one setting. “It should be two to three nights minimum” in each place.Experiment. Try different ways of working. “I was doing a work-shop in Alaska with this guy who had more equipment than I did, but he’d never shot a close-up-only animals, and at a distance.” Be open to other possibilities.Sit tight. Above all, nature shooters need patience. Good photos come to those who wait!

One of Lauren Shaw’s photography students at Emerson College in Boston last year chose her fellow students as subjects, and the images she showed were pretty good. Shaw says the young woman did a marvelous job of removing herself from the scene, as if she were a “camera on a table” at the gatherings she’d photographed.

But how to push the work further? Shaw, who’s been teaching photography at Emerson for 34 years, had some suggestions. “I told her she needed to get more personal, maybe working one-on-one, maybe taking a few steps closer, and maybe having a conversation with her subject.”

Making portraits more intimate is a given for Shaw, whose own 10-year project, Maine Women: Living on the Land , was published last year. In it, she interviewed women in New England’s biggest state and photographed them in the landscapes intimately tied to their lives.

According to Shaw, a portrait is “what happens in that magical space between the photographer and the subject.” It comes not from a quick snap with a long lens but as the result of some interaction between subject and photographer.

Shaw’s interest in teaching grew out of her desire “to find a profession that would allow me to maintain my sense of identity as an artist. I wanted to integrate my avocation with my vocation,” she says. As a teacher, “I’m looking at photographs all day long. I’m encouraging young photographers. I absolutely love it.”

She teaches only advanced courses, with names like “Ways of Seeing” and “Finding Your Voice.” Her school’s curriculum requires students to know the history of photography, and she frequently has them look at different photographers’ work. It’s all part of educating their eyes, showing them what’s been done before, and helping them understand how what they’re doing now fits in.

|| |—| | Lauren Shaw www.laurenshaw.com | Although portraiture is not a separate course at Emerson, when it comes to people photography, Shaw draws on experience. “When you’re doing portraiture, it’s a collaboration” between subject and photographer, she says.

She has suggestions for strengthening that collaboration, including such simple acts as moving closer and talking with your subjects before picking up a camera. Her students are not allowed to snap at a distance-she tells them they must start out using a 50mm or 35mm lens (most of the teaching is in 35mm film). And she tells them to keep the gear simple so that they can be “so comfortable with the equipment it becomes invisible.”

Her students may end up doing “portraits” of inanimate objects or of themselves. One student took staged photos of himself as “Everyman,” posed doing things like fixing the furnace in the basement. As the project continued, it became clear he was really photographing himself in the role of “the man of the house,” a role that he had been forced to take on at age 16 when his father died. Shaw had suggestions for him, too. (“How about taking your clothes off, and do body identity, not just costume?”)

“For me to have access to a teacher like Lauren Shaw is something I couldn’t have expected,” says Emerson student Katherine Kordaris. Part of her work involved people photography. “We were able to talk about it with her, which was really great, because she is a working photographer.”

People How-To TipsGet personal. Go metaphorically or literally into the “inner rooms” of a person’s life. Converse.See their place. In many portraits, the subject’s environment, and how he or she interacts with it, makes the image.Look around. “You’ve got to see behind your subject.” Be careful not to look only at the person but at the whole scene.Frame carefully. Check what happens at the edges. Shaw sees people cut off at the wrist, the finger, the ankle. “It’s OK to cut off a head,” she jokes, “but not an ankle.” Watch the bottom of the frame, in particular.Liven them up. Strive for animation from your subjects. “It takes tremendous energy to get people to animate themselves,” Shaw says. She admits to acting goofy or doing whatever it takes to make this happen.Shift position. Don’t stick to the eye-level point of view. You can climb higher, get down low, walk around your subject, or move in and out. Each POV will lead to a different image.

Some people become interested in photography as a way to go on adventures and see the world. Not Nevada Wier. She was already working as an outdoor guide and instructor in places like Kathmandu in the late 1970s and early 1980s. After years of guiding for pay and taking pictures for fun, she realized that her photos were good enough to sell to airline magazines and stock agencies. Gradually photography took over, until Wier was shooting stories for publications such as National Geographic and Outside.

But the former Outward Bound instructor never stopped teaching. As her photography career grew, she found herself leading workshops in her hometown of Santa Fe (at the Santa Fe Photo Workshop) and around the world.

So what does a seasoned world traveler tell students? “It’s really just about having fun,” Wier says. “If you don’t have fun, your pictures aren’t going to be any good.”

It’s advice that may shock her students, some of whom are so involved in their gear that Wier warns they produce photos with “no soul.” For her, good travel photography is often about people. That’s part of what led her to change from guiding to photography. “I became much more interested in what was at the bottom of the mountain than at the top of the mountain,” she says.

In teaching, “I talk a lot about photographing people, and about difficult lighting conditions.”

The people part is challenging. “Approaching people is always a big question” for her students. And if you don’t speak the language? Wier says it’s all about how the photographer handles herself. “It’s about you. You have to be approachable. Learn nonverbal cues. It’s not like trying to shake hands with an elephant-it’s not that hard.”

|| |—| | Nevada Wier www.nevadawier.com | Says Elise Widlund, who with her husband has taken both workshops and international trips with Wier, “She gave me the courage to step forward and approach people.”

Widlund says that Wier’s teaching has led her into amazing situations, like a recent trek into the backcountry of Myanmar. In a remote village where many of the people are tattooed, Widlund spotted an older woman whose face was completely covered with tattooing. Rather than snap a candid, she let her cameras hang and approached the woman to compliment her shawl. She ended up in a room with the villager, who demonstrated how she’d made the shawl herself-a scene Widlund never would have photographed if Wier hadn’t taught her how to approach people.

As for those difficult lighting conditions, Wier sees this as a big part of the territory for travel photography. “Anybody can photograph in good light,” she says, but in travel you rarely have time to wait for it. And even if you can, your subject won’t. One solution: fill flash, which can get a good photo out of bad lighting.

In travel photography, difficulties are a given, says Wier. “There’re so many limitations. There’re always problems.”

But she sees this as an advantage: Is there something in your way, or a lens you didn’t bring, or maybe another jeans-and-sneakers clad tourist planted in the middle of your exotic view? Good! It will force you to be a little more creative with your approach to the image.

Travel How-To TipsTravel light. You don’t always have to have all your gear with you. Carry one body and a single lens sometimes. Go light and be creative.Simplify. Don’t let the gear you do bring get in your way-if you’re too involved with it, you’ve brought too much. “You need to keep a balance of your gear with your skill level.”Master fill flash. It will help you deal with the bad lighting that travel photographers face so much of the time.Beat the clock. When doing landscapes, you do need good light, so “get up early and get out.”Use your head. “When you’re not shooting, you should be thinking,” she says. For example: What’s this place like at another time of day? What else may be going on around here?Be flexible. Take advantage of the fact that things won’t go as planned. If you’ve counted on sunrise but are met with rain, don’t give up-put that rain to use in your photos.

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The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

The-Obsessed

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