K E E N P R E S S

Well, we are finally back in Copenhagen after being away for nearly three months. Missed the entire COP-15 Climate Conference, instead, we were sailing in the Southern Ocean, filming whales, black penguins, and albatross. Three trips in total onboard the National Geographic Explorer. The guests were great, and nearly everyone left the expedition feeling really good about all they had learned, both from the Lindblad naturalists and the Lindblad/Geographic photo team. Here is a link to all of the Daily Expedition Reports to see where and what we were up to. Click here. We have been updating our website with some of the imagery, take a look if you have time. Now we are processing all of our stills and videos, sending them off to the agencies and preparing our summer up North in the Arctic.

Here is a link to our next big trip, Beyond the North Cape, Norway’s Fjord’s and Arctic Svalbard. We will be representing the National Geographic onboard, helping everyone master their skills in photography, and now something new, digital video. With all the new cameras coming out with HD video capabilities, its time to get out the notebooks and start learning, yet another. set of skills. What new and special techniques do you need to think about what you start shooting motion, and recording sound. I am working right now on the curriculum, and will post updates as they get polished. As you know, we have been actively engaged in the recent migration from stills to video. There are shooting and editing techniques to consider, and what better way than on a Lindblad Expedition. One last note before I sign off. We made a new ‘best friend’ on the trip. His name is Andrew Evans, and you have probably heard of him from his Bus2Antarctica project with Geographic Traveler magazine. Read his blog and follow his tweets. It’s changing the way we report and send material back to our loyal readers. He also happens to be one of the nicest persons we have met in a long time. It was a pleasure to travel and work with him. Okay, need to get back to editing and distributing the work. The agencies are anxiously waiting for the material. Stay tuned, I will be back soon.

One of the most stimulating experiences last week during the Lennart Nilsson Conference in Oslo, Norway, was meeting and listening to Leif Preus, the Founder of the Norwegian Museum of Photography. His opening lecture called, Imagine the Future, was about the Secret of the Photograph. He talked about the three most important photographers in the world who  changed our way of thinking about photographs. Edward Steichen, Lennart Nillson, and astronaut, William Anders, whose photograph, “Earthrise”, taken during the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, changed our way of seeing ourselves forever. I quote Leif Preus here.

I have decided to call my opening speech, “The Secret of the Photograph,” rather than “The Secret of Photography.” Photography is the process, the photograph is the result. As soon as the image is materialized as a photograph, it starts its own life.

A photograph is a thing, something materialized and needs to be an object. It could be a print on a wall, or something you keep in your wallet. Today, we focus so much of our creative time and attention to publishing our work on the internet, this is an important thought to pay attention to. Leif Preus feels that what we see on the computer screen is not a photograph, he calls it a virtual image.  It is only when we print it on a material surface, does it become a photograph, and begins its new independent life in the world.

So what is the Secret of the Photograph? There is always something in the photograph that you cannot see, something that initiates a process between your  eyes and what you begin to  feel emotionally. Leif Preus calls it “Associations, the heart has its own understanding, which the understanding does not understand.” His quotes Saint Exupery, “Only with your heart you see correct. The essential is hidden from your eyes.”

What matters for us is that we continue to print out our exposures on pieces of paper, or whatever, so we have saved our photographs for the coming generations. Leif Preus ended his lecture quoting an Austrian photographer, John D Pforr, who had dyslexia, word-blindness, but with the assistance of his wife, he wrote poetry. These are words worth remembering.

“When the fall of eve comes to pass, the gift to your children that shall ever last, will be the images of your past.”

We have been home printing this weekend for a small exhibit opening at Montana Mobile on Tuesday. We needed to find a photo that could easily fit into a preexisting frame size, tall and narrow. We found the right shot. It was a tight vertical portrait of a young polar bear taken in Svalbard, Norway, a few years ago. For us, however, it never really stood out the way it was originally intended. Taken as a vertical with the Nikkor 200-400mm f.4 lens. It was a good shot, but not great. Just for fun we tried rotating it counterclockwise, and  the image became much stronger. It’s very rare that you can make a change like this and not have it look so obvious. In this case, because of the narrow depth of field, you have a hard time seeing that it was not taken originally as a horizontal. It looks much better big. We liked it so much we posted it to the intro series on our website.

Tell us what you think?

Photo after being turned counterclockwise © 2007 KEENPRESS