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Travel Photography

And I'm really excited to bring on mr andy katz and back running thank you. Welcome back. Glad to have you are you feeling I could be better? All right, well, happy camper. Wonderful. Got this great audience here and it was a happy camper travel. Thank you all for coming. I really appreciate we're going to talk about something that is near and dear to my heart, which is travel photography I love traveling you know, I think any time you travel not only can you get great images well, first of all, the images come to you it's not a big deal. It's just put your camera on birds fly, but you know it, you you are allowed to just learn so much when you travel anytime you go traveling, you learn something and also you have a great opportunity to take some great photos and we're going to try to do in this short hour and a half is going to talk to you about how you could get the best images you can when you're traveling. And I just briefly I started doing studio photography and it took me about f...

ourteen hours to do this image, and when I was finished, I said, I don't want to be in a studio I want to be outside so that's that's, how I kind of got around to it what I like to do is projects and I always encourage people to start projects projects will let you start from something an end from something I need that personally whether it's a discipline type of thing but I want to do a project on this and I encourage all of you to do that because once you do that you've got a focus, you've got something that you want to do and it can start and it can complete and I really think that you will increase the quality of your photographer if you say in the next four months I'm going to do photographs of whatever you want come up with something that's near and dear to your heart, but you have to do it in four months and I also think it a tremendous benefit for you to come up with a portfolio come up with a project or ten images that your favorite images that you've ever produced so if somebody comes up I mean, this is a as you all know, you're all photographers it's not the easiest business in the world it's the most fun by far there's no other business like this in the world it's the greatest thing I love every second and I'm doing this but it is not the easiest thing in the world to do and a lot of times you get gigs from fluky things that happened oh jim's got a friend and he's looking for a photographer so they come up to you and they say let me see your work and there's two ways to approach it one is to take you know a five by seven from here well here's one and then it just it looks sloppy it doesn't look professional so if you have a really tight portfolio get your ten favorite images mounted my museum board just make it look really, really good having a portfolio okay, so if somebody says let me see your photographs you go yeah I'd love to show you this here it is and here in my images and it's amazing how important that iss and then you take those images and you you had these images and you I have to work to improve your image is you have the ten of your favorite and then you when you come up with an image that you like more than that then you replace one of those images and then every six months your portfolio should be getting better. And if you ever go for six months and you have the same ten images you've got to kick yourself in the butt and saying I'm not doing anything I really need to get going on this so approach to travel these air images this was a project that I did on uh called vanishing jewish society I was in egypt and there was very few jews living in egypt and I met these older men and they said when we die, the religion is probably going to be gone so I went and I traveled all over, uh, eastern europe, russia and that israel to do this project in the project ended up being wasn't easy thing I've ever done because I spent a lot of time in concentration camps and things like horrible place like that, but it ended up being a project that ended up traveling, you know, was a show that traveled around the world and that's why projects are important because it's everyone loves to take photos and everyone can take very beautiful photos it's a beautiful world out there I mean, it's an amazing planet. We traveled to incredible, incredible places and come back with beautiful photos, but if you come back with a cohesive group of photos that really is focusing on one subject that's going to change your whole world, I mean that's really going to change? And then you find out what you like, what you don't like it's a very, very important part of, uh, photography also let's keep this really, really loose if anybody else's questions, we're not gonna wait to the end if you have questions, just ask because there's no stupid questions, I promise you and there could be stupid answers but there's no stupid questions thiss for example was an image that I took when I was in sri lanka and uh some beggars came up to my taxi and came up to me, which is a very important point and that is always be ready to take a photograph the idea of having your tamara deep inside your suitcase where you see a great image and all the sudden you got to dig for your camera and then you lift your camera out the so is all whacked out and you've got it f sixteen in a thousandth of a second be prepared to photograph because if you're not prepared to photograph, things happened very, very quickly so when you're traveling wherever you are, make sure that you can just lift your camera up and shoot and be in the ballpark of what you're shooting because you don't want to miss something there's very, very few great picture there's there's tons of content but to take a great picture is really, really difficult to do you take a good picture is easy, but to take a great picture it is very difficult I mean you've gotta have there's three important things in my opinion of course all this is my opinion, so you've got to take it with a grain of salt or whatever else you want to take it with but one is content it's got to be an interesting subject otherwise, you know, if I took a picture that great wall I could have the greatest light in the world and it's going to be pretty boring the other one is composition you've got to compose the properly looked through the view finder figure out what you want in the viewfinder, what you don't want it in the viewfinder and the third, which I think is what brings everything together is light you've gotta have beautiful light in order to bind these two together and there's yes, please about always having your camera ready rich and showed town what is your favorite lens toe have mounted on your camera when you're out traveling and want to be ready at a moment's notice? Well, the camera the land said I'd that I use I could really survive with this lens without anything else is a twenty four to seventy f two eight and this happens views iceland's this's sony camera of course and his iceland's and it's by far the best lens I've ever used it's ridiculously sharp which helps but the focal length of twenty four to seventy appeals to me in just about anything I shoot yeah so so that that's that's that's my main acts that's what I have on my camera all the time and most of time it works perfect, yeah so anyway be prepared be ready but you've got to if you travel and you want to come up with great photographs if you wake up at eight thirty in the morning and you have dinner at six, you're not going to get great photo beth, you get great please I'm sorry t find where what was happening when that happened well, I'll tell you this just to say ok, this is in italy but the uh uh you just happen in order to get the great light you have to wake up before the sun comes up and you've gotta shoot until after the sun comes up and you got it shoot before I mean before the sun goes down and shoot after the sun goes that there's two times in the day that you have to shoot during the middle of the day you do it everyone and sometimes you with a family member, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever and you just say there's two times the day that's got to be mine and that's early morning and late afternoon this was taken in italy and this is actually a trip tickets there's a dog that was walking by and he turned and kind of shot the dog with his fake gun but this is this is ah, quite a long time ago so that's a very important part of this whole thing because you know you just have to be at the right spot at the right time in order to make this work and how do you when you end up in a spot when you end up in your flying to so and so how do you find the best places? Well there's a lot of guidebooks and some of them are good and some are not good but generally what the guide books will tell use places that have been a lot of people go to and what I find most interesting for me is a go places that are really remote I think you find very interesting people you find interesting subjects and you don't have the tourism that people are aware of your kind of a unique and you're treated that way to eso what I generally do is when I go to a town or village or city or something like that I'll usually find some store that the aesthetics air kind of cool they're selling cool stuff or just you know it looks like it's got you know something about the store, the restaurant whatever is cool and I'll talk to the person I would say I'm a professional photographer and it's nice if you have a life phone you can chose some work so you can show your valid photographer whatever that means your photographer and say you know I'm looking for really amazing places where would use where would you go if you were in your town what's your favorite place where tourists don't go I mean if you go to agra in india they're going to tell you go to the taj mahal but other than the ties in the hall, what is your favorite place? And you'll find spectacular places you'll find really amazing amazing places to go to so these this is in the black and white days when I wish you know I did a project on children from around the world right spent a year traveling around the world photographing children and it was, uh unicef was going to do a book and live on and the actress was going right the introduction I was a young kid I just thought this is perfect it didn't happen unfortunately, but I still really love photographing these amazing children for all over the world when I'm traveling I always look for things even if I'm on a project I'm always looking for images and it's just like I'm scanning, you know what's going to be great with what looks good this is amazing the lightest terrible this amazing if I come back at five o'clock this is going to be the shot so I marked down in my small brain or put it on a pad or something like that the street whatever be back here it's, sunrise or sunset and you try to figure out you know where the sun is going to be a second better. Sunrise is going to be better at sunset. And you have the whole day to do that. Because during the middle of the day, generally light is horrible. Unless there's clouds that there's clouds, then you can shoot. And if the shadows you can always shoot shadows, shadows always produces beautiful, beautiful light. Um, I was in south africa and there was you can get in cages and see sharks, and I had just gotten I just became a artisan of imagery and sony and sending these cameras, and I photographed this shark and I blew this thing up and you could see every little droplet from the teeth and amazing, amazing animals. But this is kind of the different things that you get to do when you're traveling. It's just a total energy and wonderful, wonderful experiences. And, you know, I've traveled all my life, and I'm pretty damn old, and I've had one bad travel experience ever in my life, and that was that was about it. This is a hotel room that I had. I was doing a book on burgundy, and I was in the hotel, and I saw this with a cracked mirror and just always scanning trying to figure out ok the sun is really coming in pretty hard and I could be able to shoot this now because it's the balances and right if I shoot this with diffuse light will all be good when you when you have a subject that you like a lot of times when I teach workshops you know people will take like two pictures and then be gone I mean for this is a pretty good example because these air birds you can't control what the heck bird's air doing so you just have to shoot especially in this day and age you know pixels or free shoot shoot shoot shoot shoot because where the bird is going to be if there's an action type of thing you might have to shoot fifty sixty photographs in order to get everything to be exactly the way you want it that don't when when you're in a great spot when you see something beautiful stay there hang in there and really work it work it from different angles a lot of times people shoot from this distance this height this there's no reason that you can't go like this there's no reason why you can't get up high and look down there's no reason why you can't turn around I mean if you're looking at something and the light is going this direction all of a sudden if you turn around the light is completely different I love looking at small things kind of macro type of things see what's what's going on there's always the big picture in the small picture and the other thing is that you know, work with the subject like like I was talking before so these these flowers were you know there was a lot of them and I photographed the whole thing and then I just kept on getting closer and closer and don't don't worry about getting too close special and photographing people a lot of times people are intimidated to get too close and we'll talk about photographing people soon enough but in any case really again work your subject work your angles were work everything especially if you find something that you really really like take your time with it it's time well worth spending early morning markets I love more there's certain places you could always go and find great photography always asked where market is always get to the market an hour or so before the market opens before tourists come with all the action is happening where they're setting up for the market areas where there's a fisherman, fishermen villages and you know seaports and things like that abundance of material always there um window white is pretty much just beautiful beautiful, beautiful life and objects next to windows and looking through windows and just using that light is just really, really uh an interesting type of thing now I'm a huge jimmy hendrix fan and this is in morocco and jimmy wrote a song called castles made a sand and these are the castles so this is my tribute to jimmy yeah, you're talking you're talking about how a lot of your photo zone galleries, right? And I know it's the last one was cropped like a little thin because of probably the windows do you have you just cropped or whatever it is that you want died to see, and then you just say, hey, this is what it's gonna look like, yeah, great question when I'm shooting, I tried to crop it in cameras much as possible. I generally probably eighty percent of the time do not crop anything but certain times all crop, if you know if there's something that I can't frame correctly, I'll know that, you know, I will be cropping afterwards, you know, it's, not always in three to two, yeah, and you know, when you go to a lab, if you're getting prints done, don't worry if it doesn't fit an eight by ten don't worry if it doesn't fit it's sixteen by twenty years, the image that you think is the important part of the image and then use the border around that, yeah don't, because all of a sudden they're dictating what your image is going to look like he should always dictate with your image is going to look like maybe you want something that's super super skinny you know, kind of a panorama type of thing additional narrative you still do a bit of film, I'm shooting all did you know that show where the black and whites in the beginning where those wells all found? Yeah, this is filling this well, I switch to digital when I found a camera that I thought did a better job in film and there's always these arguments and I'm not going to get into it, but the one thing I can say is when I was shooting film on shooting medium format shooting with r z six seven thing way that ton the lenses waited on that's why I kind of looked like this these days and in this day and age, this camera here I can produce a thirty by forty image that aesthetically amount time at its deadly but print quality is exceptional it's unbelievable. You can touch the fabrics and you cannot do that with a thirty five millimeter film camera and you can barely do that with a medium format camera. The new technology is amazing now there's an argument about well, I like the grain I'm not gonna get into that argument I like this I like that, but for clarity and sharpness. And I mean, if you took a picture of somebody and had their head and as a eighth of the frame with thirty five digital and thirty five film. And you took that and blew that up sixteen by twenty, you could see immediately that there's really no comparison as far as image quality, sharman's, et cetera, et cetera. Now, you might like one better than the other, but that's clear of our points out that in your jimi hendrix image, it does have some purple haze in the sky. I love that nice. Well, and of course, like plan for that. This is an an image in south africa. And one of the things about travel photography is you. You have to be patient. I mean, you're not going to just walk onto something and everything's going to be perfect. I mean, it happens once in a while, but a lot of times what you have to do is you have to wait. You have to wait for the light to be correct. You have to wait for the sun to come down to a certain point. You have to wait for a cloud to get in front of the sun there's so many variables about that, um and again, you know I can't emphasize enough patients and I'm not that patient a person but I have to be for this there's just no choice if you see something that you think is going to be a gorgeous photo and you know he had come back to that's fine but generally I just will stick around and stay there watch the sun come down and just watch everything kind of happened and it's just is a very magical thing because you're looking at it it's like you're rooting for the sun to do certain things I mean I talked to the son it's like coming down further come on come a cloud cloud get over there yes, yes it get very excited about this this's when I was doing this project on vanishing juice, jewish societies and I was at a church in in russia and I saw this it just it was there I don't the beauty and the great thing about travel photography is the images air they're they're all there you just have to find him you have to find them and wait for the light to be perfect which when you think about it is actually a pretty simple thing it's there just find it and and concentrate and frame it correctly and wait for the light to light to be correct this was one of these fluky things that uh I was camping in luxembourg and I it's in the middle of the woods and virtually I woke up before the sun came up and this appeared and a lot of photography is you know is really luck I mean it's it's lucky when you get a great sunset and it's lucky when you bump into you know great subjects and stuff like that but the harder you work the luckier you get and it's like playing the piano it's like playing the violin it's like anything else the more you can work it the more you khun be out there shooting the more you can put an energy into it it comes back tenfold and it's the beauty of photography it's like instant gratification I mean you get a great photograph and in the morning you can print it in the afternoon or you can put it on your screen and go yeah I nailed this one so thie other thing I do is I trained dolphins and I'm getting pretty good at him so I was I was this'll ache and new zealand ask the dolphin to come up and he came up and pose for me smile tilted his head nail them but this was the first digital project it did I did a book on new zealand and again this was another project is a book that sam neill the actor did the introduction for and these air new zealand images is and this is milford sound one of the most gorgeous places on earth um I love back lit images there great and you know, there's there's certain issues with backlit images meaning that oh there's a flare issue there you know, because you're looking into the sun but there's ways of getting around it in that put in an object in front of the sun and then you get these great shadows and a lot of times this really works quite well with a wide angle lens one of most beautiful vineyards on earth this's all new zealand yeah this's a whole project that I didn't new zealand and again finding finding the spot waiting for it to happen waiting for it to happen tripods air really really important part of of shooting and you should always have a tripod because you can do stuff with tripods that you just cannot do without tribe odds now this camera's got image stabilization system that is beyond belief. I mean, I was saying yesterday that I shouldn't I'll show you an image that I shot a four hundred millimeter to thirtieth of the second which in the film days I wouldn't even consider doing that so you can shoot a low shutter speed and it really does an unbelievable job of keeping it steady but there's so many other advantages of having to tripod one is you khun adjust your depth of field um if you want to shoot it f eleven and you want to have a minute exposure no big deal and what I find is that with when you open up the lands for a long long time magic happens just things start coming together and light gets amazing and the richness and it's just yeah it's just pretty amazing the other thing you could do with a tripod with water and things like that is of course you khun just what you want the water city frozen you whether you want the water to look like a ribbon you know there's a lot of different uh uh different things you can do with that that you just cannot do without again this this was the cover of the book on new zealand the next image here this was about close to twenty min exposure which means a twenty minute exposure and then you've got teo you know when it writes to the thing these days cf card that's another twenty one so you gotta wait like forty minutes before you see it but this was virtually dark virtually dark yeah uh their boats yeah and the quick question obviously when you take it in a shot like that that's long you're going to meet a tripod germany recommendations came in from vegas wants to know if you have any recommendations for a travel tripod enduro is the tripod that I use and what the head it's something tech oh my gosh I'm having a little bit of a brain you know what it is a very light head and it really works well because you know it's it's true you're trying to you're trying to do it carries little stuff is possible so yeah and you know it's you know they're making materials now there just aren't heavies graphite we did actually have a bunch of questions about here and what you do travel with you want to talk for a moment about sure here that you carry with you time well this this is kind of this is kind of what I carry this is a seventy two, four hundred millimeter which is actually a very light lens and incredibly sharp it's a spectacular spectacular lands and then this is a sixteen to thirty five uh for extreme wide angle twenty four to seventy which is the winds that I use all the time and then I always have you know what? This is like any seven which is something just to carry around and then this camera here I can't say enough about but this is called in or x one and this is a fixed thirty five millimetre lens onto a full frame sensor and this the image quality of this when they engineer lens where it doesn't have to have interchangeable lenses we can engineer exactly to go to the sensor you can tweak it down too so accurate and so there's really going to say this? I mean, people going already? Oh, I've never seen image quality out of camera like this it's spectacular it's got the same sensors this and it weighs nothing. So this I have with me all the time I'm living in new york city now, and I just carry this, you're going out to a location like this? Do you have, like, a backpack? Just aside, big shoulder bag this I find it to be a little bit easier use low, low pro bags and I just I have a kind of a big bag, but a lot of times when I'm shooting, if I'm going to do a lot of a lot of walking or something like that on dh, I want to be lazy, which I try not to be, but I might not bring everything I might just bring this camera with the twenty I mean, I might just have this around me or I might, you know, during the day when I know that it's not going to be optimal shooting. This is the camera that I'll have always had a camera with me because you never know and you can always go into shadows, you know, isn't get great photographs in the shadows, but uh yeah, I try not to be both down with with too much equipment but ideas a shoulder bag for that? When I was in new zealand, I had a waterproof bag because I got really wet maybe one more question real quick here while we're on the subject, mando says when traveling with your camera out and ready, are you worried about someone's stealing your camera or stealing your equipment as you're traveling with thousands of dollarsworth? I'm really not, you know, I just never had that problem. I mean, I've traveled, you know, I think that I think I don't know, maybe I'm kidding myself. I think people are pretty nice around the world and, you know, I spent I just finished a book on india was all of randy eos never ever issue anybody trying to steal it. I've really never had a problem with that. I've traveled extensively, I mean, I'm pretty street wise, I'm not gonna put my camera down a walk around, I always have it there, but you know, the idea and he he once in a while you hear stories of a motorcycle coming and grab it that but for me, honestly, I've never I've never had that as a problem and a lot of times it's really kind of ridiculous because people buy a nice cameras and they're saying, oh, I'm going to go teo india but I'm scared to bring my camera so why did you buy the camera? I mean, this is exactly the reason why he spent a lot of money on the camera. You might as well use the good camper actually maybe finally one more from bread seventy nine so do you then have insurance on your equipment if so, you know, cost her recommendations on looking for travel insurance uh, yes, I do have insurance on my equipment and I forget the name of the yeah ok, yeah, I mean it's like saying my favorite insurance companies like, say, my favorite oil company you get great until they're not any others were going to move on for now. Anyway again we're talking about water and you know, the different things you can do with that um this was when you get to an area sometimes it's really a wonderful thing to find out what this area has to offer this had a glacier and you know, you can helicopter up to the glacier and get some, you know, amazing, amazing photographs and you know what? Crampons and do the whole the whole thing and also looking at foreground and background, I mean it's really something that when you're looking through a view finder, not only are you trying to figure out what to be in the camera and what not to be in camera but where you're what you're focusing on and what you're what you're trying tio accomplished with with this image and do cantor if the foreground goes into shadow, do you? What is the most important part of the photograph? It's a lot of times you're in a tricky lighting situation, you've got to determine uh that which brings me to another subject and that is everyone should be shooting raw instead of j peg raw gives you a tremendous amount of, like ten times more information than j peg and the reason why that's important is you have a much more dynamic range if you are shooting j peg and you overexpose something and you try to pull that back, you're out of luck when you shoot with raw, you have that information so you could take the highlights and bring it down we could bring the shadows up a little bit so you can really kind of I'm not talking about crazy photo shop I'm talking about very, very general basic things you can do with an image to improve your image, so I totally encourage everyone tio shoot rods if there is very important uh, yeah, what can I say? They're amazing, I traded only well tales ah, very specific in my training process, but you know, you go out there and you just have to spend a lot of time trying to get that you know that that one shot and I had to get a whale shot from new zealand? Um again, this isn't a free, fast shutter speed because I wanted to get that that waters, you know, frozen in space again, a very, very long exposure I've just found that so few people take advantage, jj of long exposures and there's so much that can happen with a long exposure it's just it just really adds ah whole new perspective on your photography and and the idea when I was talking about tripods get a good try, but if you get a crummy tripod or a crummy head and I totally suggest ball heads and if you get these, you're going to use them. If you get a bad one there, just there rinky dinky and they don't work well and they're going to be frustrated, you're going to be frustrated with it, etcetera a lot of times when I'm when I'm traveling, I'm going for a pretty long hikes and that's what? I love these lightweight cameras, you know, they're just compared to the whole days it's really a spectacular thing and I'm you know, I'm I don't have an assistant, I don't know what the hell I do with them assistant I'd say, you know, tell me when the sun goes down hand me a card or give me a lindsay I mean, it would be kind of silly for me to do that I'm kind of a one man shows I'm carrying everything myself another really long exposure yeah this was taken in a helicopter um and again what I say about check out different angles you know low, high sideways very, very important and you're going to find you know, if you want to get high helicopters that's what another very, very long exposure and this was taken in an area that had hunt of mosquitoes and I got totally nailed but uh and this little bush here that's lit is from a road that came around and the lights of the car would hit it and get some exposure more exposure, more exposure because the density would build with that and while that was happening, the density was building with the railroad tracks and the density was uh you know what? The clouds and this and that but the way you looked at this was a very, very dark dark image I love getting close up and I've done six books on wine and the reason why do books on wine is I love drinking this stuff it's really good on generally areas that have good wine have really good food that really like food and generally they're very pretty areas as well, so I really enjoyed uh doing that and I think that a lot of times my problems I have a tendency to close especially I'm shooting people if I'm shooting somebody, I have a tendency to get too close and like any backup there's a whole story back there that you need to tell about this don't just but I'm very you know, I love photographing eyes in this and I did the same thing too great um lighting is everything if this was if I turned around and shot this, it would be a pretty boring it would be a picture of a great but when you when you can get it back lit and it glows like a bowl that's it's really ah, much more enjoyable image a little bit more versatile using things in the foreground using wide angle lenses the's air these air different tools that you can do you know that tree I think really helped the image just because of that of perspective and this is the type of thing that you do want to shoot it f sixteen you do want the depth of field when you're taking an image, you have to determine what do you want to focus and what don't you want focus if you want to do selective focus, obviously you're gonna have to open up to eight one for whatever your lands has and if you want the focus you have to adjust the f stop in order to do that and sometimes if you don't have enough light you have to and you don't try it you have to push the I s o in this day and age it's not that big a deal these cameras are unbelievable that I I really quite spectacular and I apologize for this but I have to have one rainbow and but there'll be no kittens just the rainbow it's a double rainbow but this was a book that I didn't know this is my latest book that I don't know which is a just a spectacular spectacular I used to live there this is so no mechanical northern this in northern california hurts no, no, it says one, so I'll not, um I love rose of things I love depth and perspective and and I always look for that and it's to me it's a pretty interesting kind of an obvious fun instant gratification to take. The thing to do is when you have just these great rose with this great depth as long as there's some interesting things around it and lighting is totally totally critical to this because if this was a bad lighting situation, you'd have some areas that are hot in some areas that aren't hot and gaming funky shadows and s o you just have to again wait for light to be great and this was on a relatively overcast day it doesn't look like it was a long exposure overcast day so any time there's clouds in the sky one you can sleep in I love cloud so great when I know for sure there's clouds like oh I'm sleeping in tomorrow there's there's really no reason wake up at five o'clock in the morning because it's you know it's just cloudy so it's a great opportunity to photograph throughout the day I was in south africa and it was all this great clouds and it was kind of funky out reigning not raining and uh and my friends that I'm so sorry that you know the weather is terrible this weather is perfect my biggest nemesis I hate blue skies blue skies with out of the cloud it's just it's horrible that happened in india quite a bit there's a lot of blue skies without clouds and it's very it's much more difficult tio to photograph that because he generally have really early morning to chewed and without clouds is generally not great sunrise and then you have the sunset without class generally no great now with an image like that we do have a lot of questions about your post processing you want talk about how much you adjust your image is what you do to them on how you might play with color yeah basically I don't do much I haven't opened up photo shop and probably a year and a half I used I used white room exclusively I spend very, very little time on the images I you know, depending on its this looks very oversaturated in this screen but if you saw it in a print it's really not oversaturated and I really don't like images that don't look like nature where people just pump up the saturation and it's just it's like nature doesn't have that color and you know I print I've galleries at hand in my work and I print for galleries when the prince in the gallery any color that you see you will see a nature it's not so I opened up an image I checked to see the shadow detail and generally I'll probably pump up the shadow detail a little bit I'll see if the highlights are blown out trying to bring those down a little bit and then that's about it yeah that's about it maybe pushed the vibrance just just a bit I hardly ever touch saturation at all. Um, I'm assuming with that kind of work flow, you don't do any hdr or like like painting of your images and then I don't yeah, I just I like to try to get it yeah, and, you know that's just made first of all of the terrible photo shop because I never use it and I really like looks that air pretty natural I just think that there is enough in nature that you don't need tio teo and you know, some people do hdr and it's it's quite interesting and it's just it's just not really my thing. Now, one thing I should say I had done images were under exposed when they're really extreme under exposing, exposing normally overexposing so I have images that when a process comes out to make a look really, really natural haven't seen one now that that can do it, that it doesn't look kind of funky, I will have some of those and those for pretty extreme images again, these these close ups and what one of the other great things about oh, sorry about that. This is also backlit, you know, always always, always looking for backlit I was going to talk about exposure a little bit too, because, um, you know, when you're shooting raw, the exposure you want, you want as much meat on your raw images possible, meaning you want it to be exposed everyone's got these will blink ease on their camera and you know when they take a picture and that starts blinking, people freak out well, those air compressed j pegs and that's meaning that you're losing detail and this compressed j peg if you're shooting raw, that does not mean you're losing detail so look at the history and make sure that that you're that you're highlights or not blown out but my image is generally are going to look pretty bright when I looked looked them on screen because I want it so much a cz much information on that as possible and if you under expose images what happens is when you get into the shadow detail that's when you create noise that's what the noise comes in so you want to have the shadow detail really good and have enough information the shadow detail that you don't have to punch that up to the point where it gets noisy you want you want to avoid noise at all costs again backlit and with this particular image if I moved a little bit this way or I moved a little bit this way then dubey glare will be a wholly different image eso I'm always looking things were backlit to block the sun because I think it creates a pretty interesting image and the same thing this was about this is basically from my house I used to live in to know my moved you how home in new york city I don't see that view anymore early morning like you just have to love it it's just absolutely spectacular spectacular like more grapes the other thing that I think is quite interesting is trying to get us much way briefly talked about before but trying to get us much knowledge is possible on the area that you're shooting both beforehand and when you're there and talking as many people as you can and trying to kind of plan out what what you're going to do when I travel. I never have an itinerary of where I'm going toe I know we're going to sleep when I arrived, and I know where I'm going to sleep when I'm coming back because the problem wouldn't you have an itinerary when you're gonna be in brussels for two days in paris for three days? And this and that? I mean, sometimes it's just an easy way to travel, but if I'm in an area that I love that I never thought I was gonna love that much. I might want to stay there for a week, and just so I don't want I don't want to be pushed out of an area that I really, really like and in this day and age, there's, you know, there's always there's, always hotels, there's like airbnb, you can always find a place to stay. So a lot of I mean, I never have an exact time from there. There, there, there. Now again, I'm there to get images, that's my solar reason and go there and a lot of people. Are there for, you know, family events and this and that but the people that I'm talking to here our photographer is so if you want to come back with images and you want to come back with strong images just let it flow let it happen go from one place and then when you might find absolutely opposite the place that you thought was going to be unbelievable you might just not flowing with you so then you go on to the next place or then you asked people okay, this is kind of what I'm looking for I'm looking for the most amazing fishing village and I'm willing to take a ten hour bus or I'm willing to do anything where would I go and just asked as many peoples is possible and if like five say oh yeah this village is unbelievable give it a try and and I think that's what you're going to find the most interesting places to go I need some questions I have so many questions here for you we'll do one here for good so you travel and train whales and dolphins and drink wine and I'm jealous how how long did it take you to get to this point where you're like this is this is what you get to do and kind of what steps do you take tio get on that past tio get where you are now yeah, good question. Well, I went to I went to photo school for a period of time and then after I finished with that you know it's a commercial photographer and I was photographing absolutely anything that came my way because I had to put food on the table and, uh then look what I was telling you there's certain lucky things that happened. And then there is a musician named dan fogelberg that saw my work and I started doing album covers for him that I start getting in the music business. I was photographing rock n roll and I was doing that for a period and then someone saw my will. Meanwhile I was doing this I was always doing the travel photography because that was the love. And then I found someone that I really like my work that sponsored needed to travel for a period of time and there's no unfortunately there's no book there's no way to to say this is what you need to do this this and this it's not like, you know medicine where you have to do this and then listen, this is just just shoot like heck, get a great portfolio and showing around as much as you can and show it and show it and show it and if you have images, but make sure before you show what you're incredibly proud of every image it's much more important, show ten great images than ten great images to images air really good one image you think is good, be really tight on it have you will ask you about that and then showing showing your work, you might not be able to get into a gallery, but you might be able to get into a restaurant that has nice lighting and say, you know, here are my image is what do you think if I do a show here and maybe perhaps you could do a little opening for me, you know, because you make food for chief and we could do something like that and bring us many people there just try to get it out as much as possible and after your explanation, two part question now, so when you were shooting all of these different things on your on your web site, in your portfolio, where you showing, you know, you're you're rocking all photography, your travel photography and all these different types of photography. Or were you just showing your travel photography? Because I don't remember who said it earlier, but they said, you know, she, you know, only show what you want to shoot, and so I'm curious if years was hodgepodge rails, no, I would say that when I was shooting rock and roll I had rock and roll in and now I'm not even doing that so that you can find anything like that on my web site on my website is basically geared to selling prints so it's images that I want to sell and images that that I think are strong and they're you know I've got it like asia south america you know that they're different orders different project, right? But so when you were doing rock n roll you were still shooting travel and so I did, but so you showed both on right? Okay, yeah, absolutely so along. Those kind of same look it's subject relaxed now from pittsburgh says I would love to share my travel photography with others where do we get to travel? Photography published? Yeah it's again, it's it's not the easiest thing in the world I mean, I have to be honest that it's just very, very difficult but to have a really solid group of photos it is absolutely the most important thing you can do and once you do that, then just ask around trying to get his, you know, try to talk to you, find magazines that you like try to talk to editors say I've got some images can I send him to you? Can I come and see you just try everything you have to try everything because believe me, I've been rejected so many times, it's unbelievable, and if I if I didn't have thick skin, I would still be doing photography, but it would it would be difficult don't don't worry if you get rejected, everyone gets rejected so it z one of those things, but you just you have to be relentless on this, you have to take the but you had the only way you can be relentless on this is if you're very, very proud of your photographs, if you know that you've really worked really, really hard to get these images, because if you have images, so you're not that proud of you're not going to put that much effort into showing him to people so that that that is truly, truly key. Tio uh, what you do and if you have amazing images something's gonna happen someone's going to see it. This is the cover of the book that I did on burgundy called burgundy its wines. And I was I was with my son and the son. This is crazy oversaturated. But anyway, I was with my son and e what was I worrying a bike? And I saw this and I got a man, the skies getting great and I had my tripod with me and my camera and I told him, go down that's the house that I rent and why did my book on burgundy to turn on every light in the house? And he went down there and, uh, you can see in a big print is him looking out to make sure that he turned on all the lights correctly and he's now a winemaker, which is kind of a funny story this's the light that's just mean, when we have light like this and you have anything that's around that's interesting it's really hard to go wrong, you know, you've got these black black clouds, you know, you're going to get wetter than hell in about ten minutes, and you've got this son it's just getting a certain amount of things and it's it's phenomenal it's just absolutely the most exciting light in the world. So when you find light like this and I've had many times where I've had this great light and I can't find something to shoot with a light and, you know, panicking, I'm driving all over trying to find that, but it's, what you just have to do this is one of the very few images that I had that I actually used strobes with I brought strobes down tio to the cellar and back let that but generally I when I travel I rarely rarely very rarely strokes I always have a strobe with me but I just generally don't like light that comes off very much I'm like very, very natural light burgundy this was a uh famous wine makers house and you know my feeling is about doing a book on burgundy none of my books of wine have any people drinking wine or pictures of wind or pictures of glasses they're all this images that happen to be from that area this as well as from burgundy again another project that I did and one of the projects that it did of sonoma led to project in tuscany which led to a project and burgundy so that that that's the importance of finding something to do that would be really, really important for you and it's if it's really important to you it's you're going to do a better job with it. I mean, don't do something that we have this sounds like it could be interesting really figure out what you want to do and do it that's the key you got it. You gotta gotta gotta do it. I know I sound like a cheerleader but it's really, really true this is the cover of the book that I did on tuscany in its wines are you writing? Yeah, there will be no right in here. Yeah no, I just do that and then they then you know the publisher will prepare me up with a you know, someone who you know, hopefully a well known or just somebody that's well known that khun write an introduction I mean, a lot of these books that burgundy book was robert parker very famous wine writer and he uh you know that the book was I mean, the he wrote three pages sam neill wrote two pages and you know, so it's basically it's a most of these air picture books that I get somebody famous so I can put him in the coverage do you find that you're balancing this at the same time with other work that you're doing like a ce faras income goes trying to be a travel photographer professionally or you do it like there you just focusing on one thing at a time? Well now pretty much this is pretty much what I do is travel but like I say in the old days I would do everything and anything I do you know you want a picture of your dog give me a check your dog will be photographed beautifully, I'll do a great shot and you just you know, the only thing I didn't do is weddings apartments is that was it and the reason why I wasn't like that was beneath fear anything the reason why is usually these air taken at noon, and I couldn't imagine trying to take a pretty picture noon of people and then you gotta put the flash on and people do amazing jobs, but it was too much for me thiss was in tuscany, and this was a I found this spy and I thought this was cool and I came the next morning it like four thirty and waited the sun came up five and had this big red. This is totally untouched, as was just unbelievable, like and have his big birds for about fifteen seconds. And then and then it kind of lost a lot of that, and I really like the image came back three days inro afterwards in the morning and, uh, never found the light to be quite as good as the original one early morning light. I'm going to see if I'm going to run through these little bit quickly because I want to show you some of these images that I did in india and my most recent eyes namibia so if anybody's got any questions while buzzing through these things the yes, okay, this's, another a great situation. If you have a tripod when you have one window and a lot of times when you shoot long exposure it's almost impossible to overexpose. So you can let the shutter stay open for long, long, long time and you know the area where the window is that's going to be blown up you don't care about that that's really not that important and then the light just envelopes the whole place it really produces some stunning results and I've gone back to this place I love this little spot and I've come back to this space and photographed quite a bit with his little clump of trees this is it isn't asking uh this is a book that I spent about a year and a half doing on indian I go there for about a month and I would land in india and in delhi or something like that and try to get out of the big cities as quickly as possible and then would just hire a driver and sometimes they spoke english sometimes that they spoke a little something. This is both more and I'd be with his driver for like sometimes two weeks, three weeks and it would just be me and the driver and I would kind of tell him where I'm thinking about going and I stopped and it was just it was a very it was a wonderful way tio photographic, a huge company country and I'd set it up where I'm going to be doing southern india western in the eastern india because it's it is a huge country but a fantastic fantastic place to photograph, you know, with amazing colors and just everything was just uh you know, I just loved it but again it's like photographing any other spot, you have to find the light you've got to be patient, you've got to be in a certain area if you see an area for example, this area was just this great spot where were the most amazing people watching in the world? And I just would sit there with the light was good, I wait for, you know, some amazing looking person, and then I've asked them, and I always never a lot of people are really worried about asking people to have their photo taken, and I've asked zillions of people have their photo taken and it's very, very rare that they said no, well, this is a very good question, and the correct answer is absolutely because you should. But the reality is that if I spent time in india getting model releases, I would be crazy to be just absolutely nuts because I first of all, a lot of people didn't speak english, so these people can write it's and I would and it just it was overwhelming, so so no, but there's there's a organization called s mp that everyone should be a member of that these air attorneys that represent us for these type the things if you ask them they say yeah, you should get tomorrow's now if I was doing it and for coca cola I was doing an ad for somebody I would absolutely one hundred percent get a model elise because that's a commercial entity this is a book that I'm doing and I think I'm ok with it I mean I mean, I think I'll be legally okay, but if I was gonna photograph, I met somebody who lived in ireland and had a born in ireland and I think saks fifth avenue some like that use his barn in a ad campaign and he sued him anyone so if you're doing something commercially, absolutely not only do you have to have a model releases for is the person, but sometimes you have to have model releases for is the property as well. But it's a really good question? Yeah film from tulsa wonders if you have any recommendations for approaching people oppose when there are cultural or language limitations and how do you explain what you're doing? Yeah, well, smiling is huge and I like I say, you know, photograph zillions of people out there and ninety nine point five percent of the time they're totally fine with it, I think what people have a hard time with is if I had my four hundred millimeter lens and I'm shooting me like that that's your sneaking a photo? I never sneak a photo, I will have the camera and I'll take, you know, go up to the person, and they knew there would be knowing that I was taking their photograph and if somebody didn't want to have their photo taken, you know, they did this or that basically put my camera down so they knew it was him trying to sneak something. I go like that at smile and walk way and give them their space, but when somebody would generally, when I'm photographing somebody, there is an interaction there and they know I'm photographed him and I'll talk to me don't understand a word that I'm saying, but I'll still talk to him and and when I'm photographing generally and I get a great subject, then I will move, perhaps move the subject, go from different angles, I'll get what I need to get I'll get it in the can, the photo that I want, and then I'll do variations on that, I'll go from the side, I'll change angle or I'll ask them sometimes, can you move over just a little bit? I mean, I won't start off that way because that might might not work then then you might be not not going to get away from here, but I get the photo and then all the sudden you go okay come this way come that when I've got some images of that as well of people that I actually moved around for you know she was kind like in a moment do you take the picture and then approach her or are you just know I'm jug she she didn't know that I was I don't think she knew that I was taken a photo yeah just kind of take it yeah, yeah yeah and nor did this elephant you know st three people it's it's just such an amazing uh, spot this this is what this is what I love this is indian transportation there there's no one driving this bus thes they're just I mean, these are things that you could do kind of a sub folder of what you do. I mean, this is like transportation and I think this is absolutely hysterical because you've got this and then all of a sudden you have this and it's like how the heck I mean it's unbelievable this mass of whatever it is will get from point a to point b it might break down three or four times, but it'll eventually get there which to me is absolutely astounding is one of the joys of travels to see things like that look at the perspective of the women uh compared to that andi I love portrait of people I mean people's faces are absolutely amazing and you know the yeah it's just such a wonderful wonderful wait wait, wait tio just to see things and then you know you're interacting with people too and a lot of times I'm photographing somebody then there buddy comes along and says, what about me? And it becomes like I feel like I got ah portrait studio in india this was a situation where I saw this and I saw all these pigeons coming in and coming out and coming in and coming out and it was the light was terrible I thought, well, if I came back like a five o'clock I could get some pretty interesting images there so I came back five or six hundred exactly. No, it was when the light was beautiful and again these are birds I just shut the heck out of this so I got the one that that I like you know where the lights going how do you know where the life? Well, I know because you can kind of get an idea of where the sun is and where the sun is going and I use that trick it's hard to do here but basically if you put your hands out four fingers equals an hour and when the sun is too where the sun is going toe be behind something whether it's a mountain with his hillary I'm like that is an hour so I can kind of go one hour so I get an idea of where the sun is going toe went in the sun is going to set and you know I know that generally when the sun setting and that's when you get the I mean generally always you get the most beautiful light of that day and hopefully you're going to get, you know, tremendous depth of color with, you know, yellow light or red lighter or uh, things like that and you know, it has a lot to do with you know, the light can change color tremendously, you know? This woman is in very diffused light, but because of the color is it's very contrast e almost and I don't think it would work quite as well with a contrast the white on her one of the great things that's traveling is when you get invited into someone's house and in third world countries that happens to me quite often and once you get into into a house you kind of have permission to photograph because otherwise they probably wouldn't allow you that I mean, obviously I'm a photographer I'm going to be shooting and it's just it's just really, really wonderful when someone you know trust you and there you know, you're in their house and this you know what one of the incredible joys of photography depth of field again this is something one of the many things you have to think about when you're shooting what do you want to focus? What don't you want to focus and for this particular image I didn't want, you know, I just wanted the background focus I didn't want everything and focus people watching I mean that great travel photography is you've got to be a great people watcher and always be ready to go with it, you know, always be ready to see amazing things that were going to happen you know? You have some like that we've got to be quick or you have something like this that's not going anywhere it's just going to stand there but you always have all these different images well, I love eyes the eyes are so expressive eyes and hands that's why I really work on with people, eyes and hands and I will always ask people I'm not always but I will sometimes asked them try to subtly figure out how to get with their hands in different spots without over directing them storms are phenomenal, you know, just wonderful wonderful light this is an area where there were there were putting the tar on the road so there's a lot of smoke and steam and when I was photographing this guy here there was this burning tar and I was out there and I was photographing him for about ten minutes and it came back to the car and I was just coughing for about fifteen the's poor poor people and just finding these really spectacular places and hoping there'll be clouds and when it works you're like yeah this is working now this snake didn't worry me whatsoever but this woman scared the living hell out of it she was it was really while yeah and you know, people have asked me do I pay people I've paid her e I was ready to give her anything she wanted it was a question that came up what do you do when people approach and ask you for money when you're taking pictures of them well I try to avoid that I don't like paying people for pictures I want a minute third world countries all carry a lot of power bars with me and give people power bars and this and that but the idea of it just puts it in a different realm when you're paying them if you go to the tourist areas that's all though otherwise you know they're hip to that whole thing and if you don't pay him you know you're not going to get the picture taken but if you go to remote areas or areas e I try not to pay him I generally don't pay people to have their photos taken on and on on that thought as well don't ever show somebody the back of your camera after the first picture when you're showing when you're doing a portrait because if you do do that every time it clicks they're going to say let me see let me see let me see finish what you're doing finished taking the pictures of the people and then you can show him but if you do that in between you're going to be going crazy yeah it's just you're not going to be able to effectively photograph because they're immediately going to want you this is in northern india beautiful police go lay that uh actually north away that if I had enough time I could tell you amazing stories this was might have about fifteen minutes okay but we got namibia goto we do thiss was photographed and northern india's well near the near tibet and uh my camera on a tripod I was traveling my son and he had a little sony point and shoot and the sun was setting and I didn't get enough zap out of the color of the flight so I had him underneath the prayer flags and popped up one of his flash on and it did that about ten times got an image that I that I liked um again it's all about light I mean it really is I mean any image when you when you have the advantage of having a little spartz of light and it's just it's all about light I mean you just you really have to have those three things combined you have to have the content that composition in the light they have to be together and when you get that it's like fantastic not the easiest thing available light this is one of those great things you can do now with these new cameras with these amazing image stabilization is go into a temple and shoot at an eighth of a second and get sharp images and this was in a buddhist temple in india and you could bring tripods in but I could and when you're shooting really hold the camera I mean that one the one handed photographer just not not going to work, you know really you know, put your you know really hold it, hold it really, really tight and then squeeze the shutter and just make sure that you got it got it correctly. The other thing I do a lot is what I'm shooting at a low shutter speed I'll shoot five or sixty image ages to bracket me staying steady. So in other words, if I'm shooting a quarter of a second an eighth of a second or something like that, I'll shoot five or six a real mom five or six and one of them I guarantees the sharpest of all those so it's just another way of doing that this next image I was had a uh dance in uh in india and there was just fluorescent lights is the most horrible light in the world there's nothing I could have done and like I said, I always bring a stroll with me I hardly ever that's the first time I've used it literally in three years but I had my strom and there's a white door there so I shot it a low shutter speed and I sent the strobe to the door so it bounced and diffuse and worked out pretty well I think it looks like you know somewhat natural when you have something that you're shooting trying to do is many variations I think we've talked about that before but again both with still life and with with people I mean I shot this woman coming and going and I found this one to be more effective uh image then then the other one this is like a procession of I have known a lot of times when you're traveling you have no idea what the hell's going on but it's still really interesting I mean, they were coming down and I have no idea what they were celebrating, what they were arguing with or whatever but it was still very very interesting situation and again this guy was kind of a tough looking dude but I had no problem photograph and he had had no issues whatsoever against any time you can get to an area where there's fishing there's always material there it's you know you've got to be there when the lightest right when the fish come in but it works out really well it's in the fish when the fishermen go on when they come back is always worth when the good light is going back right here this image here was taken at noon, but it was in shadow and it was in a market and you know, when it's noon I'm inside if I can be inside, you know I'm with diffused light at any time you get diffused light it's actually really pretty pretty soft light a great experiment free to do is to go outside at noon, photograph your friend in noon sun and then going to shadow and photograph and looking at the screen and see the difference and it's just amazing and if you want to even take it to a different level, photograph something early morning photograph that same thing whether it's a person or an object or whatever make try to keep it is consistent is you can photograph at noon and then photograph is the sun is going down and you'll see right there you'll see ok, there is such different light and the importance of what light does um this is kind of an example of different angles kind of a different look you're not moving that far, but when you have a great subject and you can get home when you're editing and you can go okay here's my choice I have a choice I don't have to just shoot they use this image aiken either use this this and this or maybe it's a great trip tick maybe if I put these together this would be really spectacular it just gives you so much more that you can work with then just taking one picture and leaving this guy I took this picture I like the image and he was kind of a willing candidate and I move this guy around I had him all over this temple and when he was totally totally good with it children are great to photograph. I started doing that like I told you before a long, long time ago and the interactions what's going on behind it you know, it's always very interesting. I think I said, you know, a lot of times I get too close, but sometimes when you back up there's other stories going on with that this was the bedouin groups in india where they'll go to an area, they'll live in that area and just stay there till the animals eagle the grass then they'll gather up everything and then they take off and they're actually a very happy group of people the thing that digital does now that is really fantastic, you know, you should in color, but the conversion to black and white it's so good these days and you can produce these amazing black and white images from from that I mean, the old days, as you know, you did choose, you're going to shoot color black or white, and that was that was an option you had to make. Now you're shooting something and you look at it. What I tried to do is say, is the color helping or hindering this image? What is how and it's so simple to do now that you can just do it and see some of these images? I'm not sure which one I like better. This image in particular, I definitely like the black and white more than the color one that was kind of an obvious type of thing, but a lot of them, you know, it's a really good way to compare that and you might want to do a black white portfolio. I mean, the images that you want to do for your particular project, that each and every one of you are going to do when you leave here. Yes, yes, yes, yes, there might be a a black boy image. It might be all black white images again, the different, uh and, you know, it's, just sometimes you just have to go back and forth. I'm not so sure that, um, this is such a great example of how incredible sensors are these days in these cameras on dh this is you've got incredible highlights, an amazing shadow detail that your encompassing all this information and you just want to make sure that you've got a you know, you get enough exposure in there to determine that you really don't care if things are a little bit blown out outside just want to make sure that that gentleman inside has enough density into him, that you're not gonna have toe pull out a thin area and produce noise. Um, the question always have question, ok, bring it on. I've got this one that I've been holding on to for a while, and I don't know that we're going to get a great time to ask it, but I think it's a great question, they ask it now, kathy s it doesn't look like you shoot many festivals, but if so, when you're at a group environment like that, how do you handle being in places where they're huge crowds of photographers? Yeah, um, actually, in india, I did shoot quite a few festivals on dh, there are a lot of photographers, so it was not the easiest thing in the world to do. I think that when you get to the more remote areas you're there with mostly the local photographers that it's a little bit easier to deal with and then you know a lot of but um you know ah just just had no envision just figure out what you want and don't worry about anybody else just don't worry about the other photographers just just shoot the way you want to shoot again let's keep going uh this image here was the image that I think I told that I shot four hundred millimeter lens of thirty of the second and the last photo plus a note to photo photo pluses ago in new york city of the javits center they blew this thing up five stories high I mean sure each pixel is about that big but it's pretty neat to see an image is that this right here? It's a festival and this was a festival I had a driver and he said, you go to festival and I go yeah, that I said how many hours of those four hours the festival I want great, like eight hours later arrived in the festival and I got there and there was just a bunch of naked dudes hitting each other with sticks I still to this day and no idea of what this festival's about but it's pretty interesting and I got all these really wild images this will be the last image in the book that I do an indian this guy had of riel so weird thing is a real elegance to it is he just had a, um you know, you felt so sorry for you see these people kind of moving around and just I don't know it just this for some reason this image uh, struck may because because of his I don't know the only thing I'd say is elegance of the whole thing um namibia, uh my news project I'm doing this for children's organization and the's namibia's an amazing, amazing country absolutely fantastic desert landscape incredible people, himba tribes and this woman is from the him a tribe. I found a amazing guide there which was just so huge because this guy knew where to go, where no tourists when he was a himba himself in him the tribe is this woman's in the tribe and this this woman running is the him a drive. The women never bathed there's no water there so they go through life without ever bathing in the men or the other baby either and they are all self sufficient. They have, you know they have cows and they, you know, they run miles, miles and miles they heard there were cows and uh it's just a fantastic fantastic place and he was an mba and knew all this people so I was in the village with them there was there was him the kind of quote unquote village that all the tourists went to and we went there and I said, boss, I said that was his name I said I'd never want to go to one of these ok, you're going to take me to your friends right? Because I just want to show you just want to say um so it was just it was just a great trip and I went camping for about nine days and all sorts of great things this was just by the, you know, photographing near a fishing area with the birds and I'll do this rabbit relic relatively quickly but what that body of water is a notion or yeah, ok and again getting close, getting getting really close up and uh uh this was an old diamond mine that the germans had does I lived in a minute that they just left there's still a diamond industry there um it's a very remote area the second least populated country per kilometer on earth I think mongolia's the first, so when I first got there I just read in a car on myself and most of the roads were just gravel and you could drive for literally six hours without seeing a person it zebras but that that's about it and it was very, very interesting but but but the tires will pop like crazy and I had a tire pop and I was down to four tires and this is kind of a funny story puts it in perspective at a show in new york and I was showing the work on namibia and I was talking to a woman and I said yeah, you know, if my other tire popped I'd be on the side of the road for like eight hours and I said, what do you do? And she goes well, I just got back from afghanistan shooting that with that tire story let's not even worry about that everything is perspective so these were, you know, just areas this is the himba area in this photograph in people trying to get, you know, shooting one aspect and then trying to get a little bit closer to somebody else and then trying toe work work with people as much as he can different angles here's another angle kind of looking from down below. And, uh, this woman here was the one that was running before and it's so funny because they were running and should carry her sneakers should run with that shoes and then when she got to with the animals where she put her ship's and how important is it for you in a country where you don't speak the language sounds like most of them for you to find that guide on how do you do that for some you know something that's ever done that before? Like is there a processor? Well, the way I got tio namibia was I was teaching a workshop in tuscany and somebody from namibia contacted me about taking the workshop and I said forget my workshop I've been dying to go to namibia we help me and she was the one that helped me with that um india I got really comfortable in india and I would just try to find some driver if if a driver I would never drive in india nor should any of you but if a driver drove me around and uh uh I liked him uh he seemed knowledgeable I'd say what are you doing for the next two weeks? And I am and he's getting a lot more money with me that if he was hanging around so that's that's kind of the process there is also you know, really good guides that there are around that you khun thatyou confined I mean everyone's got a guy no matter where you are you could find it we'll find a guy sometimes you know tour books are good for that they'll say you know, if you want to go like a new zealand, if you want to go, you know, climate in glacier here, the different places. Climate glacier in namibia, there's, a lot of different tour groups there, but it's really nice to it's. Wonderful. I mean, many, many times I'm in an area where I don't have any idea what they're talking about. They have no idea what I'm talking about and it's. Not that I'm uncomfortable doing that. But it's really nice when you can communicate with the people, because and, uh, because, you know, here's, somebody that's, so opposite tow us. I mean, they're you know, they're living in this really remote area. They have no idea what news is going on or what's going on. And to actually talk to him, surprises the heck out of you. Some of the insight that they have.