2011 – Looking Back

As a self proclaimed “nomad” I tend to get antsy when I haven’t been on a major adventure in a few weeks. To keep myself appreciative of the kind of life that I’ve been able to lead thanks to a well chosen career and great friends like Lou Lesko helping me along the way.  I sometimes have to reflect on the last year and outline the best parts. Here’s how 2011 shaped up for me, and some of my favorite projects of the year.

Manatee

I got my start shooting for National Geographic in the underwater world, and although I’ve since moved on to mostly shoot above water, it’s one of my passions. I’m slowly but surely continuing my work on manatee, and hope to take it to the other side of the world and continue shooting dugong, a much more difficult subject that is a close relative of the manatee. This project was at first a way for me to start learning how to shoot the animals in an interesting way, but once I arrived in Florida I saw that most of the animals were covered in scars from the boats, and were nearly constantly pestered by the tourists. Expect to see more work from me on Manatee in 2012.

See my manatee photos on National Geographic Stock

Manatee in Three Sisters Springs, Florida.

Haiti

Haiti was a chance for me to start working with a wonderful photo editor named Leah Roberts.  Lou Lesko sent me to Haiti for the National Geographic Assignment Blog - See those stories here, and here.  It was also a chance to bring something new to photography.  I worked with Tomnod, a crowd sourcing group out of San Diego to put together a way for people to join me vicariously on the expedition.  Using satellite imagery to follow my ground based photography the viewer could not only see where I was, but they could see before and after images from the Haiti earthquake.  It was a huge hit, and quite possibly the first time this has been used in photojournalism.  I hear that Time magazine did something similar a few months later, I hope they got the idea from Tomnod but I don’t know.

A boy in City Soleil, Haiti.

Mongolia

Mongolia was one of the few projects that I did this year for National Geographic that narrowed my role down solely to the photography.  The project is headed by Dr. Albert Lin and was heralded as a huge advance in the field of archeology.  Dr. Lin took new tools into the field and used modern science to aid his search rather than the antiquated trowels and brushes that we associate with archeology.  We also used the predecessor of the Tomnod format as a way to crowdsource the search for ancient tombs by having millions of citizen scientists search through the satellite imagery for anomalies.   Here’s a link to the National Geographic page on the project.

Of course, besides the National Geographic photography that I was doing, I made my living shooting fashion, commercial, and adventure photos.  Here’s a gallery of favorites from this year.

A boy in City Soleil, Haiti.

Manatee in Three Sisters Springs, Florida.

I also got to try my hand at filming and producing television!  This was an entirely new angle for me, and I enjoyed (some of it) immensely.

Here’s a teaser from the Mongolia special I helped put together.

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/specials/in-the-field-specials/expedition-mongolia.html

After this I filmed for Discovery Channel’s “Deadliest Catch” in Alaska, when that comes out be sure to Check out footage from the “Kodiak” to see my work.

Check out some of the personal video that I put together this year at http://www.youtube.com/user/Benhorton83?feature=mhee

I also wrote a number of articles, reviews, and blog posts for other websites and magazines, had my photos published in editorials around the country, I produced a new portfolio book from Blurb, and of course, have a grand personal project that I am not ready to tell anybody about. So 2012 if we manage to live through this coming apocalypse (I am not a believer) will be my best year yet.

Not another App

I have five minutes to waste so I do what we all do.  I pull my smartphone out of my pocket and flip through page after page of useless apps.  Nothing grabs my attention, I try googling, but even the vast repository of information that is the internet can’t seem to bring about anything interesting enough to burn through five minutes.  I deleted Angry Birds ages ago, and the games I have kept are old and uninteresting.  The next step is to visit the app store and see what the technophiles have created in their get rich $2 at a time scheme.   Rarely do I buy an app, but I’d heard good things about this one, sitting there at the top of the list.  Vidify they call it.   I don’t read the description, I go straight to the screen shots which look clean and well thought out so I buy the app.  By now my five minutes are up, so Vidify is lost in the many pages of apps on my phone for the next week until once again, I’m bored staring into the screen of my Iphone.

It’s simple, and my first forray into using Vidify takes me maybe 40 seconds.  Immediately I wonder why nobody has thought of this before! As simple as it is, there’s so many ways to see the app.  In the most simple possible way I could just use it to put music to the video I have on my phone, or to combine a few select clips that should go together anyway.  Pretty quickly I decided to upload a number of my videos from youtube onto my phone and see what Vidify could come up with.  To edit what it came up with myself, in Final Cut, (or that horrible program IMovie which isn’t actually any easier to use than Final Cut) would have taken about 20 minutes, not to mention the time it takes to export the video.  Here’s what Vidify did in 30 seconds. Worth a couple bucks?  I think so.

Contour

A few years ago I was  kayaking with my friend Ken Hovie.  He’s the go to guy for news crews looking to get footage of downriver races from the competitor’s viewpoint.  Strapped to his helmet would be the forefather of the miniature camera. They were called “lipstick cams”  and they had a cable winding around to Ken’s back where a large uncomfortable waterproof pelican case full of hardware for the camera was strapped.  Ken still totes a camera for TV, but now the whole thing is the size of that tiny lipstick cam strapped to his helmet.

Miniature cameras have given the creative filmmaker and photographer new options that not too long ago would have been a great way to lose or destroy expensive cameras.  They have greatly reduced the number of “impossible” shots.  These little cameras have gone to space on weather balloons, and I’ve personally sent them hundreds of feet underwater on nothing more than some fishing line.

With the flexibility and low costs, everybody is picking them up for all kinds of uses.  Family ski trips and self-absorbed athletes overwhelmingly dominate the demographic.  I know of a number engineers that have put them on remote-controlled helicopters and robots, and photographers that use them to get new angles on old subjects.  The demographic that I’m concerned about and am writing for are the people who want the best camera for their money.  That’s everybody.

Before I started messing around with the Contour brand, I went online to review some of the other comparisons that are out there.  In truth, video quality coming out of these little cameras is all pretty similar.   The defining factors are in the build quality, the ease of use, and the specific needs of the user.

On a recent shoot where I spent 4 weeks working with a TV show that I’m not allowed to talk about I really tested the Contour+ that I’d brought with me, and I compared it to the three GoPro’s that they had provided.  The GoPro’s came with an LCD backpack, Battery Backpack, and pretty much every mounting attachment  that they make.  The Contour came as is, along with every mounting attachment that they make.  Both camera’s were set up with underwater housings.  I’d usually skip over the out of the box observations but I think they are pretty important to note mainly because it affected the rest of my shooting that I’d do with the cameras.  One of the Go-Pro’s front LCD screen had detached and was falling back into the camera so was nearly impossible to read.  Another wasn’t working consistently so I ended up side lining  it and using only a handful of times when I needed an extra.  Greatly contrasting the shape and confusing menu of the Go-Pro was the svelte and sturdy feeling Contour.  The buttons were simple to use, and sturdily snapped into place when recording started.  Instead of having an LCD screen like the optional one that can be attached to the Go Pro, my Contour links up to my IPhone via Bluetooth where I can preview my shot and change settings on the camera.  There’s an actual menu rather than the obscure letters and numbers that show up on the Go-Pro’s tiny little front LCD.

The Discovery Network owns everything I shot in Alaska so in the interest of not getting sued, I’ve shot a few other video’s and timelapses to show what it’s like working with the contour.

This first video is an example of using the contour to record b-roll and to document a photoshoot that I was on where I wanted to get video, but didn’t have the time or extra hands to hold a second camera.

This is the main reason that I want one of these cameras, I would have loved to have had a Contour+ Mounted to my shoulder on a recent shoot that I did in Haiti.  It would have been doubly beneficial because the + also records GPS coordinates and I could have used it to track my travels through Port Au Prince for this interactive piece I put together with Tomnod.

http://tomnod.com/explore/?r=haiti

Most people however arne’t as interested in using these for photojournalism, but more for the self glorifying action shots that adventurous athletes love to upload to Youtube.   Now I’m not a great surfer, so I risked ridicule to bring you this next piece.

One nice thing about the Contour that is an immediate bonus over the GoPro is that it’s housing focuses underwater.   The GoPro can’t focus underwater with the stock housing.  It’s necessary to buy an aftermarket housing from a company like Eye of Mine in order to get usable underwater footage.  The savings you might have had buying a GoPro just went out the window.
Getting the opening shot of the duckdive would have been impossible with the stock GoPro.

The camera took a beating with my poor surfing skills, but none of the parts ever showed any weakness whatsoever.  The longer and thinner body of the contour also seems to be less affected by the water than the wide front face of the GoPro.

Can’t afford a boom for your big HD camera?  I just mounted the Contour+ on a painters pole to get some new angles of a famous boulder problem near LA called “Masters of Reality”.

Contour Vs. Go-Pro – Details

Form
The Contour is sturdy, and well designed.  It is slightly larger than a Go-Pro and they have completely different forms.  The Go-Pro is a little box, modeled more off of a point and shoot camera.  This leaves its largest side facing into the wind, and water.  That’s bad for high-speed applications where drag can pull it away from the composition, but good when you want to mount it flat against a wall or something.   The contour is long and thin, easily pulled through the water and was my choice when using a painters pole to drag the camera through the water while the boat was moving.   Really though, the shape is a matter of taste.

Function
Go Pro uses digital buttons and a little LCD screen, but figuring out what BoF P1 and R5 all stand for while getting bashed around in the waves took me a bit to get used to.  The good news is that the camera is adjustable on the spot and in or out of the housing.  The Contour is best adjusted when connected to your phone or computer, but gives you three presets to work with on the fly.  I almost never hook it up to change the settings as I have the three I use most dialed right in.  I prefer the sureness of a button that moves and locks into place over the digital buttons on the go pro.  I never missed a shot with the Contour because the button I never had any trouble with the buttons, I did miss shots with the Go-Pro.  The rotating lens on the Contour is a huge plus for me, allowing me to quickly level my shots regardless of how the camera is mounted.

Image
Out of the box the Go-Pro is somewhat over exposed and the Contour somewhat underexposed.  You don’t have to decide between the lesser of two flaws though, as the Contour is adjustable.  Hook up your iPhone and Contour via Bluetooth and preview your shot and adjust your exposure.  Other than that the image quality itself is comparable.  Both cameras give you many options with HD, time-lapse capability,
30 or 60 FPS at 720 though the Contour is certainly built more for Video as it doesn’t have a “shutter button” to take stills.  I never used it on the go pro anyways.  I always put it on time-lapse, set at 1 photo every 3 seconds and worked a scene that way.  That way when the camera is at the end of a boom or in an awkward place (if it wasn’t I’d use my SLR) I didn’t have to pull it back in to take another shot.

Price.
Both cameras have a range to work with.  If you don’t need Bluetooth and GPS then you don’t need the Contour+ which is a bit more expensive than the Go-Pro.  They have models that don’t need underwater housings, and others that are just the basic camera.  The difference is that when I bought a Go-Pro I felt ripped off, but not when I bought the Contour.

Rant

Photographers are artists, and artist inherently are easily distracted.   It doesn’t  help that in the modern digital world our work is completed on the same device that supplies us with Facebook, Twitter, news and video’s of cats doing funny things.  A photographers workflow is as personal as other people’s morning ritual, asking us to change our ritual or throwing the odd wrench into our system doesn’t so much focus our wrath, it’s more of a intensifying of our distraction.  When a program isn’t working correctly or keeps crashing (even on my infallible MacBook Pro) I’m only about 1/4 second away from clicking on the google chrome app in my browser and being led down that rabbit hole.

 

I like the idea that my programs are updated automatically, that I can install plugin’s to Lightroom and Photoshop and so on; there was a time though that we’d read about what this new plugin or update consisted of.  Now in this age of the “Cloud” we don’t wait to hear if the updates work before our computer secretly downloads everything.  While we’re on the subject, all my programmer friends say that the “cloud” is just a facade, not a real cloud.

 

I would hope that this will force programmers to get their programs and updates working well before sending them out to be downloaded by the masses.   So far though, Text Edit is the only program I have any control of on my computer, and the result is this short piece.  I’m off to hold down my power button for a few seconds.

Syd Park

I had the honor of shooting with child actress Syd Park a few days ago.  She’s 13 years old and already touring as a stand up comic, acting in several Television series, and best of all has no ego surrounding her success.  Syd is going far, fast, so getting to photograph her now is very exciting.  See more photos from the shoot on my website.

Haiti from Space – Following the Photo Essay

Click the page to read this story on the National Geographic Assignment Blog.

Haiti Image by Image – 1 of 2

The editorial work that I shot in Haiti will be coming out elsewhere, but I still wanted to put a few images that have special meaning for me on this blog. The stories behind each photo were stories that moved me, and although they may not fit with the upcoming editorial I think that they should be told.

There are Happy Haitians too

The newspapers and world fact websites would have us believe that Haiti is an awful place. That as soon as you step out of the airport you should expect to be shot. Haiti is suffering, but in the midst of the pain, hunger, and loss there always seem to be smiles. For the most part, if a visitor just takes the time to actually talk, or if language is a barrier to simply communicate with a warm smile and a handshake then the Haitian people respond with warmth.

Survival

It was a year before people started to enter the collapsed Bel Air Cathedral. Haitians are mostly Catholic, and the collapsed cathedral was one of the few places that wasn’t looted, or hardly even disturbed for quite a while. Now though, with people hungry and desperate, a few pathways are starting to emerge in the debris. There’s not much to be found under the tons of crumbled concrete, but by digging out scraps of rebar this man can collect enough every day to earn himself a meal. The cathedral is one of the few places that still has enough rebar to be worth visiting. Still though, very few people dare enter the church.

On the Brink

There are so many metaphors in this photo. The background is full of empty buildings, leaning dangerously over the street vendors who are too afraid to work inside; the downcast eyes of the Haitian people, and the trash piling up in the streets all represent the current state of the capitol. What the earthquake did not destroy immediately, it crippled. The buildings will fall, it’s just a question of when. Yet life must go on. Street vendors have taken over the store fronts, and the buildings sit empty devoid of any industry. Haiti waits, there is so much to rebuild, but first it must be torn apart.

The Cart Puller

Would you take a job that would most likely kill you before your 40th birthday? For the cart pullers in Haiti, there is little choice. To eat tomorrow, they must torture their bodies today. I imagine one of these men would destroy the “Strongest Man in the World” competition. I’ve seen them pulling loads the size of semi truck trailers down the road and a slow and steady crawl. They are looked upon as the lowest of the low in Haiti, the people you pay when a car would cost too much. A friend even told me once he’d seen one of these men pulling a car, flipped upside down onto his cart. It’s sad but true that in a lot of countries, even our own, the hardest workers are the least paid, and least respected.

Protected: Sirenians – Dugong and Manatee

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Why Beer is Important for Travelers.

The first thing you see when you arrive in a foreign country is usually a taxi. Whether exiting an airport or crossing a border, it’s the taxi drivers that first make contact. The question here, is how much should you be paying? Pay too much, and they’ll get used to ripping off uninformed visitors, pay to little and maybe you’ll end up in an ally.

I forget where I first learned this trick, it may have been from some stranger while riding a chairlift, it may have been from a fellow traveler. The best thing you can do is to ask a local “How much will a local beer cost me?”

To give an example of why this works think of your local restaurant. To get a taxi ride to the restaurant it’s about $10, or two beers. To eat, if it’s a cheap place $10-$15 will get you an entrée. That’s two or three beers.

Now let’s think of it in terms of travel. In Mongolia a beer is $1500 Touareg. A taxi in Ulaanbaatar will run you $3000 – $3500 Touareg. So expect to pay about the same for a meal.

Get the drift? Try it out and let me know how it works for you!

My Review on Photocine News on F-Stop Backpacks