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Seeing the Light, 2009 was a wonderful success. Old friends and new explored what it means to be a photographer, and what it means to see – both before the shutter is clicked and after. Stay tuned for a 2010 announcement!

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I must have passed this cross covered with leis twenty times before I noticed it on the solitary stretch of Kamehameha highway by the sea on the island of Molokai. It was located on a blind curve so I franticly took my frames while standing in the middle of the road as a friend of mine spotted oncoming traffic.

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August 17th, 2009

Aurora photographer Jonathan Kingston’s image of a pair of boots recovered from a German battlefield was published recently in the June 2009 edition of National Geographic. The boots (whose original owner is currently unknown) are being used by the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command (JPAC) to try and identify the fallen soldier so that his remains can be returned to his family. JPAC, established in 2003, is a response to the Pentagon’s recent efforts to try and find the 84,711 US military men and women still missing after various US engagements all over the world. It is home to the world’s largest forensic anthropology lab.

When asked about the shoot, Kingston said, “Assignments such as this one epitomize what assignment photography entails — problem solving, people skills, and performing well under pressure. I feel honored to have played a small part of bringing the story of what JPAC does to the world.”

To see more work by Jonathan Kingston, visit Aurora Photos.

Highest sea cliffs in the world, Molokai, Hawaii.

Luang Pragang, Laos

Elliot Erwitt once famously wrote: …photography was little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

It is with this thought in mind that one of my mentor’s Paul Liebhardt and I decided to craft a photography workshop to be offered on the beautiful island of Molokai, Hawaii this October. While much photographic instruction today focuses on the HOW of doing things, very few workshops focus on perhaps the most important part of all in photography — SEEING. If you are a reading this, and interested in being inspired to see more deeply, this workshop is for you!

Click here for more details on Seeing the Light photographic workshop on Molokai.

Cross posted from the Aurora News Blog Here

When Aurora photographers Jonathan Kingston, Dan Patitucci and Janine Patitucci, along with 7 other photographers, traveled to India to document the annual Pushkar Camel Fair in Rajasthan, they were not expecting to end up with a book. However, after seeing the collective archive of imagery created by the 10 participants, they decided to gather them into a book, titled Pushkar – Gurus, Gods and Camels, which was published by CreateSpace on March 27, 2009. To view the entire book online, or purchase a copy, visit www.gurusgodsandcamels.com.

The group of photographers traveled to Rajasthan to recharge and inspire themselves creatively among the thousands of Indian nomads, gypsies, sadhus, pilgrims, camels, and tourists who travel to the Pushkar Camel Fair annually. When asked about the resulting book, Jonathan Kingston said, “Every morning we would go our separate ways before sunrise and every evening we would meet again well after sunset for dinner and an exchange of stories from the day. One evening towards the end of the fair, another photographer on the trip suggested we pool our collective images into a book and put me in charge of the project. I immediately deferred my new-found responsibilities to the Patitucci’s, who wrangled the images from each photographer, and spearheaded the production of the book. This project goes to show that spontaneous creativity happening collectively can be a powerful force.”

Image by Jonathan Kingston

Images by Janine Patitucci (left) and Dan Patitucci (right)

Image by Dan Patitucci

View more work by Jonathan Kingston, Janine Patitucci and Dan Patitucci at Aurora Photos.

Evening light on conifers near Juneau, Alaska.

The days are long in Juneau this time of year, and there are long spans of beautiful light as the sun slowly sets over the mountains. Juneau underwater photographer and local camera shop owner Art Sutch, just reeled in his first King Salmon of the season and was kind enough to invite me over to his home along with Flip and Linda Nicklin to partake in the feast. I, along with the other guests did our level best to assure there was very little left of the 25lbs of fish by the time we finished eating. As we were saying our goodbyes the golden light falling on the conifers next to his house caught my eye. A visual feast as simple and delightful as the King Salmon happily digesting in my belly.

A bald eagle and sea lions on a buoy in front of the Point Retreat lighthouse near Juneau, Alaska.

While a student at Brooks Institute of Photography, one of the highest complements that I could receive from one of the upper division professors in regards to my prints was “your image doesn’t suck”.  The statement was of course, tongue in cheek — and always made me glow with pride when I heard it.  In the same vein, I’m happy to announce that it is official - Alaska does not suck.  After arriving here earlier this week to teach a photographic workshop with friend Flip Nicklin, my initial impression of Juneau wants to categorize it as a hybrid between Switzerland, with its vast peaks towering over crystalline lakes, and the east side of the damp Cascade Mountains in Oregon.  Throw in bald eagles plentiful enough to almost be considered pests, humpback whales languidly growing fat on plentiful krill and a number of yet to be see grizzly bears, (or in the parlance of Juneau speak “Brown Bears”) and you begin to get the picture.  Over and out from this nomad for now from Juneau.

Waves, sea cliffs and mist on the north shore of the island of Molokai, Hawaii.

FISH IN THE FILTER

The massive cumulonimbus clouds ripe with rain were well over a month away from rolling atop the blue hills of the Western Ghat mountain range in Tamil Nadu and enveloping the region in the mist of monsoon.  My pet project for the dry season at the photographic college where I was teaching was to insure that the students in black and white darkroom of were receiving clean water in which to process their negatives.  During the wet season, the school harvested rain from the rooftops of its buildings into a massive tank from where the water was piped into all the darkrooms.  During dry season, the school was forced to truck in water from a less than clean source, which led to all kinds of problems with the emulsion of the student’s images, and all kinds of headaches for grading their film fairly.

I initially approached the problem of filtering the water by procuring the purchase of a number of cone filters.  In America, this system would have worked brilliantly to remove any small bits of sediment, and was in fact used by many photo labs in which I had developed film.  Unfortunately the mud brown water the academy was receiving from the tanker truck would clog the cone filters within a couple of days causing an enormous drop in water pressure in the lab and it soon became apparent that maintaining this filtration system was untenable.  As a stop gap solution, I had a huge pack of coffee filters shipped from the USA for my students to pre filter their lab water before processing their film.  This method worked reasonably well, but was to dependent on a resource not locally available, and I knew I had to find another solution.

As my frustration and emotional investment in fixing the water situation grew, my options for solving it seemed to narrow.  I searched the internet, and spoke with friends all to no avail until halfway through the dry season, a newly hired office manager offered a brilliant idea.  He suggested building a series of tanks that would allow the dirty water to flow, at a slow rate, between a series of successive concrete settling tanks.  Gravity would act as the filter forcing the sediment plaguing the students in the darkroom to settle to the bottom of each successive tank, until the last tank contained nothing but crystal clear water.  Nothing happens quickly in India, but the simple, smart, low cost idea did come to fruition a few months later and a smile spread across my face every time I visited the students in the lab and saw the crystal clear water in their beakers where the mud brown liquid used to be.

One morning, not long after the completion of the sediment filter, I was in the lab preparing to develop some of my own film when I noticed a pungent fishy smell coming from the tap.  Perplexed, I closed the faucet and wandered up the hill to the series of settling tanks, where I found, much to my great chagrin, they were filled with hundreds of floating dead fish.  I sat, jaw open in awe, until I saw, in clear movie montage in my mind, what must have led to the fish in the filter.
Some four hundred yards away on the grounds of the school lay a fish pond.  It was built as a place of solace for the students to relax and enjoy the beautiful view of the mountains that the grounds afforded.  Without any rain to replenish the pond during the dry season, its level had been steadily dropping over the past months leaving less and less water for the fish to live.  In my minds eye, I saw the image of the schools gardener, in an act of compassion, bucketing the fish out of the nearly evaporated pond and transporting them over to my filter.  Unfortunately for the fish, the filter had a corrugated metal lid that was placed over top to prevent debris from falling in, and that lid was enough to cause the water temperature to rise to a deadly soup for the fish.  In the act of trying to save them, the gardener had condemned them to a quick death.

No sooner had I seen this montage my mind, than I burst out laughing.  I laughed like a maniac back to my office, and when fellow faculty member Rudy Loupias asked what was going on, I could only point up the hill and manage the words “check out the filter” before I burst into another fit of merriment.  Months and months of planning, fighting loosing sleep for this filter, and all the gardener had seen was not a brilliant sediment filter, but a five tank fish pond.  I had to let it all go, and laughter was the chariot that loosed my holding on.

How often do I as a photographer put myself in the same predicament with my images, as I did with the filter?  I labor and plan a story, research and think through how to best execute a shot.  I carry my gear and my knowledge sometimes half way around the world to the place of maximum potential and click the shutter at the right moment.  After the shoot, there are heart wrenching decisions.  Do I choose this photo, or that?  Which image captures the idea that I wish to communicate?  In other words, I put my heart and soul into creating an image and when the image is published, I want the world to recognize and congratulate me on my fine execution of the photo or photo story.  However, just as the gardener saw a fish tank where I saw a filter, once the images are in the world how they are perceived has nearly nothing to do with me and everything to do with my audience.

Recently I was on the phone with a family member who saw an image on my website that they liked.  It was a landscape I was quite proud of producing and the family member was talking me into giving them a print.  I asked where they planned on hanging it – and they said ‘Oh its just perfect for my bathroom!’  I was momentarily offended as my mind raced through the sacrifices I’d made for this print to hang as bathroom art, until I remembered the gardener, and the fish in the filter, and laughed to myself and let it go.