Life on the Road

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“…you know, there are certain things
that people say you shouldn't talk about, because it makes people nervous.

The things that make us uncomfortable in public are a person who wishes to speak of what is beautiful. That makes everybody a little bit nervous, because many of us keep this jaded, cynical separateness with the world, because we're cautious. We're cautious. How many people do you know whose crying out is for intimacy? They want to be known. They want to be touched. But they can't make that intimate connection without being vulnerable. You have to be vulnerable in order to achieve this exchange of intimacy. And you can't be vulnerable unless you can trust the situation. And what we're learning, many of us, is the world is not trustworthy enough for you to be vulnerable to it and gain that intimacy.” Barry Lopez in conversation with Bill Moyers. 

So, there you have it.

Intimacy. Vulnerability. Beauty.

Lopez went on to say that the challenge is to confront darkness, confront the horrors that we see around us, to not yield our vulnerability, and yet find the strength, the courage, to open ourselves to the world and to those around us. Ironically, Lopez goes on to quote Martin Buber, a philosopher whose work I found less than exciting, and yet in light of Lopez’s comments, someone to whom I am closer than I expected I could ever be. Buber argues that there are three fundamental relationships – I-it – the relationship we have with objects, I-you – the relationship with have with people on a casual level – a business associate or classmate for example – and then I-Thou – for those of you who believe in god, this is the depth of intimacy that characterizes the relationship between humans and the divine. It is for Buber also the relationship we have with our significant other when the relationship works. Intimacy. Vulnerability. Beauty.

Lopez has traveled the earth and has seen first hand many horrors. When Moyers asked him why he has not become embittered by what he has seen, Lopez responded:

“…we have a way of talking about beauty as though beauty were only skin deep. But real beauty is so deep you have to move into darkness in order to understand what beauty is.

If you try to separate these two things, you're in trouble. What you must do is build a system of civilization that is as aware of darkness as it is of beauty. I would feel on thin ice if the world were nothing but beauty.

I need to remind myself by going to Auschwitz or by going to Afghanistan or by going to Northern Sumatra after the Boxing Day tsunami, and talking to people. And, you know, you used this word. And I use it all the time, too. Hope. How can we maintain our sense of hope when to go deep into the news is to encounter the kind of terror that can traumatize a person for the rest of their life? I think
hope is a space holder that word. It's not the false word, but it's just- for me, it's just holding a place for another word to turn up.”

In the NyghtFalcon world, we speak about the Shrek Effect – better known as the apparent contradiction that lives so boldly in our work. Best embodied in a question – “How can such, jaded, bitter, angry, hard-assed people turn out such beautiful, emotionally deep, work?” – Lopez’s words provide both the answer and the insight.

It is the darkness that has possessed each of us, that Gothic streak that runs through each of us, that fundamental awareness of the passage of time and the immanence of death, that have ripped us open. Ripped us open not in sadness, though there is often a sadness in our work, but because we see the world in its most ordinary for what it can be and
yet is. Despite, the death. The suffering. The inhumanity that is every where about us. Because despite it all, in a world where all things die, each of us, every moment of every day, seek love. Seek intimacy. Vulnerability. Beauty. And we do so without fear.

This is why our work is different. This is why we are who we are.

So, here’s to the Shrek Effect. Here’s to continued courage. Here’s to vulnerability and to intimacy. Here’s to life

Save for the light from the LCD of my laptop, it is still vey dark. And very early. Even the snow, unusual for North Carolina at this time of year, has yet to lighten the darkness. The cats have been fed. Anaximander, white save for gray left on his head and tail, has decided I am worthy of attention this morning, and he keeps pressing his head into my hand as I type. Or try to. Cats are that way, after all.

Coffee is brewing and its smoky darkness already rises around me. As I always do at this time of the darkened morning, I imagine what it will be like to savor that first sip.

end of the year is less than two weeks away. There is a flurry of activity here as we rush to complete as much work as we can. One hundred and twenty five prints leave Monday for Honduras – our largest single print order in our history – to be sold by Royal Caribbean at the Port of Roatan – and many small orders that will be Christmas presents still wait to be printed.

It has been a memorable year here. Changes abound. New web sites. New equipment. New partners. New places we have worked. From the canyons north of Cedar City, Utah, to the remote village of Punta Gorda, Roatan, Honduras, there has been no end to interesting places. We missed a military coup by a matter of hours, and we survived a Chrysler Sebring convertible on a snow and ice covered mountain road high in the mountains of Utah. More memories that we will add to those we have gathered over the past seven years.

For me, personally, it was a good year as well. I received my third Image of the Day on One Model Place for a photo I did as part of a series with isis, my muse. Five selections from other series were published on Michelle7. One, isis and Demeter, was the “cover” in September. My thanks to isis, Demeter and Innana, for sharing their beauty with me. My work was featured on NextCat, Behance and on Deviant Art I was part of seven features. Not bad all in all.

It was a good year for the firm as well. FJ Westcott named us to its Top 100 Endorsed Pros. X-Rite named us to its Coloratti. There were new partnerships with Chimera, Pocket Wizard, Sekonic, and Induro. Our work was on the cover of several different publications. Traffic on the web site tripled to more than 100,000. We were discovered in Asia – fully fifteen percent of our hits come from China now.

There will be more changes in 2010. Among them: Videos will come to the blog and to the seminar site. We will become a content delivery company. While photography will remain our core business, with Blue Flame 6 Productions, video production will become as important and increasingly, our work will be targeted toward mobile devices. We even have a Canon camcorder that will let us chronicle our life on the road for this blog. This week we released our 2009 portfolio still video formatted – and downloadable from our site – in formats for BlackBerry, iPod, iPhone, and Palm Treo Pro smart phones. Our goal is to deliver content any where in the world, on demand.

Coffee’s ready. Sun is nearly up. Time to head out. From all of us here at NyghtFalcon, best wishes for 2010 and our thanks for all you have given us this year.

We are pleased to announce our new seminar program.

Please be patient while the video loads.

I couldn’t possibly tell you when I first discovered Irving Penn. Honestly, I haven’t a clue. I was never one to look at the name below a photo, not until I became a photographer, so I can’t tell you that from my early days I even knew who he was. I didn’t. I just know that, like George Hurrell, he has always been in my memory and there isn’t a single photo I have taken that in some way he has not influenced.

I can’t point to a particular photo of his and say that this one image more than any other has touched me or shaped my style. I can’t say that just one of his images became the seminal link between his work and what has now become the NyghtFalcon style. I can’t. But he is there. I see it in the way I see the world. I feel it in the way I hold my camera. I am aware of it when I think about how I will approach a still life, a model, a building….. Somehow he taught me how to see into people, into things, into the world around me and this ability to disarm and be disarmed is why we say that the art of photography is learning to see the world again for the first time.

Perhaps that’s what I did and perhaps that is how I first discovered Penn.

Up the street from us lived a couple who had no children. We adopted them and I confess that once I discovered my “Uncle” Howie’s penchant for magazine subscriptions I spent hours and hours on the steps to their cellar consumed in images. When I was old enough, I was allowed to actually go into the cellar and there lost myself in an endless collection of magazines. I am sure it was there that I found Penn and Avedon and Smith and Parks.

Howie died more than twenty years ago and I left Connecticut and the cellar filled with magazines while still in my teens. Yet, it seems that I have carried with me all these years those photographs Irving Penn left for me to find – like the fabled trail of crumbs that enabled me to find my way home, my way to the person I always should have been. It has been a long road – one filled with more twists and turns and dark nyghts than I care to remember. And here I am. Where I always should have been.

Thank you, Irving Penn, for helping me find my way home.

NyghtFalcon and One Model Place to Hold First Annual Model-ween

On Friday, October 30, NyghtFalcon and One Model Place will jointly host a Halloween version of "In the Click". The quarterly "In the Click" event creates an open, safe environment in which photographers and models can work together to build their respective portfolios. This event will have a Halloween theme and the model with the best costume will be awarded a prize. The event is from 6:00 to 9:00 PM at Bonamanzee Conference and Event Center. Directions to Bonamanzee are below.

There will be an open shoot before the formal event from 3:00 to 5:30 PM. Models over 18 may remain after the event ends at 9:00 PM and work with photographers till 11:00 PM.

While lingerie is allowed for this shoot, garments cannot be see-through. As always, implied, partial or full-nudes are not allowed.

The event is free. Photographers are asked to tip models. We recommend $20 for 20 minutes.

Directions to the Conference Center:Bonamanzee is located just north off Highway 220, take the Madison – Wentworth exit. At the end of the ramp, take Rt. 704 towards Wentworth. The Conference Center is 2.9 miles from the 704 exit just outside of the town, Madison. The entrance sign on the left on Rt. 704 just after Painter Rd. Bonamanzee is 25 Minutes North of Greensboro and the Piedmont Triad International Airport.

We do not know much about the details of Atget’s life. Some of the more general facts survive. We know, for example, that he was born in Bordeaux in 1856. An orphan, Atget was brought up by an uncle. While still very young he went to sea as cabin boy. These experiences made a deep impression upon him and shaped his vision of the world – we know that in his later years he recalled to his friends many of the events from this period.
Atget’s path to a career as a photographer was rather circuitous. As a young man, after leaving the merchant marine, he pursued a career on the stage. He never rose to the stages of Paris as far as we know and his career was limited to the provinces and later the suburbs of Paris. Apparently, he was not physically suited for the parts offered to leading men and so he found himself usually playing the villain’s part. Eventually, he left the theater and decided to become a painter. Despite the fact that he continued to paint for some time, this too proved lacking. But his experience as a painter was enough to provide the foundation for his work as an art photographer.

For thirty years, Atget pursued one subject, Paris. He did so with equipment that we today would find primitive. He worked without benefit of light or color meters and his 18cm x 24cm view camera lacked all the features we now take for granted. The lens on his camera was likely quite simple and had a fixed focal length. The glass plates he used offered little consistency since the emulsion on the glass varied greatly. As one web author wrote –

“Because the emulsion used then were non-color-sensitive, he never used filters. For interior work, he used no artificial light of any sort but availed himself always of natural light. Any shutter used with the lens was at most a simple bulb shutter. Atget made a practice of closing down to a small aperture if conditions permitted. Only when he photographed people did he open up the diaphragm and focus critically on the center of interest, leaving the background out of focus. It is doubtful if his lens could have been faster than 1/11 at its widest opening. It would seem from the photographs themselves that most of them were taken during the summer months when the sun’s actinic rays are stronger. Also most of the human figures of these series are posed to the extent that Atget probably asked them ‘to hold still a moment.’”

Yet, his scenes from the life of Paris remain profoundly breathtaking and even though the Paris we know is now very different, his work is still moving and still speaks to us about the heart of the city.

Atget enjoyed little success during his life time.  Some prominent Parisians of the time - Luc-Olivier-Merson  and the playwright Victorien Sardou – did purchase his work but his success was otherwise minimal. Before the World War of 1914-1918, Atget was gradually winning recognition and financial support. The First World War brought an end to that and save for the purchase of some of his plates by the archives of the Palais Royale, his lived a simple, impoverished life. In 1927 his death passed with little notice.

The vast body of Atget’s work focuses not upon the extraordinary, but upon Paris itself. The day to day. That which others viewed to be mundane. Atget’s ability to see the world again for the first time, even in the most mundane of moments and events, discloses to those who see his work, the depth and beauty that is always hidden right before our eyes. We need only open our eyes to see the world again. It is this ability to see the extraordinary in the mundane, this ability to see past the everyday, which resonates to those of us at NyghtFalcon.

These days it seems to be the first question we are asked – “Who influenced you?” In the end, it isn’t as easy a question to answer as it might seem. The people who influenced us are both numerous and diverse. So are the traditions. For example, I didn’t realize until relatively recently how critical my training in philosophy has been to the development of the NyghtFalcon style. But that is for another time and another essay. And there is the influence of Rembrandt everywhere in our work. But we shall talk about him another time as well

My interest in photographing the world around me didn’t start in earnest until nearly eight years ago. A corporate executive, I spent much of my time in Europe and, given all the issues I was wrestling with during that period of my life, I frequently found myself on the streets well past midnyght with my first digital camera in my hand. As any one who knows anything about photography can tell you, nyght photography is never easy. I had no idea that that was true. I knew nothing about photography, nothing. It didn’t take long to begin to figure things out.

One nyght, I stood in front of the window of an antique shop. On the other side of the glass was a stunning vase. I raised my camera, took aim, and pressed the shutter. The flash sent blinding light off the glass and back into my face. The photo suffered the same fate. I paused, considered the situation, then turned the flash off. No light this time, but the camera twisted in my hand because the exposure was long. Once again, nothing. The third time I cradled the camera in the space between my index finger and thumb then anchored the elbow of my left arm against my waist. This time, I got what I wanted. And so the NyghtFalcon tradition began to be formed.

In the fall of 2002, I left the corporate world. For the first time in my life, I knew I couldn’t go back to that life. The pattern of doing photography at nyght continued in earnest. JD Milazzo, now a Senior Photographer and partner in the firm, became a constant companion. We never knew where we would go, how long we would be, save for the fact that when dawn came, we would call it a nyght and spend the day looking at what we had done. We drifted across the back roads of North Carolina and even went as far as Savannah and Charleston. We always took the road others never travel – and so we still do now – that’s how we found Silver Reef and Wells-Fargo.

Still wrestling with my past, I created my first fine art series that fall. It was called “Tea and Sympathy” after Janis Ian’s song by the same name. One day, for reasons that escape me, I sent it to a magazine called “Life Imitating Art.” I was shocked when I learned that the series would be published. At that point, I knew no matter what happened, I would never return to the life I had.

Not long after, I became a free lancer for a local paper. My first assignments were photographing people at bars on Saturday nyghts. As I have been known to say, everything I learned about photography I learned photographing drunks. I learned how to deal with difficult people, how to hold my ground, how to take a potentially difficult situation and turn it into a good photo, and how to get really good candid photos. The list goes on. Most of all, I learned how to adjust to the demands of the moment and how to get what the client wanted no matter what I had to do to get it. This is at the core of what we do today. Any where, any time, world class photography

Without a doubt, as you might now expect, we are most influenced by photojournalists. Among them we count Atget, Cartier-Bresson, Gordon Parks, Avedon, Eugene Smith, and Walker Evans. In the next article in this series we will look at how the early photojournalists have influenced our style.

Induro, the company that makes our tripods, has featured us on their blog. To view the story, click here - http://blog.indurogear.com/?p=482

 

Falcon, NyghtFalcon’s Senior Partner, said “We are honored to be part of such a select group. Our partnership with Westcott has enabled us to add another dimension to our work. We look forward to a long and mutually profitable relationship with Westcott.”