For a decade I’ve believed that by traveling extensively and shooting constantly, I could learn to take great travel photos.
It has worked. Sort of. I’ve captured some nice images, but I’ve also taken thousands of shots that may never again emerge from my filing cabinet. I cringe to think how much money in film and processing I’ve sunk into all those slides. If I had that money now, I could travel around the world on my customary shoestring.
So last year I, as a budget traveler, couldn’t afford to go on like that. I decided I’d better learn how to get more than one or two decent shots out of each roll. What I needed was a brief, rigorous education in consistently capturing photos with visual and emotional punch. What I needed was photographic boot camp.
That’s just what I found at Photography at the Summit, a one-week workshop held each autumn in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Coordinated by Rich Clarkson, former director of photography for the National Geographic Society, the workshop turned out to be a bargain when I did the math. For $800 I got a week of instruction, not from one expert photographer as in most photographic workshops, but from nine of the best image-makers in the world, including Geographic shooters David Alan Harvey and George Steinmetz, Sports Illustrated staffer Bill Eppridge, landscape master Jack Dykinga and adventure photographer Galen Rowell. I couldn’t have found a better group of instructors if I’d flipped through a stack of Geographics, picked the best photographers and hired them myself.
“Our whole point is team teaching,” Clarkson explained. “You get so many different perspectives. And it works. We’ve had many people jump start their careers right out of this workshop.”
That was an exhilarating prospect. The reality was more exhausting. On our first day, we 40 students devised projects for ourselves. Then, armed with 20 free rolls of slide film, we headed into the field. When not shivering in a pre-dawn gloom, waiting for the sun to hit the mountaintops, or sweating it out in morning critiques, we attended technical clinics, personal portfolio reviews, the instructors’ evening slide shows and lengthy late-night discussions at Jackson’s famed Silver Dollar Bar. Bleary-eyed by the third day, I realized all that was missing from my boot-camp experience were camouflage fatigues and a crewcut.
At least we had an energizing setting. An hour’s drive north was Yellowstone National Park with its geysers, bison herds and waterfalls. Ten minutes away were Grand Teton National Park and the National Elk Refuge, home to the lower 48 states’ largest elk herd. The photographic fodder also included herds of tourists constantly thundering through Jackson, and the town itself, still clinging to its hardscrabble Western heritage. The possibilities were limitless.
Unfortunately, so were the photographic cliches. But we learned quickly that the instructors paid scant attention to “postcard” shots, however perfectly composed. Visual cliches — a moose, for instance, standing in a forest-fringed pond — were hard to resist in such a classic setting, but the push to find inventive images carried serious oomph coming from such world-class instructors.
Or should I say drill sergeants. Just like their military counterparts, the instructors could be ruthless, especially during portfolio reviews. Pulling George Steinmetz aside, I laid my portfolio of travel slides on a light table. He looked at a few. Silence.
“I want to see more,” he said.
“More slides?” I asked.
“No, more in each shot. These are nice, but you need to dig deeper, peel back a layer. You’re too far away.” He turned to me. “Do you know how to use strobes, how to mix ambient and artificial light, how to use a flash meter?”
I paused.
“If you don’t know how to use a flash meter,” he said. “You’re cheating yourself.”
What made it worse was that many of my fellow students, pros themselves, did know how to use artificial light. Nevertheless, some of the most effective images produced during the workshop came from non-professionals like Anne Muller, a Jackson painter and sculptor. I admired her images of Jackson’s Hispanic residents immensely. Not only did she pry a human, emotional story from surroundings better known for their scenery, but she found a subject that didn’t require her to get up each morning at 5 a.m.
My own project — to show how the Grand Teton had been turned into a commercial commodity — was a bit overambitious. From sunrise to sunset I labored to find apt combinations of moment, light and composition to convey my message. Finally, I snapped a shot in a crowded parking lot of a rumpled tourist standing beside a huge tour bus, the Teton range reflected in several of the bus’s windows.
“Wow, that’s a corker,” exclaimed instructor and former Geographic staffer Dick Durrance when the shot flashed across the screen during the final morning critique. “What a great lead image for your project.”
I was glad for the reaction, but I knew the truth. I still wasn’t as close to the story as I ought to have been. And I knew it would be a lengthy struggle finding the mixture of bravado and grace to put me in the middle of a story, in the middle of strangers’ lives.
Nevertheless, in one short week I advanced more as a photographer than in a decade of traveling and shooting on my own. Simply put, my instructors and fellow students pushed me, raising my visual bar a bit higher. No longer will I allow myself to waste film and travel time on mediocre photos, or bland “postcard” shots. This alone should save me untold hundreds of dollars. Better yet, I’ll end up with more photos that, for years to come, I’ll consider priceless.
The frugal traveler In one short week I advanced more as a photographer than in a decade of traveling and shooting on my own. Simply put, my instructors and fellow students pushed me, raising my visual bar a bit higher.
IF YOU GO
THE DETAILS
The next Photography at the Summit workshop is tentatively slated for Oct. 8-13. The $850 tuition includes a welcome party on the workshop’s first evening, continental breakfast each morning and a farewell banquet on the last evening. It also includes nightly lectures in the auditorium of the National Museum of Wildlife Art, 20 rolls of film, some accessories and free use of the latest Nikon equipment. Accommodations and transportation are not included. Also, full-time college students and photography instructors get a 10 percent discount. For more information, contact Rich Clarkson and Associates, 1099 18th St., Suite 1840, Denver, CO 80202; 800-745-3211; fax 303-295-7771; www.richclarkson.com.
For information about accommodations in Jackson, contact the Jackson Hole Chamber of Commerce, P.O. Box 550, Jackson, WY 83001; 307-733-3316; fax 307-733-5585; e-mail info@jacksonholechamber.com; www.jacksonholechamber.com.
