Total days in the field: 11
Total number of exposures: 1654
Average number of images per day: 118
First edit: 100
Final edit: Don’t know yet
I’ve been distracted. Talks, lectures, interviews, and workshop preparation. Eight hours of upcoming class time, seven new presentations, plus the homework and reviews. Three new Blurb posts on my radar. Deadlines. Two require interviews. One written, one verbal. The van needs oil. I dream of buying a condo in Puerto Natales. I wake lacking the fortitude for another workout. I read on the patio in 18 degrees—still, calm, weak winter sun. My coffee goes cold in minutes, and I need to flip the cushion to avoid sitting on frost. I think about my mother and the poetry she loved.
Patagonia by the numbers.
I must admit, this place haunts me. In a good way, but not all good things come without penalty. There is a residue after a trip like this, regardless of how busy one might be. Almost a depression of sorts. Family creeps in, jobs, duties, and the unexpected, but the moments from the trip linger around the periphery of the current reality. These trips remind you of who you really are. All the creative things you keep buried come alive and demand to be dealt with.
I’m not a heavy shooter. Never have been. I remember shoots where I tallied fifty rolls, and my counterpart tripled that. There are times I wish I were a heavy shooter. More to choose from. But more difficult to edit and store. Tradeoffs. Always tradeoffs. A friend is a former editor. He called and told me about an assignment I was on years ago. For his magazine. “We kept telling the photographer to shoot more!” he said. “More, more, more.” Shooting yourself into shape, if you will. But I’ve never worked this way.
I know I only need a few. That’s it. Just a few. Most modern people can only skim now. Distracted like fruit flies. Those beloved coffee-table books of yesteryear are mostly for decoration now. Sitting in perfectly manicured stacks to accentuate the table or chairs. If your audience is the general public, you can throw out all that photography talk and get back to the basics: time and attention. What story are you trying to tell, and why would they care?
Photography is personal.
When I make pictures, I think of myself. What do I want? You do not exist. This is a skill, and one I’m thrilled to have. Making for the other is a slippery slope. We now have multiple generations who only know making for the other, and I feel sorry for them. Kinda. Those fruit flies are fickle. They like shiny and new and silly and useless. They consume like white sharks. Never stopping, and no matter how much they eat, they are never satisfied. Digital food turning to ash in their mouths. Ignore them. Make something that’s yours. Make you. And be happy with the solitude. You don’t need your work to be seen. That’s a tired old story born from the wallets of conmen.
Staring out at the sunrise with frozen breath shooting out in front, there is only one remaining desire. A life of purpose. That burning void in your innermost center. The red pill. The rest is smoke and mirrors, but at times it is impossible to escape the facade. That’s why trips like this matter. They crush the facade in a blaze of dust and tread and cold sweat-frozen fingers, wind-chapped faces, and endless questions of how we got here. The beauty and pain of mystery and doubt. In the end, there is only the final number, give or take. What feels right and what tells the story. Nothing more. Not one ounce of fat.
Comments 20
Kodak Tri-X. Rough numbers. USD.
Average rolls a day: 4
Total rolls of film: 46
Total cost including film + chemistry w/DIY developing and scanning: $680
Total cost including film + lab scanning + lad development at a popular CA location: $2,200
X-ray damage on the flight home: priceless
My typo and swapped list order in line five above will haunt me forever.
Author
No regrets! Thanks for writing!
Author
Ah, not to mention the TIME for DIY developing and scanning. That should run about $300 per hour, so the lab looks better and better, especially when passing the cost on the client at 3x the rate.
Author
I started to get base fog on my TMZ before departing for digital. Sucks but semi-expected. It’s why Salgado went digital, after all.
With the rocketing price of silver, add another 30% to that Tri-X.
Author
It’s crazy. My wife uses a lot of silver, and it’s crushing the jewelry world.
I have to say that cost in US is crazy. Roll for Trix in Poland 11USD, developing and 20mpx lab scan 13USD, so 24USD ler roll in total. DIY much less!
Author
I used to pay about $30 per roll for process, scan and proof but all that was passed on to the client at a sizable markup. DIY is great, just not realistic when shooting jobs. At least today, with things like using a digi cam to copy negatives, there are better options.
Photography is personal…. Man – spot on. I would even risk saying – joy, happiness are personal too. Making for the other is a buck driven concept in a buck focused world and can be deadly if you can’t detach from it when you should. So many lost the ability, or even never experienced one in the first place – the joy and importance of creating just for themselves. No clients, no middlemen, no heart failure.
I know a guy, a good guy, a good painter [he used to be] who became a heavy drinker, lost the ability to paint, and as a consequence – stopped creating altogether – because he’d been in a permanent client chase mode. When I asked him, why he didn’t create for himself, he snapped: “Are you crazy?” He downed a shot of vodka. “It would make no f&8*g sense!”
Author
I used to work with photographers who ONLY did jobs. We got along fine, and partly because they didn’t want what I wanted and vice versa.
When I was working an office job, I would dread coming back to regular life in a cubicle. This went away when I started working as a photographer, but sometimes I miss the feeling that holidays and travel are more magical than everyday. Maybe I just love my life, maybe the rest of the world got a little too tainted by social networks, maybe both, so I may have to try Patagonia someday, just to check.
Also, I wish I could shoot as little as you. It’s a bad habit from my early days of working as a photographer, I could never shave it off…
Author
Not sure why I’ve never been a heavy shooter. Well, check that. I know initially. I didn’t have any money for film. But this job has given me perspective about what I need or don’t need.
Am I interpreting your writing correctly; 1500+ snaps culled in first edit?
That sounds brutal, but you’ve been doing your specific process for a lot of years.
I need to get it through my head that the dslr does not need feeding after 36 frames. One should try and
Be a little thoughtful about what gets captured, but I’m stuck in film mode even when the digital is in my hands.
After my surgery I will turn over new leaves.
9 days away now. I’ve got a small background vibration of anxiety going.
I’m trying to decide if I can swing Albania in October.
I’ve enjoyed the last few posts.
That film math up above is a bit sobering.
Author
Well, I shot 1654 images total and the first edit was to 100, but that’s including all the peripheral things I need for Blurb, blog and more. The real edit will be in the 30-40 pictures total.
Author
And yes, get your ass to Albania. It’s awesome.
Some good thoughts here. I’m not a heavy shooter myself, and sometimes when I review my pictures, I wish I’d work the scene more. I can’t imagine having to go through like 3-5K photos from a single trip/event. Mindboggling!
Author
I think 3-5k is not much for a lot of folks. I’ve seen people shoot 20gb in one morning session. It’s pure crazy.
I don’t know what a heavy shooter is. First time I’ve heard the term. My early years were on a shoe string budget and even when covering a wedding for which I would get paid I was selective about pressing the shutter. The cost of film and processing was a factor but I wasn’t intentionally trying to be frugal; I was just concentrating on catching special moments that represent the whole.
What it gave me over time was the ability to anticipate where I needed to be when something was about to happen. Pressing the shutter only when it felt right and, more often than not, getting the proverbial precise moment.
I thought all photographers were that way… What did I know; I was just an idealistic kid with a camera always in his hand.
Fast forward to today, I’ve been all digital for the past two decades. I still shoot the same way. I’m still raising the camera to my eye when I see something about to happen and still pressing the shutter only when it feels right. Still trying to get those special moments that best represent the scene rather than cover the entire scene.
My perfect shoot would be to capture a single moment in time that represents the entire essence of the scene. I’ve never done that and don’t expect I ever will. But that would really be something if I did.
Author
Ya, a heavy shooter is someone who burns a lot of film or files. Some people need this to get to the best version of themselves, and often clients want you to shoot more, so there are times when it’s required. I think most people who came from the film era are better at managing things, while those that came up with digital, and the mentality that shooting more was always a good thing, have more trouble with controlling themselves.