my Desmond Tutu photo on the cover of his new autobiography

My wonderful agency passed along some photographs from Desmond Tutu's 80th birthday and the release of his autobiography that occurred last week in Capetown, South Africa at a church that was once at the center of resistance against the apartheid government. The publishers chose an image I shot of Tutu a few years ago for the cover.




photos courtesy of PQ Blackwell Publishers

I don't see photo shoots as opportunities as much as they are experiences, brief moments to be lived through and hopefully changed from in some way or another. What I remember about photographing Desmond Tutu at the tail end of a two day conference was that he had a plane to catch and I had to push a little to even have him sit for me. He was in an enormous hurry and stood there with this beatific smile on his face as he yelled at me to finish up and get a move on so he could get to the airport. There wasn't any malice in his voice and he patted me on the back and gave me that same smile as he rushed out of the tiny, makeshift studio I had spent hours crafting. As far as I know, he caught his plane, and I learned that it's always worth that extra, sometimes uncomfortable effort to approach a subject, even if their time is brief.

While it was enormously gratifying to get a copy of his autobiography with one of those photographs selected as the cover image, the more exciting thing was the enormous fresco of Reverend Tutu painted by local artists based on the image, that will hang on the wall in one of his charities in South Africa.

The title of this post is in reference to the video below, which shows Rev. Tutu getting his groove on during his birthday celebration. The video also shows him checking out the painting (apparently he thought the artist didn't paint his nose large enough) and Bono from U2 singing to him.

Like many photographers (I suspect), I often keep a camera with a wide angle lens near me while in the car. These images I take rarely serve as more than an instinctual record of scenes that catch my eye as people and places hurtle past. In rare cases, I'm surprised by the visual successes of one of these photos.

The photos here come from my trip earlier this month to Kerala and were all taken from the backseat of an SUV. The purpose of the trip was to visit family there and subsequently we were traveling quite a bit most days. I'm still sorting through the images and waiting on my film to be developed and hope to share a few more images.

It's difficult to measure progress as a photographer. The whole idea of becoming "better" once one masters the technical aspect is a murky path with many dead-ends and no end point. I don't think it happens in the actual act of photography, when one raises the camera. By then, decisions have already been made about where you're standing and where you're going to point the camera. It's the accumulated knowledge, life experience, aesthetic judgements and maybe what you had for breakfast that day that brought you to that spot and it's this awareness (minus the breakfast part) that is going to guide the photo that you take.

With that thought, I've been looking through my assignments and personal projects from this year and thinking about where I've made steps forward, and where there has perhaps been a wrong turn made, or simple a bit of idling in place. I'm not sure the details of the conclusions I reached are that important, but I do hope the larger realizations might be helpful.

First, it took much too long for me to realize this personally, but the most damaging idea for a photographer is following a preconceived notions of the kind of photographer one is "supposed to be". This trap that imposes limits and a rigid framework on your work. Truth is, on a basic level we all get to choose what kind of photographs to make, it's completely our choice and our responsibility to figure out what we want to say. While external influences exist, those best, most important photos are the ones that reflect upon the photographer himself in an intimate, thoughtful way. Also, I get to shoot for myself, even on assignment, and the satisfaction of a job well done needs to come from within, not from others. As for looking at my own progress, I see it most infused in the assignments where I let go of some of my own faulty framework of what a photograph should be and use the time to try to discover something new I hadn't seen before.

Included here are 15 photographs that I'm happy about from 2010. I'm deeply thankful for the editors at publications like The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Markets, Washingtonian, Guardian Weekend, Smithsonian and Forbes who have entrusted me with work and encouraged finding creative, new approaches to stories and portraits.

I'm also thankful for the individuals who let me into their homes, or just gave me a few minutes of undivided attention for conversation and photos. It feels just plain lucky that I got to meet people like Chris Hitchens, Elizabeth Warren, Ken Feinberg and Anas Aremeyaw Anas in the course of my work.

I'm also thankful to have my work recognized in American Photography 26, FotoWeek DC, Mamiya and American Photo magazine for recognizing my work. And to Mike Davis, for fine-tuned guidance and softly spoken profound thoughts about photography.

Here's to a productive new year, moving ever forward down this path.

Ted Sorensen, 1928-2010

I had the good fortune to hear Ted Sorensen speak about the Cuban Missile Crisis during a conference a couple of years ago. Even better, he agreed to sit for a quick portrait in a studio I had set up back stage. His eyesight wasn't great and I directed him with a gentle hand on his immaculate dark suit to have him face the camera.

As we talked, an organizer from the conference came over and greeted him. Mr. Sorensen turned to her, gave her a bright smile, and I made this picture.

Closed Car Dealership in Maryland

I'm happy to be writing again after giving the blog the summer off as I shot some great jobs, dove into some personal projects and had a restful week of (a little bit of) work and play in Paris.

I finally scanned in the last of my 91 days project. The work got more challenging as it went on and I tried to make some sense of the 30x30 square that makes up my backyard.

I was also thrilled to find out that my Closed Car Dealerships story will be displayed at FotoWeek DC. In my years of entering photojournalism contests, I never received as much as an Honorable Mention and it's both satisfying and a little strange that my work was recognized in the "Fine Art" category, and shot on film. I'm still working hard on this project, making long drives and enlisting the help of my favorite freelance photo editor/guru to make sense of it and some other work for a new portfolio. Back soon with more.