I don't actually know how many hours I have spent trying to get a photograph of a tiger making a kill, but I've decided that it doesn't matter. For me nature photography is about traveling to fantastic places and enjoying the beauty of whatever environment I end up in, (usually hot, sticky and needing malaria tablets!). The lure of big cats is the starting point, and shots that you can feel proud of are great to bring home. But there's an awful lot in between that can intrigue you, enchant you and challenge you. I have started taking less gear, but more interest in where I am. Sitting and waiting for that special shot for long hours is the only time that I actually spend doing "nothing". But I'm not doing nothing, I'm spending "quality time" away from a crazy world and I'm seeing our fast disappearing natural world up close.
I doubt if will ever see a tiger kill, but I will enjoy myself trying to............... why do you do it?
I don't have the money to journey to fantastic places. Instead, I found a job that allowed me to move to a place that is fantastic in many people's minds so I could hone my craft without having to hop a plane and go bankrupt. The "wilderness," as it were, is right out my back door. There was wolf scat in our back yard when we moved in, and coyotes howl in our neighborhood of a summer night, though we live in the Ely city limts. Moving here was my luck and my curse, because a small city on the edge of a sought-after wilderness yields a high cost of living but a low wage.
I don't have to go far to find wilderness, so the journey I have to travel is in my mind. I must still the cacophany of daily life and its hassles and heartaches. I must shrug off those irritations like a clinging shirt when I walk into the wilderness or my vision will flatten and fail.
There is absolutely no difference here between writing and composing fine images. I have been a writer longer than a photographer. When I journey, I try to strip myself clean. I fail more often than I succeed, both with words and images. My successes need no explanation. Either you "get it" or you don't. My failures are beyond explanatory revival. What I see, what I feel, what I scent and what I hear are what I become that day. There is also the sixth sense, and on the right day, in the right frame of what we call "mind," there are times I see what's coming before it comes.
Some feel their hearts beat faster when they read my words or view my images. Others are unmoved by either. I try to be unmoved by any of them, but since I am working hard to divest myself of a 15 year journalism career, including a share of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, I find myself looking at what I propose to capture out there in the wilds. And I weigh it against what I think will be popular and saleable. I have to sell to make the professional switch, and I have to remain true to my vision to retain enough integrity to sleep at night. Can both be accomplished on my meager budget? I don't know, but in the journey I'll find out, won't I?
After three years of struggle, after thousands of hours on wilderness trails and on wilderness lakes searching for images of wild wolves and settling for captive animals, I finally put together a series of images of wolves in the wild. Their interactions with the ravens on the scene, their air of constant wariness and their vividness of life that was what I called "within the moment," made me humble when I finally got there.
The journey is always more important than the destination. It's easy to get somewhere, harder in this world to squeeze value out of the trip. My heart will continue to quicken in the journey, even as it someday will reach its rated shutter actuation. And the destination? Who cares? I'm the superstitious Irishman who said that, if he knew where he was to die, he'd never go near the place.
Wow! Eddie and Steve, you are both great writers and I can't quite express myself that well. Let me just say that it is without a doubt the journey that is most important. A few years ago I had a serious brush with illness. While I am OK now, the experience has taught me that life is about savoring those experiences that grip your soul. In photography as well as all of life I hoe that all of us never quite reach our destination. I hope there is always another image to be captured, just over the next hill, just out of range of our longest lens, not quite the right light, so we will always have the journey to savor - forever.
The journey is definitely a big part of it. My journeys are usually an hour or so drive from home, and a hike of a couple of miles or so. Just the experience of exploring and discovering things is a big reward. When I was on Roan Mountain (NC/TN) the other day attempting to shoot the rhododendrons, I saw a little black bird with some dead grasses in its beak. I saw it hop into the grass, so I peered in there and found the most perfectly crafted nest. The little discoveries like that make my photo outings much more rewarding. Even if I don't go to exotic far away places!
Great question. Through some education and soul searching, I realized in my early 20s that the world makes a lot more sense to me when examined from a dialectic perspective. To me everything is a journey, a process, an evolution. I don't subscribe to the "freeze a moment in time" approach to photography. To me a moment is just part of transition and I consider an image part of a story (often my own story rather than that of the place or object portrayed).
I guess I could sum it up by saying that my best image is the one I haven't made yet.
John, it worked when I called it up. First I though it might be a link issue with NPN, but I clicked on it and went right there. Then I typed in the actual url myself to make sure it was working (www.stevefossimages.com) and it took me right there.
As to whether there are images there that will make your heart beat faster, I don't know. Quite a few on the Web site also are in my new NPN portfolio, though there are some in each place that aren't present in the other. One can hope to make hearts beat faster.
John: My wife, Lisa Foss, is a Web designer, and designed my site. Hats off to her for that vision. Thanks for the image kudos. I'm in the process of making more of those wild wolf/deer carcass shots available, since the market has tilted so strongly toward actual wild animals instead of captive animals. The glassblower image is a composite of two images. In the first, I arranged Alan's colorful glassware against a vertical background and spun the camera using a slow shutter speed. The second was simply a protrait of Alan against a consistent background, which made it easier to lift his portrait using photoshop and place it onto the background. In the newspaper, I ran it with a "photo composite" credit. It was simply coincidence that what looks like his tie-dyed T-shirt was actually part of the color wash of the first image, and I just cleaned/cloned up the area where the color met his neck to give it the same look as the edge of a T-shirt.
Don't mean to highjack Eddie's excellent topic, either, and my apologies. So, thank you John for taking the time to look and comment, and for your kind words. And now . . back to the journey. Or, um, is it the destination?
For me, its usually begins with the idea of a destination, planning for a certain thought, but the freedom to detour at whatever life brings forth and that is how it becomes the love of the journey!
I too am fortunate enough to be able to take a short drive to some beautiful vistas & usually when I hop in my ca , I just point it in a direction & go. I know what lies in each direction but its what I haven't seen yet that I seek. I may have chose to go west to photograph that mountain range one more time, but then I see an old wooden bridge & I stop there, and well, I might as well see where the road leads that crosses the bridge so I turn left. And before I know it I'm at a small waterfall, etc etc. The options are endless & the joy of the journey is new each time I go!
Posted by David Senesac on June 21, 2006 at 11:41 PM
You seem to be indirectly meaning is it the journey and process to get a photograph that is most important or the results of being successful at it? Sometimes the journey is certainly of great importance and other times it is not. I would not give a black and white answer as each situation is unique.
During the last month I drove 50 miles out and 50 miles back four times trying to nail an image of wildflowers on beach sand dunes with the ocean in the background here on our Central California coast. So about four gallons of gas or $14 a trip at our gas rates. The spot is not obvious and the whole time no one else's footprints have shown up. The wildflowers were spectacular so I've been determined to nail the shot. One reason is I don't have but one great 4x5 coastal shot in my marketable collection. The problem has been it is one of the windiest and foggiest places on the California coast. A decent shot would need calm, else flowers would be blurred at usual 1/15s shutter speed. Thus each time during the last month I drove out there, it was either too foggy or if not foggy then windy. Typically 15 to 30 knot afternoon winds decrease to 5 to 10 knot winds at daybreak. Some days though it is near calm. But that usually lasts just briefly then northwesterly breezes pick up. I'm totally plugged into a number of weather sites including wind and pressure gradient info so each time I gambled there might be a enough of a lull to get a shot in.
Well today I gambled yet a fifth time. I knew this would be my last chance as the current heat wave is bound to put an end to a number of the blooms. From the internet reports I knew today was my best shot also. Well I raced out over the pass and down to the coast this last time and. Yes there was just an intermittent breeze less than 5 knots. Well I hiked out the third of a mile and by time I'd set up the breeze began picking up. I managed to get an insurance shot quick during a mediocre lull and then nailed it about ten minutes later during a good lull. After that I exposed two sheets nearby quickly then a 5 to 10 knot breeze immediately kicked in. So was it the journey on this shot? Nope at least not after my first trip out to the site. I'm hoping today's exposure was ok and my track record is rather consistent. However until I get the film back, I'm not going to celebrate too much.
In general I highly value my experiences in nature. For most of my photography days, I have not been trying to market my work so experience of the journey is something I've always reveled in. The last few years as I've decided to market my work and developed a fine art business, the business end of the work has taken on a much stronger presence. So getting the shots aka the destination is more the goal and long lasting satisfaction. ...David
Discussion
8 repliesI doubt if will ever see a tiger kill, but I will enjoy myself trying to............... why do you do it?
I don't have the money to journey to fantastic places. Instead, I found a job that allowed me to move to a place that is fantastic in many people's minds so I could hone my craft without having to hop a plane and go bankrupt. The "wilderness," as it were, is right out my back door. There was wolf scat in our back yard when we moved in, and coyotes howl in our neighborhood of a summer night, though we live in the Ely city limts. Moving here was my luck and my curse, because a small city on the edge of a sought-after wilderness yields a high cost of living but a low wage.
I don't have to go far to find wilderness, so the journey I have to travel is in my mind. I must still the cacophany of daily life and its hassles and heartaches. I must shrug off those irritations like a clinging shirt when I walk into the wilderness or my vision will flatten and fail.
There is absolutely no difference here between writing and composing fine images. I have been a writer longer than a photographer. When I journey, I try to strip myself clean. I fail more often than I succeed, both with words and images. My successes need no explanation. Either you "get it" or you don't. My failures are beyond explanatory revival. What I see, what I feel, what I scent and what I hear are what I become that day. There is also the sixth sense, and on the right day, in the right frame of what we call "mind," there are times I see what's coming before it comes.
Some feel their hearts beat faster when they read my words or view my images. Others are unmoved by either. I try to be unmoved by any of them, but since I am working hard to divest myself of a 15 year journalism career, including a share of the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, I find myself looking at what I propose to capture out there in the wilds. And I weigh it against what I think will be popular and saleable. I have to sell to make the professional switch, and I have to remain true to my vision to retain enough integrity to sleep at night. Can both be accomplished on my meager budget? I don't know, but in the journey I'll find out, won't I?
After three years of struggle, after thousands of hours on wilderness trails and on wilderness lakes searching for images of wild wolves and settling for captive animals, I finally put together a series of images of wolves in the wild. Their interactions with the ravens on the scene, their air of constant wariness and their vividness of life that was what I called "within the moment," made me humble when I finally got there.
The journey is always more important than the destination. It's easy to get somewhere, harder in this world to squeeze value out of the trip. My heart will continue to quicken in the journey, even as it someday will reach its rated shutter actuation. And the destination? Who cares? I'm the superstitious Irishman who said that, if he knew where he was to die, he'd never go near the place.
I guess I could sum it up by saying that my best image is the one I haven't made yet.
Guy
As to whether there are images there that will make your heart beat faster, I don't know. Quite a few on the Web site also are in my new NPN portfolio, though there are some in each place that aren't present in the other. One can hope to make hearts beat faster.
Don't mean to highjack Eddie's excellent topic, either, and my apologies. So, thank you John for taking the time to look and comment, and for your kind words. And now . . back to the journey. Or, um, is it the destination?
For me, its usually begins with the idea of a destination, planning for a certain thought, but the freedom to detour at whatever life brings forth and that is how it becomes the love of the journey!
I too am fortunate enough to be able to take a short drive to some beautiful vistas & usually when I hop in my ca , I just point it in a direction & go. I know what lies in each direction but its what I haven't seen yet that I seek. I may have chose to go west to photograph that mountain range one more time, but then I see an old wooden bridge & I stop there, and well, I might as well see where the road leads that crosses the bridge so I turn left. And before I know it I'm at a small waterfall, etc etc. The options are endless & the joy of the journey is new each time I go!
During the last month I drove 50 miles out and 50 miles back four times trying to nail an image of wildflowers on beach sand dunes with the ocean in the background here on our Central California coast. So about four gallons of gas or $14 a trip at our gas rates. The spot is not obvious and the whole time no one else's footprints have shown up. The wildflowers were spectacular so I've been determined to nail the shot. One reason is I don't have but one great 4x5 coastal shot in my marketable collection. The problem has been it is one of the windiest and foggiest places on the California coast. A decent shot would need calm, else flowers would be blurred at usual 1/15s shutter speed. Thus each time during the last month I drove out there, it was either too foggy or if not foggy then windy. Typically 15 to 30 knot afternoon winds decrease to 5 to 10 knot winds at daybreak. Some days though it is near calm. But that usually lasts just briefly then northwesterly breezes pick up. I'm totally plugged into a number of weather sites including wind and pressure gradient info so each time I gambled there might be a enough of a lull to get a shot in.
Well today I gambled yet a fifth time. I knew this would be my last chance as the current heat wave is bound to put an end to a number of the blooms. From the internet reports I knew today was my best shot also. Well I raced out over the pass and down to the coast this last time and. Yes there was just an intermittent breeze less than 5 knots. Well I hiked out the third of a mile and by time I'd set up the breeze began picking up. I managed to get an insurance shot quick during a mediocre lull and then nailed it about ten minutes later during a good lull. After that I exposed two sheets nearby quickly then a 5 to 10 knot breeze immediately kicked in. So was it the journey on this shot? Nope at least not after my first trip out to the site. I'm hoping today's exposure was ok and my track record is rather consistent. However until I get the film back, I'm not going to celebrate too much.
In general I highly value my experiences in nature. For most of my photography days, I have not been trying to market my work so experience of the journey is something I've always reveled in. The last few years as I've decided to market my work and developed a fine art business, the business end of the work has taken on a much stronger presence. So getting the shots aka the destination is more the goal and long lasting satisfaction. ...David