One of the unsettling effects of bouncing from culture to culture is the disconnect from my own culture, and even my own neighborhood, when I come home. Spend a while in a third-world country and you’ll return with some funny stories about local customs, but you’ll invariably carry an unsettlingly clearer understanding of the stark contrast between the haves and have nots on our planet, as well as an unfortunate grasp of the good and the bad, not just among those in positions of power, but also individuals and groups “doing good.”

In writing this, I am hoping to explain to my neighbors and in a broader sense for the group that comes to this site, how being a contributing photographer for National Geographic can skew how you think about the world and how it gives you a worldview that can be hard for people in your bedroom community to understand, and why I know how it is that sincere people with good intentions often cause collateral damage they could never imagine.

Last week I was in Suriname, a small country in northeastern South America wedged between the Guyanas. I was with Amerindians (mostly Wayana) who were carrying thousand-pound boats through the jungle around rapids. There were eight of the thousand-pound boats to be exact, and it took 20 men to carry each boat, sometimes dragging them for 3 kilometers. They spent weeks doing this so they could cut a hole in one of the most remote jungles in the world, so that 20 of us could drop in by helicopter.

One of the men that cut the hole in the jungle was this guy:

We were lucky to drop in by helicopter, but we came back out by boat and all those boats had to be dragged back out of the jungle on multiple portages. And, yes it was a mess of equipment, food, chain saws, boat engines, 50 gallon drums of aviation fuel.

This is the hole we dropped into:

The Suriname jungle is a very foreign place, there were botflies, which inject eggs under your skin—you can feel them moving around and when they hatch they secrete a natural anesthetic so you don’t feel them come out; sand flies that carry Leishmaniasis, a flesh eating parasite; spiders the size of pie plates whose footfalls you can actually hear in the forest (this tarantula injects a hemotoxin via one-inch-fangs that liquefies its prey and then it sucks said prey back through the same fangs that deliver the venom); and such torrential rains that I actually started dreaming about dry socks.

It was so wet that every night the cameras went into a box filled with silica gel to dry out the interiors of the lenses. I learned the hard way that expensive, weather-sealed lenses take longer to dry out.

I also learned I am grateful that at home I don’t have socks hanging like Christmas tree decorations from the ceiling of my bedroom in hopes that they will dry after many days. That I don’t have to continue to wear the clothes that have turned to cardboard with sweat and all the muck I waded through the previous day. And that I normally don’t slide out of bed into a few feet of water and have to be evacuated by helicopter because the entire place is flooded, overrun by a river that was our friend the night before.

But I was there for a reason—to document this trip. And photographs will show up next year in National Geographic Magazine and on NGM.COM. Here’s a hint: the world could be a better place structurally (how the planet breathes, how it’s systems work) if more scientists were out there dropping into holes in the jungle trying to do this kind of work, trying to do some good.

So, how much did it cost to do some good in this case? In my opinion it was just the amount of money that was really needed. NGM paid for my airfare to Suriname and also for my part of the expedition that cost around $8,000, and of course a salary and other expenses. But I don’t know where it would be possible to cut expenses and still have a safe trip. This expense to document and inform is nothing compared to the amount of money other forces are spending to destroy this place.

So, then I fly home to Sewickley, an affluent suburb of Pittsburgh where we bought a home 25 years ago, and I run into the opposite situation—an incredible waste of money just to do a little good—a problem of wealth run amuck.

My wife is fighting a local church group that wants to tear down a house right behind us. It is one of the last Beaux Arts mansions from the industrial age and want to raze it and build a youth center and a parking lot to combat the current “dangerous” parking situation in a town many people nickname “Mayberry.”  I am listening to this rhetoric only a few days after multiple helicopter flights with an African pilot who was still reading the helicopter-training manual.

Somehow, zoning language was changed for a few short months (now changed back) that allows the church to pretty much go unchallenged on their plans, and church leaders said on video they would do an immediate “humpty dumpty” to this historic structure, so no one would be able to put it back up again.

One problem is that this houses’ ultimate genesis is from one of the trinity of American architects (Wright, Sullivan, Richardson) and the direct connection to this house are his disciples who were “Carnegie’s Architects,” and the folks who made all those incredible Carnegie libraries.

So the appropriate analogy would be if an oblivious entity wanted to tear down or gut Frank Lloyd Wright’s Falling Water to put up a soup kitchen. That Joni Mitchell song was humming in my head,

They took all the trees
Put ‘em in a tree museum *

And they charged the people
A dollar and a half just to see ‘em

Don’t it always seem to go
That you don’t know what you’ve got
Till it’s gone
They paved paradise
And put up a parking lot

One of the rooms in the mansion. You can sign the petition to save this house HERE.

My wife was somewhat manic about this when I came back from the jungle and I was just trying to pay attention to my feet. Once they finally dried, the skin cracked into patterns much like those drought photos you sometimes see in newspapers.

But the strangeness and disorder of this “service religion” and the disconnect I always feel when I come back stuck around longer this time because of the church’s actions, and I kept wondering how much “good” are they really going to do for this incredible price?

The first story I photographed for National Geographic Magazine was a series of portraits of people who had made their own communities better for the anniversary of Earth Day. All of these people made a difference with virtually no funding—without a mansion to work from.

Whether it was saving a vacant lot in Harlem for a community garden or stopping pulp mill pollution in the Okefenokee, they all labored from an un-endowed base. Not being wealthy and coming on the scene without throwing a lot of money around was actually to their advantage. They garnered community support because they were the little Davids fighting the mighty Goliaths.

This is a woman from my first National Geographic story who saved huge amounts of green space in New Hampshire even though she was not wealthy.

This is a man in Harlem that fought to make vacant lots into community gardens:

Child getting drunk on sorghum beer – Omo Valley, Ethiopia

At the same time, I understand that NGOs need money to operate. It is also impossible to disassociate a successful salvation of souls with the accumulation of material wealth. This dynamic plays out through the entire history of organized religion. All you have to do is walk the tourist line through the Vatican to the Sistine Chapel to understand how the Catholic Church has collected the wealth of the world.

But as I look at all the wealth in the Vatican I wonder about the Catholic priests I’ve stayed with in the Congo who are preaching to Africans that condoms don’t stop AIDS.

I see the priests in the Congo eating the tastiest food (shipped in at great expense) in a village where people eat one meal a day. I also see their African altar boys (the priest’s best friends) who are also eating that tasty food and who will eventually become the only ones in that village to get an education and make their way out of poverty.

Life is complicated and organized religion (as much as it helps so much of the world) is not always “good.” One constant in my life is the interaction of institutions of do-gooders on relief trips that live in spiritual or ideological bubbles.

I remember having to go out of my way to help a church group in Iraq that went in to proselytize Muslims. This is a long story . . . but they ended up naked in the desert and stripped of their possessions, because they didn’t pay enough attention to the physical environment around them.

As I write this, neighbors in my town surrounding this house-wrecking church have signs in their yards objecting to the church’s hubris and there are multiple groups poised to take them to court if they don’t do the right thing. This is a prime example of a group living in their spiritual bubble without understanding or seemingly caring about the physical environment around them. But that physical environment is slamming into this church in the same way the bandits slammed into the proselytizers in Iraq.

I have plenty of other examples of folks who don’t need a mansion to feed some refugees or give cub scouts a place to salute a flag or organize a “muffin ministry,” but because this situation is on my mind, I woke with a very vivid flashback last night. I remembered being in an MSF (Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders) hospital in a southern Sudan war zone. I met the doctor in his refuge, under what I can only describe as a ratty, aluminum-pole, picnic tent, and his hospital, a small, thatched hut, wasn’t much better. Inside were war victims, Kala-azar patients, pregnant women, and undernourished children and gunshot victims. It was bleak. That doctor not only delivered many babies that day by making huge incisions (because it is fast and there are less medical complications, except when the mother has to go back the next day to gather firewood), but he did so between patching up a number of guys with gunshot wounds. Some died waiting for him because they were on the wrong side of the triage. I could see that he was trying to figure out how to work faster. I could also see how much good he was doing every single day under the 140° sun.

Woman with unknown skin disease being comforted in MSF field hospital – South Sudan

Soldiers with gunshot wounds that I transported in a chartered aircraft to a MSF field hospital – South Sudan

Carrying wounded soldier to a plane I chartered for an assignment – South Sudan

The church community in my town has been helping refugees. This is commendable work. They are feeding them, helping with education, doing good things for these people who are getting a new start in life.

But I just have to wonder if any of these refugees were one of the many lives that doctor saved that day under his glorified picnic tent.

The disconnect that I bring back with me looks at the relative, disassociated wealth in each of these equally important relief efforts, and tells me clearly that you do not need a mansion to save a man’s life or to feed him once he is safe and sound in my neighborhood.

I have traveled enough to gain a breadth of knowledge that unfortunately does not always contain great depth, and I could not tell you what that MSF doctor was really thinking or what my neighborhood church group is thinking and feeling. But if I could use the breadth of what I know about the world and take a stab at what this church group could do with their money to do some real good, I would suggest they open a shelter or community center in Braddock or Aliquippa or some other devastated, former steel town in their own back yard. That, to me, would do a lot more good than destroying yet another historic structure for yet another parking lot.

This photograph was taken in a disco in Yelizova, Kamchatka, Russia on a down day when we could not get a helicopter. On the way out we got the women’s names and thought it was funny that one of them said the way to contact her was angel4glam.com.

I’ve had a number of email requests for this woman’s actual contact information because angel4glam.com doesn’t work anymore.

First: This creeps me out.

Second: For the men that are asking for her contact information I can only say: Walk AWAY from the computer. Walk out the front door. Continue walking until you find an actual 3D woman that gives some indication that she will have a conversation with you. Give it a shot.

When you come back to the computer read this: NY Times: The Flight From Conversation

The famous photographer, Robert Capa, was a guest on my grandfather’s radio show in New York in the 1940s. The book he is holding is on my shelf at home just below a shelf of the books that my grandfather wrote.

Three of the more successful of my grandfather’s books on this shelf are So Dear to My Heart, The Wolfling, and RASCAL. They sold millions of copies and RASCAL is still a best seller in it’s market niche. These books had 104 translations into 50 languages, they were broadcast over Voice of America, included in kits sent with the armed forces into Vietnam, and read in every grade school when I was a child. RASCAL and So Dear to My Heart were both made into Disney movies. My grandfather was a hunt and peck typist… one finger at a time… and he responded to every one of 20,000 fan letters using that typewriter. His boyhood home is a museum about his life in Edgerton Wisconsin. In 1977 RASCAL was turned into one of the most popular anime cartoons in Japan. Then the cartoon was syndicated into many other cultures.

So why am I telling you all this?

Let’s talk about that cartoon, Araiguma Rasukaru, and Japanese culture.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I thought it was crazy when I stepped off a subway in Tokyo to see an entire RASCAL shop devoted to selling stuff from my grandfather’s life and to see the animated version of him on big screen TV’s even though he’s been gone for 40+ years.

Click here to view the embedded video.

There is even RASCAL toilet paper. I guess some members of our family were aware that this cartoon had further implications than just all the plastic stuff it was generating, but when my sister sent me an email two days ago, I admit, I had not been aware of what she wrote: I turned on the TV this evening and the first thing I saw was “Nature” on PBS and it was about raccoons. … And if that wasn’t exciting enough, the scene switches all of a sudden to a Buddhist temple (oh no) and the narrator starts talking about how mountain temples that have survived all other threats during the last 700 to 1,000 years are now being ravaged by gangs of raccoons (I’m standing up now)…

And then I hear, “Raccoons are not indigenous to Japan,” (I have my hand over my mouth now and am muttering, “don’t say it, don’t say it.”) ” . . . They’re not indigenous to anywhere near Japan. They were introduced because of the popular book ‘Rascal,’ written by Sterling North . . . ” and then they show the book, and then they show a clip of the Japanese cartoon that ran for years and years and was so popular that “Rascal Raccoon” is practically as popular in Japan as Mickey Mouse is in the U.S. And apparently since the character was so beloved, the Japanese imported as many as 1,500 raccoons a year (!!) for pets, which (obviously) is a disaster waiting to happen… so most of the “pet” raccoons were released/dumped into the wild where they have no predators and as of a few years ago they are hugely occupying 42 of 47 prefectures and ravaging crops all across the country and ransacking temples and, in general, doing what raccoons do.

I can only imagine what Grandpa North would think about all this. Obviously the rather important part of the story where it becomes apparent that you should not / can not keep a raccoon as a pet was entirely lost on a segment of the Japanese population. I like yaks, but I am not going to order one. I even saw journal articles about it and how the raccoon rampage in Japan prompted the “Alien Invasive Species Act” there in 2005. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, all of a sudden I am aware that, through no fault of his own (but in a direct reaction to his work) my grandfather is somehow implicated in unleashing an invasive species in Japan that has no natural predators… Kinda like the Black Sea filling up with huge biomass of jellyfish… Or the cane toads in Australia that marched through the country and when I was there. I remember the rangers in Kakadu were trying to round up quolls to put them on an island that no cane toads could get to because they were wiping out that entire species… Or even just the cute kittens that Melissa shot for an invasive species story for National Geographic Magazine – feral cats are creating the same kind of problems in the states. It goes on and on… they were even talking about genetic engineering for the cane toad problem when I was in Australia… I thought that was really crazy…

Melissa’s invasive species story was published in the JAPANESE edition… But I guess I don’t expect they would stop importing Raccoons when our own neighbors were planting (another example in the story) invasives in their gardens in Pennsylvania.

But really… Arctic dogs are being imported into very hot areas of China because they are so “cute.” What in the world would possess someone to bring a raccoon that, like a chimp, you cannot keep into adulthood and has no NATURAL PREDATORS in Japan… and Raccoons are REALLY SMART… Just watch the Raccoon Nation program… these critters are amazing and unstoppable.

This page above is when RASCAL was set free… Even my grandfather had to take his pet back to the woods at a certain age… but he was taking it back to the woods where he belonged… not setting him free in the streets of Tokyo!

But there are many things my grandfather would not be happy about… the tree that he and his raccoon lived in after school came down last year in a terrible storm…

My grandfather was a naturalist and in tune to the order of things… He told me that everything in nature had a rhythm and a season. I have a letter he wrote on his very first trip on a plane in 1940. After seeing the geometry of what we now call the anthropocene for the first time – “From the air, one would imagine that humankind thinks only in terms of squares, rectangles, ovels and limitless narrow ribbons of white concrete.” He takes a look at the natural world for the first time from this new angle:

“But if man seems orderly from the air, nature seems wilful. Streams flow in an unbelievable pattern of sharply twisted and serpentine complexity. Mysterious drainage patterns of the subsoil create fantastically beautiful patterns which we cannot see from the ground, lacing every field with finger tracings of subtly altered coloration — fanshape, dragon-claw willowy. Nothing on this earth or in heaven could be so beautiful as America from 9,000 feet.”

My grandfather had a history of accomplishing great things at an early age. He was only eight when his first poem was published in a national magazine. He was in his teens when his poetry was being published in Harpers.

His pet helped him through hard times. “It was inevitable that some day I would write the story of the almost perfect pet who saw me through a lonely year when I was 11 and 12. My mother had died when I was seven. But before she died she had taught me much about the stars, about nature and about literature.”

Maybe the best way to end the longest post of my life is with his words… a poem he wrote about his mother when his sister died.

You can never go home –

Except, perhaps in letters –

Yellow now and the ink as brown

As leaves around an old house

Drifting down.

Dear father, dear sister,

Are you well? Are you in pain?

Did the lilacs bloom this April?

Have you had rain?

Did the rose we planted

On Mother’s grave survive the snow?

(I wish I were writing to Mother,

She was the first to go.)

We are well and hope you are the same –

I couldn’t finish this before the postman came.

I have written a letter that will never be read;

How could I know as I wrote that you are dead.

The fog is thick, the world is bleak and cold

The letters fade, the ink is brown and old

The candle dwindles to a thin blue flutter 

No breath of hyacinth across the snow

(I wish I were writing to mother

She was the first to go.)

I read this and think about his life and how much he loved and needed his pet… what do I really know about those Japanese lives anyway…

We’ve known John since he was an intern at the Pittsburgh Press where we all worked… We’ve vacationed in Africa together and kept up pretty well until he started covering conflict zones… and for years, we would only see him on CNN every now and then when they would show a brick slamming into his head in SLO-MO while he was covering some uprising somewhere in the world. He was nearly blown up with Benazir Bhutto… and… and… and…

It’s nice to finally see a video of what he’s been up to…

Melissa has shot city stories for National Geographic Traveler on Miami and Chicago, which made sense to her… but a Traveler story on Detroit? She didn’t know how great the city actually was until she got there, met some crazy artists, hung out at a turn of the century speakeasy and basically had a great time… her story follows…

When I’m asked where I’ve just been on an assignment, people wait with a dreamy look on their faces expecting to hear some exotic location or far away foreign land that will make them envious. When I tell them I was in Detroit to shoot a travel story, there is a look of disbelief accompanied by silence as though they didn’t hear me correctly. I have to admit that I wondered when I accepted the assignment from Traveler if I would regret it.

Detroit—Rust Belt city in ruins. Unemployment—bankruptcy. Motor City—Murder City. Worst of the worst in many people’s minds. I imagined trudging around carrying my camera, looking over my shoulder with fear that I’d be the next crime victim. The weather was sure to turn cold and snow. On top of it all, the assignment fell on the week of my birthday—so I’d probably be alone.

The urban ruins reinforced my uneasiness when I arrived–large, empty blocks where buildings once stood. I got a tour from a local photographer the first night and she warned me that lots of street lights were out and to take care not to hit anyone walking in the street.

We ate and stopped at her favorite bar hangout where I got an update on the Tigers that were playing in the World Series and realized the Lions were playing in town too.  There was something in her voice—she spoke with pride. I could tell she loved the city. I connected with writer’s contacts and began to work. It’s always hard to begin, but this looked to be more than a challenge.

The first shock was walking in to a Speakeasy close to my hotel and feeling I’d stepped back in time. Talk about atmosphere—people were sitting at little tables pulled up to a beautiful mahogany bar—talking–laughing–what a fabulous place. Actually there were two Speakeasies that had great vibes—Café-D’Mongos and Cliff Bells. The music, the food, but what made the greatest impression were the people. They were so friendly. I didn’t feel like a stranger.

The next surprise was the over the top fabulous architecture. I’d seen photographer’s dramatic images of the “ruin porn” of post-industrial Detroit. But I didn’t know about the Guardian Building, Fisher Building, the Detroit Opera House—just a few treasures that still exist. Many more need to be saved like this one, but the process has started.

Places like the Eastern Market and the riverfront development felt familiar—I live in Pittsburgh and watched the city develop a friendlier interface and has kept ethnic charm. But I don’t know of another place anywhere like the Heidelberg Project. I’m not sure how to begin to describe a 25-year endeavor by a Detroit artist that transformed a dilapidated inner-city neighborhood into Detroit’s third most popular tourists’ destination. A polka dot house? Sculpture of discarded objects make a political statement? The Heidelberg Project is a creative metamorphosis from urban decay to a few city blocks that continually evolve as a whimsical, thriving outdoor art museum.

In fact I met a lot of artists that have come to Detroit. Young creative classes are attracted to places where rents are low—similar as to what happened in Brooklyn. Detroit has a history of supporting the arts. There are commioned Diego Rivera murals that cover a huge courtyard in the Detroit Art Museum but I also found many local artists painting murals on buildings that served as “blank canvases.”

Yellow flowers were a finishing touch on a playhouse in Mexicantown; but across from the now abandoned Grand Central Station, artists worked on the unconventional “Imagination Station” questioning the gentrification of their Corktown neighborhood.

Whether they were on Belle Isle planting trees or swimming on the last warm day of the year in the Detroit River–or urban pioneers pulling up weeds to take back the city to make gardens—people were open and genuinely nice.

One friendly resident that was curious about me hanging around warned, “People come here and get out of their cars and put their purses and backpacks under their front seat and expect to come back and they will still be there. Lady, you are in the ‘hood. Don’t forget that.” But nothing bad happened to me during my ten days in Detroit. Well, except for the three parking tickets I received. I earned them. I paid them, but attached a note saying I hoped they used my money wisely to help pay the city’s bills.

I’ve gotten more emails the past few days over this story than any I’ve had published in a very long time. People are surprised to learn there is another side of Detroit. Those who live there seem grateful to find a bit of recognition for the good as well as for hope in the midst of a very sad story.

Churchgate Station used to be the easiest place in India to take photographs of teaming hordes coming off the trains. There was a lunch counter balcony directly over the area where everyone got off the trains and came through the station. But then there was a bombing at Churchgate and the lunch counter balcony turned into a military observation area. After that, Anglo guys that looked like the bomber (and me), had absolutely no chance of getting into this secure area..

So my story fixer (Vinay Diddee) and I hired a runner who carried official National Geographic paperwork to all the offices of the bureaucrats that control the station and we had him plead our case for me to have access…. it took the runner two weeks and the answer was always NO… but one bureaucrat said: “If he was an Indian, then I would let him up there.”

So, Vinay was allowed to go up to the military area with my camera and tripod and I showed him a sketch of the photo I wanted. Then I waited in the van and we had the same runner that schmoozed the bureaucrats go between him and me with the camera cards Vinay was using in my camera.. When I received the cards down in the van, I put them into another camera to view them and then called Vinay on his cell phone… the first time saying…. bring the lens down a little… the second time saying it needed a slower shutter speed….. the third time I asked him to put on a darker ND filter… fourth time.. zoom in… etc… etc…

It took eight trips back and forth with cards to get the framing and everything else right… then I just told him to keep shooting whenever there were big crowds that filled the foreground of the photograph. Then for two hours I sat in the van and watched the movie GI Joe in HINDI on the DVD player hanging from the roof of the van. it didn’t matter that it wasn’t in English… it was just guys running around blowing stuff up… so I was working an Indian fixer by remote control while watching a shoot-em-up movie in a van in Mumbai in a language that sounded pretty weird coming out of American actors.

So.. I went back to the hotel and ordered a bowl of soup and a waiter in a tux with a dining room table size cart trundles into my room with one little 6 oz bowl of soup on it… I should say here that Vinay has connections with a very nice hotel chain that is actually cheaper than staying in some businessman hotel. But being in this nice hotel is complicated by the fact I am working in the biggest slums in the world… So I decided not to do the butler in the room thing again and that night I went down to the dining room and had dinner alone and the waiter brought a bowl with two big goldfish and set them across from me at the empty seat to keep me company…. I had my iPad reading the paper… I was fine.. but now I had these two huge goldfish staring at me… sucking their cheeks in and out… the waiter felt sorry for me eating alone… but how pathetic…

The next day was my birthday and I didn’t intend to repeat either of those experiences…

So.. I thought I would just let the day go… disappear…. but this morning as we were getting ready to leave at 5:30AM Vinay said “Happy Bday” and it turns out Vinay’s wife has some weird-crazy-accurate-deal with dates… and she had run my passport thru for visas a few years ago…

And then… after a sucky shooting day… I went back to hotel… the phone rang… and a woman said… Mr. Olson we understand it is your bday and I would like to celebrate it with you… The hotel also had my passport copy… so a guy in a tux AGAIN and a customer relations guy and this woman all came up with what was ACTUALLY a great cake… a HUGE thing of flowers… a brass hindu god kinda gift and took their photos with my arms around them… and sung happy bday…. and then bowed a little bit… did a bunch of Indian head wobbles… said sir a lot and asked if I wanted them to close the door on the way out…

During his presentation David La Chapelle made an interesting note of something quite unusual to him: the comradeship he witnessed among photographers who work for National Geographic.  Quite different from what he’s used to in the world of fashion, I guess.  And he’s right on the mark today because the comradeship among National Geographic photographers has never been better or stronger, not because the times are better, but very probably because they are not.  We seek common goals and it isn’t just about making more money.  It’s about getting a fair trade for what we do and what we do has always had maintaining the highest excellence of the magazine possible at the top of our priority list.  We in the newly formed Photo Society, with its dedicated and extremely hard working elected advisory board, have a presence not seen before among our type and I’ve been around National Geographic photographers for 48 years.

WHAT IT’S LIKE TO BE AT A NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHERS’ FAMILY REUNION AND MORE

I just returned this past weekend from the annual National Geographic Photographers’ Seminar at National Geographic headquarters in Washington, D.C.

The Photographers’ Seminar is a time when one might see certain friends for the only time during the year.  They may have come from Paris, New York, Sweden, almost anywhere.  But because many of us lead a semi-nomadic life, crossing paths with others of the same ilk can be rare.  Like the sighting of some elusive species of wildlife.

It’s the one time in the year when many–although never all–of the photographers who contribute to the magazine are brought together to share their thoughts, their work, and to enjoy and contemplate the work of photographers invited to speak and show work, photographers whose photographic interests and aspirations may be greatly dissimilar to those of the Geographic photographers, but still of strong interest and visual value.

There was a time when photographers not part of the Geographic’s stable of staff and freelancers were not invited as speakers.  Fortunately, that changed years ago, notably when Rich Clarkson came in as Director of Photography. It’s not important if the speaker does work that doesn’t come close to what the Geographic might publish; that’s actually often very refreshing and stimulating.  In fact, au contraire.  What a bore it would be if all of us leaned in the same direction in our efforts.

Paolo Pellegrin, who opened the seminar Thursday morning, showed a variety of his work, ending with a selection of images on New York.  Paolo’s pictures are always so well seen.  He is a favorite of mine.  I can sink into his images at times.  On my writing desk I still have a copy of the New York Times Magazine from February, 2009, with his marvelous portraits of Oscar nominees.  Much of the work he showed last week was far darker. I won’t say deeper because some of them showed  the seemingly never end of man’ capability for brutality.  Maybe they could be fairly said to be more important.  But I wouldn’t ever want to give the impression that his movie star pictures were shallow in comparison; nothing could be farther from the truth, in my opinion.  His access to those people who act and create a place for us to momentarily escape and at times bring us to a higher emotional and intellectual level, was evidently better than very good and he took advantage of that access and depicted the various players in ways really brilliant.

I won’t go through all the presenters at the seminar other than to say it was, as usual, quite a mixed bag.   I wish I could remember it accurately enough to quote from National Geographic senior picture editor Todd James’ well thought out introduction to David La Chapelle, who closed the seminar, but I will say that La Chapelle’s pictures ran the gamut from startling to stupendous, and his visual thinking is extraordinary. His imagery is such a wonderful combination of intellectual interpretation and photographic mastery.  Even if one is not quite taken with some of his pictures, I, for one, find his visual contemplation fascinating.

I am now going to take a break from writing here in a Waynesboro, Virginia Starbucks(I suppose if I were a tweeter I could announce it that way but I’m not and why tweet, anway, about just getting in a car to go home?) and go home to my writing area where I can play some music and finish this up.  I’m in Starbucks because our Hughes high speed Internet connection has given up the ghost and we can’t get a service guy until the end of the week.  And then they say we have to pay a service charge.  How is it that when a service one pays for breaks down, the person being serviced gets penalized by having to pay for it to work?  We live on the side of a mountain with not much in the way of high speed Internet options.  We’re a step up from dial up, but it’s a very short step.  And for now there is nothing.  No step. No signal. Nothing.

It’s an hour or so later and I’m back.  I had to stop at the deer processing guy’s house to find out why my son Anthony got all burger and no steaks or summer sausage from the deer he brought in last week and I picked up on my way home from the seminar.

But now I’m not really up for music, having stopped on my way up the driveway at the pump shed to check on the water pipes after a very cold last night and discovered we have a leak, maybe from a frozen pipe and now must have a plumber come out, after normal workday hours to fix what ever needs fixing. Last week while I was up in D.C. the boiler providing our hot water and heat went bad and was exhausting carbon monoxide into the house so we now need a new boiler and the accompanying new exhaust piping and tearing out of ceilings and all of that.  It will cost a lot.  Possibly over twelve grand.

And now we need a plumber. At after hours prices.

Sadly, I’ve lost my craving for music for the time being.  Can’t think of anything to play that will help my anxiety over the onrushing bills to pay, so I’ll try to finish up this thing while writing at a table just off the kitchen, watching Every Day Italian with Giada on television, between paragraphs.  She’s always a pleasure to watch and I may, although not often, jot down a recipe or take note of a cooking technique.  It sometimes depends upon what Giada is wearing.

Probably one of the most awaited aspects of the National Geographic Photographers’ Seminar is the day after the seminar speakers, on Friday afternoon when “Works In Progress,” kicks in for about three hours.  Open basically only to photographers who are regular contributors to the magazine or who have recently had something in the magazine, they are invited to show work they may be in the midst of producing, not necessarily for the magazine, although many do show assignments on which they are currently working.

The natural history guys never cease to amaze me at the “Works in Progress” sessions. They seem to constantly raise the bar ever higher for excellence in what they do.  I’m so happy I don’t have to compete with them for a gig.

Paul Nicklin and Brian Skerry continue to make incredible images in their underwater explorations; David Doubilet, now, I think, considered one of the pioneers at underwater work, always seems to have that slightly more artistic edge to his images. He showed some fascinating half in/half out-of-the water pictures.

Tim Laman, whom I kiddingly called “The Blue-Eyed Maniac” after watching his video of him descending from a canopy where he had been photographing Birds of Paradise or some other winged creature reached photographically only by climbing high into the jungle tree tops using some kind of rope device and once there, by climbing by hand, limb-to-limb.

Nick Nichols is in the process of making pictures of lions in the Serengeti with an intimacy perhaps never before seen.  Some of the pictures he showed were made through his use of a camera mounted on a motorized, miniaturized tank-like vehicle that rolls along, moving in on the lions in a way one normally cannot and with a far greater intimacy than with a long lens.   Once he has this thing fully mastered his pictures are going to be something else, indeed.  Unless, of course, the lions refuse to consider it something to be tolerated and eventually kill it.  At least they probably can’t eat it and the parts might be salvageable for some other use.

Alex Webb showed pictures from East London.  As usual, his pictures often had a lot of moving parts; his opening, bus stop picture was a favorite of mine.  David Alan Harvey showed pictures ripe with the fervor of Rio.  And a young couple with names I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember, showed some images from the Andes I liked a lot.

Gerd Ludwig showed some very surreal cityscapes from his work in Astana, the new capital of Kazakhstan.  An extraordinary set of pictures with the people as well.

I can’t possibly list everybody that showed great work in what was a strong afternoon of well-seen imagery.

As for me, I didn’t have an assignment last year and photographed not much more than a few portraits of a naked pole dancer at her home and a hair stylist in her Day of the Dead makeup in a small, empty room at her hair salon. Both women live in Missoula, Montana and I may eventually add them to my ongoing “Her Picture in a Frame” project but I didn’t think it was enough to show.  I spent most of my time in Montana last summer and fall working on a novel I started maybe 15 years ago, then put aside for a long time and just last year returned to and hope to finish sometime later this year as time permits.  I’m not a good multi-tasker and if on assignment I don’t try to write on the side if I’m not writing the story.  Can’t do that.  An assignment is an all-demanding kind of thing.  And good writing is hard work and takes a lot of time.

But I’ve always participated in the “Works In Progress” part of the seminar so I asked Nick if I it would be okay to read a couple excerpts from my novel and I did.

I’ve read a piece of my writing before at “Works In Progress,” eleven years ago.  But that was non-fiction from a retrospective book I was working on.  That reading was about a range detective  in
Wyoming I photographed for LIFE who once drunkenly held a gun on me.  That was for real.  This time it was fiction and fair to say, more sexual than riding the range with a range detective . I needed a bit more than the three-and-a-half minutes limit imposed on the photographers, some of whom honored it.  I think part of what I read might have struck some as a bit over-the-top, but that’s what this kind of thing is about and you  have to be willing to stick your neck out.  I chose excerpts that had lots of word pictures, ones that didn’t have to deal with the vagueness of plot in such a brief time.  When you take a piece of writing out of context and let it float out there by itself, it may not fly as well or as high as you would like.  But I was in the mix and enjoyed it.

During his presentation David La Chapelle made an interesting note of something quite unusual to him: the comradeship he witnessed among photographers who work for National Geographic.  Quite different from what he’s used to in the world of fashion, I guess.  And he’s right on the mark today because the comradeship among National Geographic photographers has never been better or stronger, not because the times are better, but very probably because they are not.  We seek common goals and it isn’t just about making more money.  It’s about getting a fair trade for what we do and what we do has always had maintaining the highest excellence of the magazine possible at the top of our priority list.  We in the newly formed Photo Society, with its dedicated and extremely hard working elected advisory board, have a presence not seen before among our type and I’ve been around National Geographic photographers for 48 years.

The seminar wrapped up Friday night at a place called the Potomac Boat House in Georgetown and it was a fine party.  I had new boots that were hurting and did not dance, but many did.  And there was that same spirit of comradeship evident on the dance floor.  Even John Fahey, CEO of the National Geographic Society was out there, looking good.  I think it was a night to remember.  I also saw several interesting women during the seminar days that I hope I’ll be fortunate enough to photograph some day, if they’d like.

Just a closing note that fits right in with the way things have been going around here on the mountain lately: While trying to finish this blog the plumber arrived. It seems a pressure gauge down in the pump house is what has broken, sprouting a steady stream of water, requiring the water to be shut off until the plumber can return in the morning to replace the gauge.  So from here on to morning, no water.  It’s not quite dinner time.

After the plumber left I’ve taken telemarketing calls from someone offering “A really good way to avoid septic tank problems…” (we do have a septic tank but currently and surprisingly enough, no problem), and just now, a call from a guy with some company called, I think, “Walk In Care.”  He said it’s “A walk-in-bathtub.”  I said, no, I’m not interested.  Don’t need one.  I guess they have information that tells them who to prey on, who lives at such and such an address and how old the inhabitants are. Not to say there aren’t people who would find benefit from having a walk-in bathtub.  My wife is much younger than I and doesn’t need one and although I may be 74, I can still shower with the best of them.  That is, if I had water.

It’s now the next day.  The plumber came early this morning.  It took 15 minutes for him to install the new water pressure gauge.  The gauge cost $11.00.  The total bill for the part, putting it in, and the time involved, coming from his house to mine last night and then this morning, came to $491.00.  The hourly rate yesterday because it was after hours was $150.00 an hour.  Today it was down to $105.00 an hour.

Am I in the wrong profession? If so, it’s way too fucking late to change.

Why is Nuestra Mirada so cool?

Pablo Corral Vega creates a social media site for Spanish world photographers.

You can go to the New York Times and read about the incredibly high incidence of breast lifts in Columbia. You can read about Hugo Chavez ire about the “monstrous thing” that poor women are seeking breast lifts when they are having a hard time paying for food. But if you want to see what it’s like for a woman in Columbia to go through this process (warning… this could be hard for some to view), head over to Nuestra Mirada, the Facebook for Spanish world photographers created by Pablo Corral Vega when he was working at the University of Miami. Pablo is a contributor to National Geographic, a member of The Photo Society and the most connected guy I know in the world of Spanish speaking photographers. Pablo and Loup Langton put on the first Latin American POYi in Quito last year – Melissa was one of the judges along with Ruth Eichorn from GEO magazine, Walter Astrada – World Press winner from Argentina, Claudi Carreras, and Francisco Mata Rosas.

It’s rare to go to a single site and learn so much about other cultures. I don’t speak Spanish, so I keep a few Google translate windows open to get some idea of what the Nuestra Mirada members are talking about. Of you can use this direct Google translate link for the site.

The photograph above is by Guillermo Ossa. To see the photographers pages for the other photographs click on the links.

The photo below is from the town Canton San Eloy Rocafuerte in Manabi province, Ecuador. This town has been celebrating those who have been objects of romantic betrayal for several years. This celebration is held in honor of Ramon Mendoza, a butcher of St. Eloy, who was returning from his working day in the market and found his wife in bed with her best friend.

Ramon is the patron of cachudos in Manabi. He decided not to commit suicide because of this betrayal of love, and with several friends who had the same fate, created the club Cachudos San Eloy.

For nine years, ​​this celebration has been a tradition in Manabi, as it makes caravans, has a festival queen, and (in the photo below) they have lined the house of Ramon Mendoza with the horns of cattle. (this is from a reworked Google translate section… sorry)

A lovely portrait from Day of the Dead:

If you want to see this guy’s shoe closet – go here:

I saw Karla Gachet and Ivan Kashinsky’s work in Nuestra Mirada before it won in World Press. This is a photograph from one of Karla’s posts:

There are idiosyncratic cultural photos from South America:

But these photographers also look at idiosyncratic USA culture when it lands in Cancun for spring break:

Shot by more than one photographer:

There is a series of photos from an anti-bullfighting protest:

There are a number of portrait posts that have a similar feel to the work we saw entered in POY from South America when we were teaching at the University of Missouri in the 1980′s. There is a look that is similar in many of the portrait posts.

This is a simple series of photographs about the few people that swim in the winter:

Sometimes both lack of Spanish and too little information with the photographs make it difficult to figure out what is going on. If you want to try to figure out why the Peruvian military seems to be looting this coffin in this photograph, go here:

Melissa chose a few images from the judging in Quito. You can click on the first photograph below to go to the POY site and look around:

1st place Multimedia… click on the Galerias 360

Click here to view the embedded video.

Steven Colbert brings his satirical comedy to bear on the notion of “free reporters” who get paid nothing, like CNN’s iReport, in the wake of the layoffs of 50 CNN photojournalists and other staff.

Colbert notes CNN also launched an “Assignment Desk” where you an actually go out and report on things that CNN wants, and then goes further, saying “iReporters do not get paid, they get something even better, badges, which, I assume, are redeemable for food and rent.”

View the VIDEO HERE.