There are few places in the world where you can walk in the space of 15 minutes from an Oasis, lush pasture, past a waterfall, to a sandy beach, a lake and then within minutes be in a barren and inhospitable desert. Egypt is such a place and a couple of Saturdays ago I replaced my normal Friday dawn foray to the camel market with a trip to an area south west of Cairo called Al Fayoum.

Only two hours from Cairo by road, Fayoum is renowned for its year-round warm climate, numerous water wheels (introduced by the Ptolemies in the 3rd century) and lush agricultural land. Cotton, clover, tomatoes, medicinal plants and fruit are all grown here.

The main purpose of the trip had been to shoot the sunrise at Egypt’s only waterfalls, about 40 kms west of Fayoum. My Egyptian friends had been encouraging me for months to go to see these “spectacular” phenomenon and they can be a persuasive lot.  The light, they told me would be magical – and a fair recompense for the 3.30am start.

I guess I should have listened to my inner alarm bells. As you will see from the images the waterfalls are really more of a water tumble – in total probably only about a 20 foot drop, hidden from the dawn by the steep walls of the small river.

The light was flat and the location a challenge to find a good angle form which to shoot.  This disappointment was compounded by getting there about 30 minutes late despite having driven like Jensen Button in the pitch dark because one of them was nearly an hour late! One of the delights about Egypt is that a national characteristic seems to be a wanton lack of the “time and space” planning gene. Now for someone like me who spent 13 years in the Army, this is the short-cut to high blood pressure, a short fuse and broken friendships.

That said we got some fun images of the lake and the old wooden fishing vessels, and then headed west about 20 minutes into the desert to photograph some wonderful landscape shots for an hour or so.

We then drove to the pottery village of Nazla which is extraordinary – sat deep in a natural depression, with “modern”, and I use the word loosely here, villages all the way around the lip. It is a place that time has passed by.

A small collection of potters whose straw huts and method of making hand made pots and urns are unchanged for thousands of years, work tirelessly at their craft. It felt like stepping onto a film set, and if Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had walked around the corner  dressed as Anthony and Cleopatra I probably wouldn’t have been at all surprised – other than the fact that Richard Burton is dead and Elizabeth Taylor hardly moves at all these days that is!

The potters were happy for us to take pictures, and would even re-work a gourd or a pot whilst we sought different angles or different light. It was however challenging shooting. Very confined spaces, dark interiors, with harsh exterior light, and without a flash, it was difficult to get a good balanced exposure. Stupidly I had left my speedlite at the top of the hill, in the car, as I was trying to carry as little as possible whilst I wandered around the village.

It was a real lesson in having to find ways around the exposure challenges, including the use of impromptu reflectors and diffusers made from old sheets or a piece of old white wood. I played around too with handholding lowers shutter speeds on a wide angle lens, using a new more composed grip. I got some pleasing results too.

As we headed home we saw these men fanning out masses of orange flowers in a small yard to be dried by the sun. We drove down the short track, and in true Egyptian style, they stopped their work and welcomed us with open arms. The light was fading fast, but they laughed, joked, threw flowers at each other as we snapped away. Everything that we suggested they do, they seized upon as an opportunity for laughter. When we bought out our pogo printer they were mesmerized, and of course another round of posing and tomfoolery was initiated. I am constantly heartened by the warmth and good nature of the Egyptians. Their openness, their interest in anything non-Egyptian and their delight at the simplest of gifts – a small pogo print for example – never ceases to warm the heart and leave you feeling upbeat at the end of a tiring day.

We left them promising to return. In fact i am keen to go back and spend the day there soon as I think they will make an interesting photo essay subject.

What had started as a frustrating day of missed opportunity, had become rich with hospitality and opportunity after opportunity.  Fayoum is a photographers paradise, and high on my list for inclusion in a workshop that we are planning for late 2010/early 2011, to be led  - we hope – by a world renown travel photographer. More of that in due course. You can see the other images – especially the landscape and the pottery village in the gallery.

I don’t know if you are anything like me, but if I am really uncomfortable with something I always find an excuse to put it off or give something else a higher priority. I justify to myself that this is really me being efficient –  giving focus to the “must do” tasks and deprioritizing the “should do” or “could do” tasks to another day. After all they are going to take time to master, right? And time is the biggest challenge for me wth a full time job, a young family and endless travel. Of course the truth is that I am just making excuses. I like to master things, and so of course if there is something that I can’t do, then I find excuses as to why I haven’t done it yet!

Off-camera flash and using reflectors has been just such a topic. For many of you,  your eyebrows will now be twitching in surprise! “But they’re easy”, I hear you saying! But for many of us – and by “us” I mean the keen hobbyist with aspirations but also self-recognition that they are at the beginning of their photographic journey – some of these topics seem more complex or tricky. I had convinced myself that off- camera flash required expensive triggers, probably a couple of other photographers and that this was an area of photography better tackled by full time photographers. I have always liked the purity of natural light and the freedom it gives me to just have my camera, a couple of spare batteries or CF cards and go wandering off down any alley that took my fancy to explore what was there.

Well I finally confronted this ridiculous state of affairs yesterday. A friend of ours, the beautiful Maha Youssef wanted some pictures for her new business as a professional make-up artist and also a couple of portraits of herself. I decided that this would be the right time to try and experiment with off-camera flash and the use of reflectors. I found an old merchants palace in the heart of old Islamic Cairo, and together with Karim Soliman and Mohammed AbdelWaheb – two wonderful friends and very talented Cairo based photographers – we went and did a mini-workshop.

I was right about one thing – we did need another pair of hands, reflectors and some radio triggers, but Karim and Mohammed kindly donated these for the day. In fact I discovered that not being able to afford pocket wizards was ot a barrier to this whole approach. They had a great set of Chinese made radio triggers that worked brilliantly and were as cheap as chips and of course, relfectors are not expensive or can even be home-made! I had made sure that I had already previously visited the location at the same time of day to see what the sun would be doing, what internal light would be available and what the best external locations might be for some natural light portraits too. So now there was no excuse but to dive in and experiment.

We started with the outside shots, partly to get Maha relaxed in front of the camera and partly because I knew I could do these type of portraits without any real assistance. In the first two images included here, I just used an on-camera flash for a little bit of fill to create a slightly enhanced catch-light. Maha was incredibly patient, and as the first part of the day progressed she became more relaxed and used to being in-front of the lens, rather than just doing the make-up for models, or brides who would be the ones having their photograph taken. I also took a couple of fun shots from across the other side of the building of Maha peeking out of one of the small ornate windows too (see the third image below)!

After an hour or so we moved inside, and started to use the radio triggers and the second speedlight. We kept it very simple. A key light and a fill light each at about 45 degrees to Maha. Karim showed me how to set up the key light and a fill-light/back-light. We were shooting with the strong midday sun streaming in through the ornate fret-work of the old palace windows,  but after a couple of test shots we found the right settings, and then I was left to my own devices to direct Maha and to make the composition as I saw fit.

The final part of the morning, we moved to a wonderful window seat, where Maha could look down on the closed courtyard below. The ligth reflecting off the walls was sufficient that we did not need flash, but as the perfect excuse to use a reflector to help balance the light. It was fun to play with the gold, silver and white sides of the reflector and to understand the difference it made in tonal quality, the strength of the light and the subsequent exposure values. You can see some of the images from the indoor seesion at the bottom of the post.

All in all a fun day – I learnt that actually the use of off-camera flash and reflectors, really could not be easier. Why was I getting so worried in the first place? Sure you need to understand the setting of your Speedlight, and to experiment a little with the manual settings and TTL settings, but I am kicking myself now for waiting so long. It has incouraged me to experiment more and to think about using off-camera flash with gels to complement the main key light, especially in some of the samll rural workshops that I love to shoot, where the lighting variances can be so tricky.

My thanks to Maha Youssef for her patience and for letting us turn what she thought would be a couple of quick portraits into a mini-workshop and photo-shoot. If you are in Egypt and need a make-up artist then you can contact her through her Facebook group, Glamour Eyes. My thank also to Karim Soliman and Mohammed AbdelWahab – two wonderful young professional talents whose new company, the Photographer Agency, is already making companies in Cairo beat a path to their door. You can find out more on their facebook group Photographer Agency or their website, www.ph-agency.com

You can see the rest of the images from the shoot in the gallery, by clicking on this link, here

Following my post yesterday on 10 tops tips for panning I thought I had better go and swallow some of my own medicine and practice some panning.

I had a free couple of hours this morning, so I went out into the chaos that is mid-morning Cairo, and stood on a street corner for a couple of hours – always an interesting experience! Other than getting a couple of locals insisting that I moved location once or twice, the morning went reasonably well.

The fruits of my labour are below. Not perfect by a long measure, but an improvement on before and certainly I feel that I am getting more comfortable with the positioning of the subject in the panning frame, selecting the right shutter speed and finally, today, some progress on the focusing. In the six images below you can see how I start out very shaky – literally – with off centre framing. As the morning progresses I get in closer and manage to get the subject more central and the focus more accurate. By the end of the morning – the 6th shot below of the red vespa – I had bought together the combination of background, subject, shutter speed and framing and was even getting a little cocky and tilting the camera to try and vary the composition.

It was great fun and time well spent, although surprisingly tiring and it made me realize that this is a technique that I have only just scratched the surface of! Lots more practice required!

Lets me say right out of the gate that I have not mastered panning and I am certainly in no position to teach others how to do panning – as these images clearly show! So why, many of you are now asking, have I got the gall to write a blog post that suggests I have?  It either means I have an ego the size of some 3rd world country’s debt, or the fall from the camel last week has finally given substance to what many of you suspected for some time.

Well the truth is, I think I may have mastered the theory…just not its application. For those of you who were kind enough to read my previous posts on the outcome of my review with Ami Vitale, you could say I have mastered the science of panning, just not the art. But since photogrpahy is all about applying the science to create the art, I thought I would continue my trend of sharing the nuggets of advice that I am given as I journey to become a more competent photographer, but also in the hope that it might prove useful information for you and others.

When I was doing some research online, I found lots of information about the basics of panning spread over a wide range of sources, but no concise or easily digestible set of tips – no “a-ha” ideas that would be some secret sauce to successful panning. In fact the most useful tip I got was not from the web at all, but from Matt Brandon (aka The Digital Trekker), who was humble enough to admit that it was Gavin Gough whom had given him the idea!

So as I researched, I jotted down a quick checklist to help improve my chances, because the one thing that all the different sources agreed on was that getting panning right was definitely an art and required lots of practice. So here is the list I collated, pompously entitled “10 tips for mastering panning”, in the vein hope that it might help with my SEO ranking!

1. Go on a 1 day workshop with “Mr Panning”, Gavin Gough. Okay so not all of us can get to Bangkok in the next few months to be able to make this happen, but I did run my checklist by Gavin, and with his blessing, I have included much of his wisdom in this post.
2. Camera Setting: Set the camera to shutter priority mode: TV mode (Canon) or S (Nikon).
3. Shutter Speed: Use the following starting shutter speeds as a guide for different types of panning:

People running – about 1/15th sec.
People walking – about 1/8th sec (NB watch out for increased camera shake!)
Horses/donkey/animals/bicycles etc about 1/15th sec -1/25th sec depending on speed
Motorbikes/Tuk-Tuks/Scooters/Camels about 1/30th sec

4. Drive Mode: Set to multiple exposure if you have it (like a motor-wind). This will allow you to not “lock-up” at the critical moment of pressing the shutter, although you will end up with 20-30 frames – which if you are anything like me, you then can delete about 20-30 of them immediately – but it will increase your chances of getting a great shot especially early on in your panning experience.
5. Stance: This was the tip that Matt Brandon/Gavin Gough shared. Stand at 90 degrees to the line the subject will travel along, with your feet firm. Then rotate your upper body around to where the subject will start from. It feels a little awkward, but as you pan with the subject, so the arc of travel is smooth all the way through the panning, without an awkward twist midway through.
6. Composition: The subject can either be in the centre of frame , although off-centre can work just as well with panning, but then you need to adjust the focusing point to ensure that it’s going to fall over the subject as you’re panning. So move it to the left or the right of the frame, depending on where you think the subject will be. It’s often easier to get the subject in the centre though.
7. Background selection. Choose an interesting background with good colors that will create a nice blurred effect in te final image to help re-inforce the motion in your shot. If you look at my two camel pictures, the image with the red truck is more interesting, but unfortunately the focus is not as good as the second image.
8. Exposure: If you’re shooting against a pre-defined background with consistent lighting then switch to Manual and get the exposure correct by just pointing the camera at the scene where you want to catch the panned object and taking a meter reading. Take a frame, check histogram and adjust manual exposure. Otherwise adjust your exposure as normal after taking some test shots.
9 Focus. If you set the exposure manually, pre-focus and switch to manual focus then all you have to worry about is getting the person/camel/scooter in the frame. Otherwise use the AI servo mode on Canon or the continuous servo AF on a Nikon.
10.Dry Run. Do a couple of dry runs without actually taking a shot. Gavin told me that  ”It’s that “click” that makes people stop moving the camera. Think back to cricket nets, golf driving-range or tennis coaching, it’s all in the follow-through.” This is where the stance and the drive mode can really help, as you can swing through in a smooth arc and not worry about judging the critical moment.

The other piece of wisdom which you will recognise as soon as you go and try is that panning is REALLY HARD! So it does require lots and lots of practise.

So how did I get on?

Well you can see from the images included in this post that I had mixed results. Whilst sometimes I got my panning or my shutter speed right, I then forgot about my composition! The subject is either too early in the frame, there are other distracting elements or the background does not really work or I needed to crop more tightly to get a sense of more involvement.

I did learn that camels bob up and down as they run forwards, which make great panning shots almost impossible as you have two axis of motion to contend with! Secondly the faster a subject is moving (and I am not suggesting that Formula 1 racing cars are therefore the easiest thing to shoot!), the smoother my panning was. For example, the motorbike shots seem to be consistently better in terms of focus and panning effect, whereas the one of the camel herder running is less compelling as there is some camera shake involved too. Whilst the red truck in the second shot of the camel make a much more dynamic picture, the people in the foreground left distract and the camel needs sharper focus. In the first camel picture the sense of motion is there, but now the background is wrong and perhaps the point of focus should have been more on the camel rider rather than the camel.

Ho hum! It’s all part of the learning experience.

The best outcome  though of this was that my confidence increased enormously.  If ever you needed proof that obsessing about technique does not lead to great photographs then my morning session doing panning is living proof! Whilst understanding the “science” or theory helped to ensure the “mystique” of great panning was removed, it reinforced the realization that to get really good at this was going to require practice. A lot of practice!

This is the 4^th and final part of the series that shares the insight, advice and feedback that I got from Ami Vitale, during my recent Compelling Image portfolio review. What started out with the intention of being 4 short posts, ended up as 4 essays – sorry about that. Got kind of inspired and passionate about what I learned!

If you haven’t read the others, please do check out: Slowing down with Ami Vitale, Being there with Ami Vitale and The science and art of photography with Ami Vitale. I have tried to keep the feedback pertinent to anyone interested in photography, rather than a personal soapbox for my meager talents!

This last post is the advice I received about how to make my images – predominately travel reportage – more compelling, by recognizing my strengths and using them to differentiate my work. I am going to jump right in and share two final images that Ami and I discussed during the review and use them to illustrate the advice she gave me.

The first is the Man in the Barbershop. If you have read the 3 previous posts then this image was one of the rare occasions where I had managed to combine these 3 concepts – albeit unknowingly! But the result is pleasing. Of all the images, this was the one that Ami got really excited about, because she immediately saw a story being told. As a picture it was well composed, well lit, but the subject matter is unusual and also lighthearted so grabs your attention. It is a compelling image because it has highlighted the unusual in the usual. It has presented a different side to Cairo than seen by most tourists. It has also played to my strengths (Ami’s perspective, not mine!) of looking for light and strong composition, getting in close, forming a relationship with the subject all of which allows a more personal dimension to be shown in the final image.

It is not unique a situation – you will find other barber shops in other parts of the world where a similar story can be told. But it works because it has the marriage of the science and art of photography. It works because there is a mixture of observation and communication and lastly it  is an image that stands alone, but also could be part of a wider story and encourages you to find out about more of that story.

In fact we talked about this image quite a lot in the review, and ended up agreeing that I should look at the whole subject of how traditional barber shops play a role in Egyptian community life as a photo essay project. Oddly for a culture so masculine and traditional, there is an interesting bridge to the more “metro-sexual” western world where this sort of male grooming is seen as a modern phenomenon, yet here we have proof that it is part of a traditional culture.

This success in creating this compelling image is in contrast to the second image – Shepherd in Sakara. This was – is – one of my favorite images because it represents Egyptian daily life to me and the combination of light, subject matter and composition give it an almost biblical quality. I had deliberately shot these shepherds heading home at the end of the day, knowing that the sun would be low, the dust cloud prominent and by shooting the subjects going away from me, I though this re-enforced the story of the end of the day.

Ami’s perspective was different, and surprised me a little. Whilst she acknowledged the great light, and understood the composition, she felt the image could have been better. As a travel image it was not iconic because it was not complete – it didn’t provide the viewer with a complete story. You are left with questions, rather than insight. Travel photography she reminded me is not about the location, but in seeing whichever location you are in with fresh eyes. It is about being intimate with the culture, the people and the environment. It is about seeing beyond the surface to the real story underneath. Travel photography is as much about humanity as it is about location.

Of course she was viewing this image with objective and fresh eyes, and not perhaps the blind conviction and attachment that I had formed around it. As she talked my perception of the “quality” of the image began to unravel! Perhaps  if I had included less of the green bush, or waited for the concrete slab in the bottom centre to be out of shot, then this would have made that particular composition more compelling. But Ami suggested also that to really tell this story, to really capture the location, the humanity and the environment,  that perhaps I should be taking an entirely different image.

If the story was about the unchanged tradition of the shepherd in Egypt, or the return home after a long day out with the sheep, or the “biblical” aspect of daily life, then this image only told part of the story. Perhaps, she offered, a shot of them coming towards me might suggest more of a welcome home after a long day or even to take a shot in the morning when they are going out. Whilst the image is good, there is an opportunity to tell a more complete story and create a more compelling image. Ami’s ability to immerse herself in her subject’s environment, to find the unusual in the usual, to tell the story with compassion and insight is what marks her out as one of the truly great modern photographers. Her suggestion then to return to the same place, perhaps with a translator, and getting introduced to the shepherds, spending a day with them, has to be taken seriously. As soon as she said it my mind raced with ideas and concepts, of opportunities and potential stories. So simple an idea, but potentially so profound and impact.

What this review process has done for me is open my eyes to how I approach photography and what I look for. Ami has helped me see past the perceived barriers of technique or experience; she has motivated me to get out there, experiment, have fun and to relax. Bu she has also really inspired me to think about what the story is I want to tell and to go and create photo essays that really tell those stories.

Everyone that I have talked to about Ami has the same opinion. She is the real deal. A compassionate big-hearted individual, with a capacity to relate to people and their lives. As a photojournalist and now multimedia journalist she is the master of her craft. The very high regard that photo editors, fellow professional humanitarian,freelance photographers, as well as her clients and students, hold her in is a reflection of who she is and how she goes about creating compelling and memorable images. Without trying to be overly sycophantic, It has been a true and rare privilege to have such dedicated feedback from someone whom I hold in very high regard and who has truly inspired me.

If you want to undergo a similar experience to me, then Ami still has some vacancies for personal one on one reviews available through The Compelling Image Website. I suspect though that the vacancies won’t be there for long!

This is the third post in a series of four, that shares some of the detailed advice, critique and recommendations that Ami Vitale gave me during a Compelling Image Portfolio Review. Do read the other posts – Slowing Down and Having a reason to be there, because Ami’s advice is so helpful, motivating and objective, that as a result of that one hour process with her I now think completely differently about how I approach visual storytelling, and I suspect there may be some nuggets of information that you might find useful too.

This post is all about how she advised me to overcome the technical frustrations and lack of experience that I believed were holding me back.

Books such as Within the Frame by David duChemin, have helped people like me – hobbyists, amateurs, semi-pros whatever label you choose – to understand the criticality of the right blend of technical mastery (the craft) and vision – the ability to use that craft visually to express a compelling story. This mix of craft and vision is David’s sweet-spot, but I also find it helpful to think of it in a slightly different way – the science and art of photography respectively.

For me, the science of photography is the tools, techniques and rules of photography. This might be the film speed, the aperture, the lens selected, the shutter-speed chosen or the camera body used, for example. It might be the use of hot shoe flash to enhance a light source or knowing that selecting f2.8 over f16 will have an immediate effect on depth of field, color tone, the available shutter speed and the ISO required to ensure the correct exposure. Other examples might include: understanding how to meter correctly, or how to do panning shots, or what the rule of thirds is. They are all important because they allow you to execute the image technically. And there is a fairly exhaustive list that covers “how” to take the picture.

The art of photography though is the “Why to” take the picture. What aesthetic am I trying to convey with this image? What is the story we are telling and what is the right context to show? Once these are clear then you work on the “how to” – the science of executing that vision. Having mastery over the science allows you the freedom and confidence to experiment, to break the rules, to innovate. Photographers are creative by nature and use different visual effects to tell their story. They use light, contrast, color, pattern, motion, stability; They capture emotion, sentiment, empathy, compassion, humanity. They achieve this by having the skill, experience and confidence that mastery of the craft allows them. But it is the “why” they are taking that picture that will be differentiating.

In my review with Ami, we spent over 50% of our time exploring the “why” – what aesthetic was a I creating? what story was I telling? why was I there? Why had I composed the shot in that way, or selected that lens? Only towards the end of our time together did we explore where I thought my technique was holding me back or frustrating me. As I began to discuss this with her,  I realized that I was being very “left brain” about how I took my images. I kept looking at everything from a very logical, procedural approach, worrying about technique. It was limiting me. For example I would think that when I had mastered metering complex lighting, only then could I advance to take shots that could utilize this technique or when I had mastered the technical aspects of panning, only then I could focus on getting great dynamic or motion shots. Ami helped me to reverse that perspective and see the technical challenges in the context of the artistic need. Most of my barriers, I realized were self-imposed. Whilst I thought I was squandering the great photographic opportunities provided to me by living in Cairo because technically I was not competent enough, ironically the reality was that I was squandering them because I was not thinking artistically. I wasn’t focused on the humanity, the story telling, the environment or the aesthetics. Until I do that, my images would not be differentiating.

If we look at the image of the young boy in a mosque (above left), you can see that the highlights are a little blown out on his shirt. It spoils what otherwise would be a very powerful image. I let the excitement of the moment – discovering this boy sitting in a shaft of light with all the others around him focusing on getting to evening prayers – get the better of me. Although I bracketed and tried different types of metering to cover my bases, I wasn’t really in full control. I was doing  what the books told me to do, and I understood why I had to do that but my actions were not based on experience or deep understanding. But when it mattered, under pressure, it wasn’t second nature, and so inevitably my image needed rescuing in Lightroom afterwards – and even then I cant really overcome that clipping. Ami’s cure for this was very simple. Just get to the point where the camera is just an extension of you. Every time you leave the house take your camera with you. It doesn’t always have to be a pro DSLR, but ideally take the camera you want to become really familiar with, put an unobtrusive lens on it and go a out and take photos. So, if you are going to the supermarket, take the camera with you and practice. Seems silly? If I told you that this is exactly what Ami does when she goes to the supermarket, would that help it sound less silly? When you no longer have to look up from the viewfinder to change the settings, or to think about how something will look or feel, then you are able to free yourself up to think about “why” you are there, what you are trying to show with your image and to ensure that the tools are there just to execute your vision.

In the second image of the praying Muslim man and his daughter, I included it in the review because I wanted advice. I knew it was not an image that I would normally share as there were aspects of it that just didn’t work, but I was frustrated that I had thought so hard about the technique and still not pulled the image off. I had visualized precisely what I wanted to take. A story that showed contrasts: dynamic motion of the blur showing movement versus the static nature of the child; the devotion of religion contrasting with the innocence of youth; the additional contrast of male and female, young and old. Potentially I had achieved some of those ideas, yet we can all see that the image doesn’t really work.

Ami’s advice was not to beat myself up over the technique. Although she added it is a little unusual for someone after a only a year of photography to be able to visualize in my head the image as clearly as I had, sometimes the image just isn’t there to be taken. In this case there were a number of factors that suggested this.

Firstly, the black bag was a major distraction. It would have mattered not where I stood, from which side or which angle, the bag would still have been there and still impacting on the image’s aesthetic. I should probably have just walked away and tried taking the image on another day.

Secondly the viewpoint itself created problems. By looking down on the subject, I have allowed a horizontal line to cross the man’s head, and one to go through his body. Both are dominant and distracting. Had I moved my camera to floor level, I would have also had a solid red backdrop from the curtain, less distraction from the carpet and removed those horizontal lines. This would have created a much more interesting picture – but of course the issue of the black bag would still have been there.

Thirdly with the exception of the man that was purposely blurred, the rest of the image was not tack sharp. Hand holding a long lens in low light will always prove a challenge, but Ami suggested sitting on the floor and using my body and crossed legs as a human tripod to create some stability or leaning against a pillar – anything to help stabilize the lens.

So overcoming technical issues and frustration at my lack of craft really boiled down to 4 things:

• Practise – every day if possible. If you are uncomfortable about a particular issue, go out and experiment and try and work out how to overcome it yourself.
• Know your strengths – Use these to your advantage but don’t neglect the areas that need work
• Relax – Don’t fixate on the technical issues and don’t be too hard on yourself
• Make your camera an extension of you. Take it with you everywhere.

Ami’s ability to pinpoint where I was technically and what the real barriers to progressing was nothing short of startling. She had me completely sussed within minutes! By nature I am a bit of a perfectionist and get easily frustrated when technique – the science – lets me down, because I know that for me, having the critical building blocks of the science mastered is what will allow me to really begin to express my art. I am beginning to understand that there is no secret sauce that full time photographers get given a recipe of or that there is not some secret code or answer that is shrouded in some sort of masonic secrecy. Their secret sauce is a tireless daily focus on their craft, but also ensuring that they apply as equal diligence to stimulating, nurturing and feeding their more artistic, visionary, creative side.

Ami, like others I have read or listened to, was in no way diluting the importance of that familiarity or comfort with the technology or the technique. But she is someone that – as many others will confirm – has not studied all the rules or the techniques, and is certainly not bound by them. Her focus is on the aesthetic, on telling the story. She shoots instinctively, and her advice to me was to stop thinking too much about the technical side and concentrate more on why my images should move people.

Now the title is a bit cheeky and perhaps slightly misleading. Whilst I am sure there are many of us who can think of many good reasons to want to work with Ami Vitale in person, in this case I am referring to the second main theme that Ami identified as part of my Compelling Image Portfolio review to help me improve . You can read more about how this happened and what it involved in my recent post here. However in this post I want to focus on some specific advice and critiques that Ami gave me. Most of what follows is my reflections on our conversation, and not Ami’s direct words!

Put simply, the advice was: Have a reason to be there. Tell their story.

Although Ami’s advice  was simple it still needs a little further explanation, so let me expand a little. The first thing that we need to do is to pick a subject and then tell the story of that subject. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, but in the act of creating a subject we create a focus for our images and the expectation that there is a story to be told. Maybe you don’t know the whole story yet, maybe the images are part of the journey. Maybe you have an idea, maybe a feeling or maybe an emotion that you are trying to share. But one thing is for sure is that the image that will really tell the story – the image that really connects with people – will come because you were acutely aware of the context. The story could be a single image or it could be a photo-essay – if it is the latter each image needs to stand on its own. But either way you can’t tell a story without a context. You can’t have the context without knowing what you are there to capture.

You are not just some accidental tourist, hoping to be in the right place at the right time to shoot the next iteration of Steve McCurry’s Afghan girl. This I suggest is missing the point. I am sure we have all done it. Day 1 of a workshop or holiday in a new country, over-run by potentially iconic shots and furiously snapping away as we tick off National Geographic’s next cover image in our mind. The reality though is that this scatter gun approach seldom yields result – it is akin to “being jack of all trades and master of none”.

And when we are out of synch with our environment then we are not really able to see where the real stories are. We haven’t tuned into the people around us and our part in their story.  As a result the images don’t quite hit the mark. They might be technically good, you might be a master of your craft but they still look like Marco Ryan images, not Ami Vitale images right?

For example let’s look at my picture of the “Egyptian man in the coffee shop” (left). A nice portrait, well executed and there is clearly a connection between us. Ami’s critique about the picture itself (good connection, great light, simple clean background, nice composition) were all positive and helpful, but, she suggested, had I shown him drinking coffee, or puffing on a sheesha pipe or a cigarette, the image would have had more impact. As submitted, you would never know where this man was sitting or what his story was – at least not from the picture. In fact, as Ami gently reminded me, the title tells you more than the picture – lovely though the light and tonal range might be! You’d never guess from this that he was a retired guide for the Pyramids would you? If I had slowed down, chosen my composition better, I could have given you a hint of  that story –  the tip of the great Pyramid was just visible through the window (out of shot) to the right. Why didn’t I include it? For once it was not because I was in a rush (see my last post about slowing down) – quite the opposite. I was probably just fixated on getting a good catchlight or the right tones or demonstrating my perceived mastery of the rule of thirds. The truth is I can’t remember. And that says it all doesn’t it? In effect I was in super-tourist mode (albeit a slightly over-camera’d tourist in this case!) and because I lacked a reason to be there – because I lacked a framework or context for the story – the picture became anonymous.

One of the ingredients that differentiates Ami’s images from, say, mine is that everything she shoots is contextual. Her images are compelling because they are a result of observation, communication, understanding and seeing the subject in the context of the story. She ALWAYS has a reason for being there. She always knows her story, her angle. And my images? Well if  I am brutally honest, they are probably still opportunistic. I kid myself that I am there for a reason – for example maybe I wanted to create a “Blurb” book as a Christmas present on “The Artisans of Old Cairo” –  but the reality is I am doing tick-box photo-journalism. In fact not even that.Tick box photo-tourism. It is not that the images are bad, it’s just that they are not great and they fail to really connect because I am not clear about what story I am trying to tell.

Because the real story is theirs, not mine. The real reason to be there is to capture some aspect of humanity, to tell their story. Travel photography is, Ami suggested, not about the location, but about being intimate with a place or a subject; seeing beyond the simple, and seeing things that create complexity in your images. You can only do that by knowing why you are there and what it is that you are trying to convey with your images.

Ami used my image of the father and son working on their lathe in their workshop (left) as dusk approaches, to amplify her point. As it stands it is a nice image. Good use of light, not bad composition, with some context provided by the use of contrast (both figurative contrast with the people’s difference in age and literal contrast with the use of light and shade) and with a a couple of things you might change (the red and blue bag behind the boy’s head for example). Overall then a pretty decent image. Yet it could be so much more. It is, Ami suggested, an image with potential. And here is is why.

It has the potential to tell an amazing story, but it loses impact because  it is unclear what  that story is. Is it about struggle? Is it about working conditions? Child labour? What does this image tell you? It loses impact because I haven’t provided the context and as a result it is unclear what story it is that I am trying to tell.

Lets pretend for a second that I had delivered an iconic image about manual labour. That starts to suggest a story. Manual labour, Ami suggested running with the example, is a powerful symbol of man’s toil for survival. It gives us a glimpse into the past, and a single portrait like this is like a single quotation: Interesting in its own right, perhaps even memorable, but when seen in context as part of a story, it can be so much more. In the (non existent) iconic version of the  image we are expressing the humanity of man’s struggle for survival. We have context. We have a reason to be there. Yet in my  actual version (left), because I lacked that reason, that context, so the story is unclear and the impact of the image is diluted.

Ami’s questions challenged my assumptions, yet inspired me to think differently. “What is the story then?”, she asked. It is simply not clear. Is it their suffering that they had no other work option or is this a joyous image of a father and son free to run their own family business? Is it the sheer daily graft that leaves them exhausted at the end of the day covered in oil? What were they making? What detail could we have shown that would have made this image more compelling? If I had spent all day there, would I have different images to show for it? What story would I be able to tell? Does my image express the humanity of the situation?

For example, Cairo is the second most densely populated city in the world, after Mexico City, with a population of about 26 million people. Yet this image doesn’t begin to convey that or to provide that context. Perhaps it was not meant to, but if you now view this image in that context, suddenly things change. It now becomes perhaps about their own private space, their room to breath amongst the suffocating urban sprawl. Perhaps the  toil and the light are symbolic of other small tradesmen struggling to eek an existence against the poverty that Cairo’s scale has made such an unhappy bedfellow? The message then is that the context and story are inextricably linked.

Of course I had seen this so differently before talking with Ami. Ami made me realise that having a reason to be there – having clarity about the story that you are telling – makes it relevant not just for me, but for them. Perhaps if I had gone there with a translator or learnt a phrase that explained why I was there, they might have posed or allowed me to spend the afternoon with them observing their life. Having the reason to be there then – that understanding of what story it is that you are there to tell – allows us to find the common ground, to be able to create the environment in which their story can emerge, rather than just being an observer with a lens.We become facilitators of them expressing their story not authors of how they fit into our story. Go back, she said. Go back to the same place time and time again with a story in mind. Spend time understanding the context, and then use that insight to create a compelling image, because in the case of the father and son above, the potential is there.

In my last post, I shared Ami’s advice on the need to slow down and immerse yourself in the environment. Each of the themes she raised with me  are strong enough to stand alone. Each one when applied independently will raise your game and improve your images. The real impact though happens when these themes get combined. Then we begin to see where the potential to improve really lies.

The next post will cover how to step-change our technical ability and craft, as well as overcoming technical issues and frustrations – again using a couple of images form the review set to illustrate Ami’s insight and advice. I count myself blessed to have been given such great mentoring. I would love it if, having read and enjoyed this, you felt motivated to share this with others. Please tweet, post on facebook, digg or whatever your social network preference is.

In my previous post, The Compelling Image Portfolio review with Ami Vitale , I detailed how it felt to have my portfolio reviewed by world renown photographer Ami Vitale, the process that we went through during the review and what I took away from the session. This is first in a series of posts that explore in more detail some of the key messages, themes and detailed critique that Ami shared with me. I hope that you find this as powerful as I did at the time, though I suspect hearing it second hand from me in the written word is less compelling than in a conversation first hand with Ami!

I  am, like many of you, short of time. I cram my photography onto the end of a 80-90 hour working week, a young family and endless long-haul travel. Photography is my release mechanism, and it allows me to relax. Well up to the point where I don’t get frustrated by messing up a potentially great image or oversleeping and missing the golden hour of light after dawn! I think I am – well, at least up until the review – pretty good at taking the time to build a relationship with my photo subjects – in fact it was one of the things that Ami said I did well. I am comfortable getting in close with a short lens, or sitting in a coffee shop for an hour or two chatting in my limited Arabic or letting them take pictures of me with a point and shoot. The type of images I had shown her suggested a real rapport had been built with the subjects. So I was feeling pretty good about that!

But Ami had a very simple yet profound piece of advice. Slow Down. I mean REALLY slow down. Still More. Much More. The images I had shown her were competent – one or two were even really good – but by giving myself more time to think, to create a context and to see in camera what I always saw too clearly afterwards in Lightroom, would make a massive difference to my images. In fact, she suggested,  I was probably putting pressure on myself because I thought that unless I had a great image from that week’s outing, I was squandering opportunities. And of course I was, but not as I thought because of lack of technical competency, but because I wasn’t giving myself the time – the space – to really see the potential around me. Slowing down, would transform how I saw things, she promised.

Let me illustrate this with one of my images that we reviewed – The Matriarch (top left). I thought I had done a pretty good job of slowing down. I had put the camera down, engaged the man in the background about his work engraving Sheesha pipes. I had even discovered that the woman in the picture had no English but some basic Italian, was the mother of the man in the background and two others out of shot. I showed her some of my pictures on my iPhone and then she asked me to take her picture.

So here I was with a heaven sent opportunity and what did I do? By Ami’s standards I rushed. I shot maybe 50 frames, bracketing for the light and changing my position for different compositions. But in the image I submitted for review, I didn’t take enough time to look around inside the frame. If I had I would have spotted the lines coming out of the matriarch’s head and the big v-shaped gap between mother and son that, although he is looking at her, is actually creating a divide between them. Whilst Ami commented that the light was good, we both knew that used differently, it could have created a superb image.

And Ami’s suggestion? Since the woman had asked for her photo to be taken, then you set the pace. Slow down, take the time to look at where you want her to sit. Ask her to move so that you get the composition and light you want. Say something like “I want this to be a beautiful picture, so let me just figure out the best place to put you so we make the best use of the avilable light.” Bingo. Suddenly the light is less difficult to meter, perhaps more dramatic; the lines coming out of her head have disappeared; the relationship is more contextual and it is likely with the re-framing that the space between them would be more intimate. Suddenly this is the image I had visualized (but failed to execute!) of the proud mother, hard working son, wonderful light and environmental portrait all wrapped up.

Now compare that image with two other images of the same subject, shot at the same time (middle left and bottom left), but where I remember taking more time and care over the framing. I am not for one minute suggesting these are compelling images, but they do feel different and they do address some (not all) of Ami’s points above. The obvious question – to which I have no ready answer – is why didn’t I submit one of these other images!

So slowing down can have a big impact on the aesthetics, but it might also mean shooting 15 frames rather than 50 of a subject. It might mean getting up before dawn to be at the Camel Souk before first light, so that as the sun rises and the days trading begins you are already part of the landscape and people have already come to accept you. It might mean focusing on a single subject or not taking a picture at all, but going to a location a day early and just observing or understanding or building a relationship or trust.

Like many of you I have read some compelling books recently like Visual Poetry by Chris Orwig or Within the Frame by David duChemin, and they reinforce similar ideas, including allowing yourself a change of pace to start seeing what is around you. It might be a pattern, a reflection, a shaft of light or some tonal similarities that catch your eye.  Your ability to create compelling images then is as much about awareness as it is about technique or kit. “Gear is good, vision is better” as David duChemin would say.

Now admittedly yours and my definition of slowing down and Ami’s are slightly different.  I was chatting to Gavin Gough about this and he made me laugh when he said “You or I think that putting down our camera and chatting to a market stallholder about his fruit is slowing down or building a relationship. Ami takes this to a whole new level and goes and lives in Kashmir for 6 months so that she can immerse herself in the culture”. Yet it is no accident that the likes of David duChemin, Gaving Gough and Matt Brandon – who all know Ami well – hold her in such high regard for her ability to see different opportunities or different potential in a situation that they, despite their experience, their ability and their own vision, might shoot differently. Slowing down then it would suggest, helps to remove barriers and allows you to have more control over the creative process and the aesthetic of the image. And that starts to be differentiating.

In the next post we will look at Ami’s second theme -”having a reason to be there” – and why this together with context impacts your ability to make compelling images

Please do feel free to retweet or share this image by clicking on the icon below. Ami’s wisdom is too beneficial to languish just on this post.

For those of you that think this blog is an interview with Ami Vitale or a review of Ami Vitale’s wonderful portfolio, I am sorry to disappoint. If you do want to listen to an outstanding interview with this great photographer then download Matt Brandon’s – aka The Digital Trekker’s – excellent Depth of Field interview with Ami here.

If Ami’s portfolio is what you are after then visit her website, www.amivitale.com. It would be inappropriate let alone presumptuous for someone of my meager photographic talents to comment on Ami’s photographs. Many far more qualified than I have earmarked her as one of the truly outstanding photographic talents of her generation and I suspect the world is a better place for having someone of Ami’s skill, compassion and empathy using their visual story telling capabilities to help others.

So I am going to tackle this in two parts – the first part is this post about my experience and the process of having 10 of my recent images reviewed by Ami. The second part  - a series of 3-4 shorter posts – will each cover one of the key themes and detailed feedback, together with the ideas and suggestions that Ami gave me – which I think that others on similar “journeys” of photographic discovery may find helpful, re-assuring or even encouraging.

Booking the time with Ami was something that I orchestrated through the website, The Compelling Image for a cost of $160 – which I think is incredible value and, dare I say it given the time I had with Ami and the benefits I gained, is too cheap! For those of you wanting to take an online course in photography, then do look at “The Compelling Image” – they have some truly outstanding professionals providing you with individual tuition, assignments and critiques for a very reasonable price. You can find out more about all of their courses, including the option to have Ami Vitale review your work, at www.thecompellingimage.com.

Anyway back to the review. I have to say it felt pretty nerve racking. Like many photographers I have that weird mix of wanting to share my images so that people can see them, but also nagging self-doubt that they are really good enough. You can imagine therefore my angst at having to submit 10 images to be formally critiqued by someone of Ami’s standard, even though I knew by her reputation that Ami, of all people, would provide incredible objective insight, advice and encouragement.

The first challenge was selecting which 10 images to submit. Now that sounds very arrogant – I don’t mean that I had so many great images to chose from that I struggled to sort the “chaff from the wheat”. Far from it. In my case I have so much chaff, that I struggled to find the wheat!  But obviously you want to show both your potential and also perhaps examples of where you are seeking guidance – the aim after all of such a review is to learn from somebody that you respect and whose work you acknowledge as being the type of quality that you aspire to achieve at some stage on your own photographic journey. I was conscious too that the images I selected would of course shape the discussion. Obvious when said like that, but I can’t tell you how long I spent wondering which ones to select – even taking advice from a couple of photography buddies to help me be objective about it! You can see the 10 images that I selected for review in the slideshow above and if you want to browse my other images then you can review those in my gallery.

The mechanics of the review are very straightforward. You select on the “The Compelling Image” website from a range of pre-ordained dates, when you want the review to happen; you pay your money, and on that day, the “course” is enabled for you. Once enabled you upload your images via the TCI website where you also have the opportunity to attach a commentary about each picture – why you had taken it, what you were trying to achieve, what you thought worked and what you thought didn’t etc.

Within hours of enrolling on the course – even though the course was still a few days off – Ami had been in touch by email. She wanted to know my background, my motivations my interests and then she wanted to arrange to have a chat with me via Skype on the day of the course (it is technically a one day course).

Ami could not have been more gracious or delightful. Full of ideas, full of encouragement and full of support, she began by seeking understanding about each image – Why had I chosen to submit this image? What did it mean for me? Why had I composed it that way? What other angles/viewpoints had I considered and why?  How many frames had I shot? How longed had I spent thinking about the image before shooting it? She had clearly prepared thoroughly for our call because as we discussed each image, Ami delivered real insight and the benefit of her extensive experience in identifying what is was that she liked or where there were areas she wanted clarification over.

Some images that I thought were my strongest, she liked, but usually Ami felt that they were missing something, or could have been better! Other images which I just liked, she loved – and for quite different reasons from me. As we went through each of the images, we kept returning to a number of dominant themes, but I am going to save those details and the specific critique for my next post. But at no stage was this dispiriting. Gavin Gough shared with me that “critiquing somebody’s photographs is only slightly less hazardous than offering thoughts on the perceived beauty of their children in my experience. It’s easy to offer praise alone and that’s often what reviewers resort to – or they go to the other end of the scale and pick things apart without offering encouragement”.

I can’t amplify sufficiently how productive, enjoyable and without being too over the top, humbling the whole review process with Ami was. It was just terrific fun. But of course it was also much more than that. It was incredibly focused, balanced between praise and constructive criticism, positive, helpful and motivating. Ami’s great skill is in simplifying things – helping the complex seem straightforward, removing the mental barriers that are blocking your ability to advance, and leaving you more reflective, upbeat and ready to go.  She makes you see things is an uncluttered and objective way, that as soon as she says them just seem so obvious that you kick yourself for making everything that went before so complicated. In just one hour I came away already thinking differently, motivated to just go and try new things and inspired by the opportunities that were now in front of me, yet also aware of what I should not repeat or get frustrated by.

Mentoring at its best, then. In terms of developing my photography I suspect I shall look back on this process as one of those seminal moments where I felt I had made a step change.

Like many who have met or know Ami – even virtually as I did – you realize that you have just spent time with someone very special.  There is an inner calm, a compassion and a genuine warmth in the interest she displays in you and your photographs that is all too rare these days. I too have joined the rapidly increasing Ami Vitale fan base!

Ami has kindly allowed me to share with you her comments and feedback. My next post will cover one of the key themes we discussed, using one of the images together with the comments I made as part of the submission process, and more interestingly, the critique that I received from Ami.

Please help and spread the word by clicking on the share button below, retweeting, facebook updates etc. And if you haven’t already done so, lose yourself for a few hours and get inspired by visiting Ami’s portfolio.

Practice , practice, practice… Not always easy when a camel is spitting in your face and all over your lens.

I spent the morning at Birquash Camel Market – the “new” home of Cairo’s famous camel Souk and about 15 kms north west of the city. Now you should take the word “new” here with a pinch of salt. It just means new location – not new as in “spanky brand new” or “never been used” or even “modern, clean and safe”!

I wanted to try and shoot a photo-story – Which I didn’t quite pull off, because despite getting up before dawn. It took us over 2 hours to drive the 15kms, as we drove from place to place searching for the market. Nothing is ever signed properly in Egypt and the locals’ directions were straight out of  Monty Python film. Draw up to a junction, ask the two men waiting by the side of the road which way, and you guessed it, one would point left and one would point right! So we missed the beginning and some of the more interesting action.

I did try some panning shots and some backlit shots, but none of these really worked out quite how I had planned! I clearly need a workshop with “Mr Panning” himself – Gavin Gough – to get that technique licked!

Biquash Camel Market  – or Souk el Gamaal in the native tongue – is an extraordinary place, and arguably not for the feint hearted or for animal lovers. Let’s just say that animal husbandry is an area that Egypt needs to focus on a little more. Every week thousands of camels trek up from the Sudan, Southern Egypt or nearby to be sold at auction. There is no one single auction place within the Souk, rather a long street with a series of Camel pens, with auctions happening simultaneously in the street in front of the pens.

They all have one leg tied up to stop them running around, and everyone – and I mean everyone from the 3 years old to the old man using it as crutch – has a wooden stick with which they beat the camel to make it turn, move or do as requested.

The conditions are biblical – but fascinating. Lots of dust to play havoc with your lenses, but also lots of amazing sights, sounds and opportunities.

Not all the camels make it through the day and so some inevitably have to be disposed off, which of course is done there and then in the full glare of anyone watching.

Like most events in Egypt, there are a lot of people sitting around, drinking tea or coffee and seemingly doing nothing. However they were all incredibly friendly and keen to have their photo taken – surprisingly I thought given the number of tourist and other photographers that must come to this weekly market. However this little community of traders, herders, drovers and farmers that assemble each week provide a fantastic blend of Egyptian street life and rural market, which makes it a place full of potentially compelling images.

I don’t know why, but I didn’t find the groove today. I love being out somewhere new and observing everything that is going on, so perhaps I was distracted by the fact that for me it was all so new, or maybe I expected too much and didn’t take my own medicine in my last post – “dashed expectations are seasonal” and just go with the flow. I tried to shoot an opening, some details, unusual angles, close-ups and a closing shot to try and frame the photo essay and, whilst they are a good record of the day, they don’t tell the full story. The full story – such that it is –  is over in the gallery.

But that is what practicing is about. Trying, learning from your mistakes and then trying again. I will certainly be back to the Birquash Camel Market another Friday morning, now that I know how to find it and what to expect.

You can see more of the images, including some fun portraits, over in the gallery.

Oh, and the short answer to “What price a camel”, is about 5000 Egyptian pounds or about US $1000!