Click here to see the photo larger.

I took this image last fall after leaving the Hat Creek Radio Observatory in remote Lassen County. I saw the rainbow starting to form, and chased it down on one of the bucolic side roads that ran through the quiet valley. Not long after returning from this trip, I posted an image that showed the other end of this rainbow coming out of a nearby farmhouse. However, looking at this other side, I felt I’d never been so close to the end of a rainbow in my life. It was literally “right there.”

But there is an odd thing to chasing rainbows. Like the elusive pot of gold that is said to exist at the end of the rainbow, no matter how much you chase them, you can never catch them. Since biblical times, and the tale of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood, the rainbow has symbolized the end of difficult times, and the promise of something new and better. No matter where we find ourselves in business or in life, we usually want something more or better. Similarly, when we see a rainbow, something inside of us drives us to want to get closer, to actually reach the end. Yet just like the proverbial carrot on a string dangled in front of the stubborn donkey, the rainbow presents its ephemeral nature by receding away from us every time we move towards it.

Yet the keen observer will notice that the rainbow represents much more than the promise of something better to come in the future. Its true reality lies in the beauty of the moment, the present, the here and now. Physics and ocular mechanics dictate that no two people ever see the same rainbow. For each of us, it is a personal vision unique to us and where we are in life at any given moment. With the awareness that the rainbow always recedes from us as we move towards it, should come the realization that the rainbow moves with us. By shifting our position awareness laterally, we can effectively move the end of the rainbow to where we want it, rather than endlessly run towards where we think it is.

By moving myself to different positions on the road for each shot, I was able in one case to make one end of the rainbow come directly out of the farmhouse, or in this case, pick exactly where on the tree line I wanted the rainbow to land.

And so it goes again with business and life. Coming out of 2009, I felt more personally out of balance than I had in several decades. A significant portion of this was due to my accident and recovery, the impact that period had on my business, and my recent hibernation to complete my latest book project. However, on a more general note has been the immense amount of changes going on within the photographic industry and the economy at large.

Rather than add to the songs of negativity that seem to abound, to add weight to something already out of balance, sometimes it is better to shift your position laterally, and let your rainbow follow you.

–

PS: on a processing note this image had to be one of the most demanding and specific images I had worked on in a long time. By that, I mean that the image told me what level of postprocessing it would allow. Even a couple points of adjustment too far on the levels, Hues, vibrance, or saturation, would cause a solid, artificial-looking line of distinction between the colors. While the web conversion may not show it as well as my master tiff file, it was most important to maintain a smooth gradations between the colors, rather than any straight edged abrupt color changes to occur.

That history-related book project I’ve been working on over these last many months is now, as they say, history. I am so delighted to report that as of this last weekend, my sixth book is delivered, and in the hands of my publisher. The book is called California; Yesterday & Today, and is part of a series of similar titles the publisher is producing. The book had originally been set for publication in the summer of 2010, but my accident last year forced a postponement of the project, something about not being able to hold a camera…broken wrist…yada yada yada. The premise of the book and project was for me to find subjects or places related to California, and / or its history, and show how it was (yesterday) and how it is (today). Stay tuned for developments and info on the actual publication date.

Picture: Hydraulic mining water monitor and eroded cliff, Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park, Nevada County, California
This is the first book that I authored in addition to being the principal photographer. I also was the photo researcher in charge of finding all of the historical images that would be used in the book. My previous experience with photo editing, photo research, and running a stock photo library was very handy for the latter aspect. The former aspect, the writing, proved to be a bit more challenging. What really caught me by surprise was the amount of time needed to do the photo and historical background research. I’ll be the first to say that I probably underestimated that aspect by a factor of two or three times.

In the coming weeks I’ll post a few more examples, namely from things that wound up on the cutting room floor, along with some of my other observations and experiences. For now, I am just delighted to have handed this project off to the publisher. Now I can start the process of reclaiming some of the balance that had recently been missing from my life.

I was brought up believing it’s not polite to dance on the grave of your enemy. Yet, I must admit that news last week had me wondering if I could get away with at least a little jig.

General Motors announced that they plan to discontinue the brand of socially elite uber-SUV’s known as the Hummer. The large, military-like vehicle had been based on an Army transport vehicle, but its size drew the ire of environmental groups like moths to a porch light. I have to count myself as one of the people that would see a suburbanite or city dweller driving a Hummer and quietly thought to myself, “Seriously, what the heck do they need a vehicle like that for?” In most cases, it seemed more like a huge, mobile, gas-guzzling badge of social chest puffing. (It’s more about the big gas-swallowing “excessiveness” of the beast. I don’t have any issues with those who chooses to drive a *small* fast Porsche or Lamborghini. In fact, if I could afford one…)

My personal feelings about the Hummer were typified in the summer of 2008, while photographing for my book, Backroads of the California Coast. I even posted a weblog about it back then. It was right at the height of gas prices spiking above $4.50 gallon. I was driving along the oceanfront at Corona Del Mar, when I saw a Hummer parked in front of a large house. Hanging from the front porch was a huge banner that read “Drill Now” aside the American flag. To me, it put a visual stamp on how I felt about America’s need and fascination with ‘big’ and ‘excessive’.

Picture: Hummer and banner at house reading “Drill Now” for more oil, Corona del Mar, Newport Beach, Orange County, California

I personally don’t begrudge anyone their choices of what they buy if they can afford it. But as a social status symbol, and as something that might be associated with how the rest of the world views America, I won’t be sorry to see the Hummer go.

I can understand why they’re upset. Marin County is one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s more affluent regions. The normal cursory thought of “Well, they can afford it” would usually draw little attention. Yet my empathy lies totally with the angry citizens of Marin, who are currently expressing outrage at having their water rates raised. Why the upset? It’s well understood that the cost of living is always on the rise. The answer isn’t what one might expect. The citizens of Marin were asked to conserve water as California suffered through a number of dry years. The citizens did such a good job of conserving water, that reservoirs are now overflowing from recent storms, and the water utility experienced such a low demand for water, that their budget revenue fell 10%. The Marin Water District is now seeking to make up for the loss of revenue caused by it’s citizens excellent conservation efforts. In a case of pure ‘government logic’, they’ve decided to rewarded those who excelled in conservation by raising their rates.

Tell me there’s not something wrong with this picture? If you do a good job of saving a resource, we’re going to charge you more for using the resource. No doubt in my mind; that’s the wrong lesson.

I spent the bulk of last week in Reno, Nevada, attending the 2010 Annual Summit Conference for the North American Nature Photography Association. Considering I had a book deadline coming up this next week, it was a challenge keeping the commitment to attend. I had to cancel my participation at last year’s conference in New Mexico due to other work issues, and promptly fell off a cliff. I simply wasn’t willing to risk anymore similar bad karma by cancelling a second year in a row. My greatest joy at this conference was my work as a portfolio reviewer. Over three days, I got to sit with 12 wonderful and enthusiastic people, looking over their images, discussing their concerns and direction, and offering the best, honest assesment of their work as possible. If I had done nothing else at the conference, the opportunity to help other photographers would have made the whole event worthwhile.

Among pros, the NANPA Summit is more about networking and touching base with friends and peers. I had the chance to interact with many other photographers whose work and skills I admire, including Michael Frye, Brenda Tharp, Greg Vaughn, Charlie Borland, QT Luong, Jed Manwaring, and Jack Graham among others.

Attendance at this year’s conference was lighter than in other years, which I suppose was expected given the economy. That said, there was still a very positive energy from the attendees. The tradeshow still had the traditional notable vendors like Nikon, Canon, Lowepro, Hunts Photo, NIK Software, and numerous photo tour / destination organizations.

Overall, the general program was quite varied in scope. But from my own personal perspective, they didn’t seem to have the same “wow” or draw factor as did the previous summits. It was widely noted that the keynote speeches by Phil Borges and Joel Satore were very well received. There seemed to be a slight thread among non-professional members that I talked to that several of the breakout sessions fell short of expectations, usually due to the presentation content not matching their expectations based on write-up in the program guide.

Of particular note was a presentation called, “Who are you & why should I do business with you?” It turns out it was the exact same presentation I’d seen previously. A couple of the comments I heard was the program as listed in the schedule led people to believe this was going to have a broad business based approach, yet it was entirely specific to the art market, and entirely left out any information about targeting portfolios, contacting, or marketing materials to any other markets like magazines, publishers, stock houses, or ad agencies. On top of that, the one artist presenter, while very personable, started with a preface that he’d only been doing this for the last seven years, and then showed his own marketing where he admitted that he’d forgotten to put his web site address on the card. Isn’t that marketing cardinal rule # 1a; always put your web address on everything you send out?

Another similar instance was the breakout titled “Making the Journey from Amatuer to Pro” by Katherine Feng. While finer reading of the program summary after the fact indicated that this would only be “her story” and will “inspire” others hoping to make a similar transition, a number of the people I talked to said they were hoping as with the first example to have a broader scope, depth, and more concrete examples of what ‘they’ needed to do to become professional.

The Stock & Pros meeting were both very well attended. I thought the Pros meeting was well organized, and nice that it didn’t devolve into the wild vs. captive animal debate. The Stock Photo breakout was also good in that many examples were shown of images still generating good sales. Tom Wear, presenting info on behalf of Getty, had insight on the industry was indeed valuable. But like with the Gorilla in the room, I had the sense that some other comments were a bit white-washed or deliberately softened so as to not point out some of Getty’s negative impact on the industry. Two personal points; Tom showed a bunch of images that sold for $xx,xxx.00, which is great, but it was never brought up that Getty takes 80%, while the photographer usually only gets 20%. I specifically asked about my experience with the invitations sent out by Getty regarding joining the Flickr Collection. I noted that a year ago, I wasn’t able to decide which sales models my invited images could be sold under, i.e. Rights-Managed or Royalty Free. His reply was basically that no, that hadn’t changed. While photographers do have a chance to opt out of a sales model, his reply basically pointed to the fact that they (Getty) felt the photographers there (in Flickr) simply weren’t smart enough to make those kind of decisions based on their experience. Due to the panel wanting to keep the meeting moving along, I simply had to bite my tounge, when I really wanted ask the follow-up of “Why doesn’t Getty just post information about the type of sales models, including the pros & cons, and let the photographers decide if they want to sell their images as RM or RF? Getty could then always provide an alternate model that the photographer could opt-into, rather than opting out of, and losing any chance to have the image put into the collection.

Finally, the “Video for Nature Photographers” was one of the best attended breakouts of the summit. Presented by Ian Shive (with his experience in Hollywood) and Rob Sheppard, Editor at Large for Outdoor Photographer, high expectations were a given. Unfortunately, the subject matter was so deep, that there was no way a cursory 90-minute breakout could even scratch the surface. Ian presented several fine examples of how video could be utilized by nature photographers, but almost no time on how to be using the actual dSLR-V camera(s) available to most of the attendees. I kept waiting for a few basic bullet point do’s and don’t about pans, zooms, and editing, along with the lighting and sound. What I saw was such a huge amount of info flying over the heads of the average audience member. The recurring theme of the session was that a whole workshop could be devoted… i.e., “Sound; gosh, there’s so much to know, we could do a whole workshop on that.” “Lighting; gosh, there’s so much to know, we could do a whole workshop on that.” “Editing; gosh, there’s so much to know, we could do a whole workshop on that.” Most people I talked to walked away simply saying there’s so much more to it than they thought. And while that is very true, I think more time could have been spent showing some of the very basics of how new users might take their first operational steps with a video-camera in the field.

That’s enough of a review for now. Opps, except to say that despite the smoke-filled venue at a casino, the food served at lunch was really good.

The 2011 NANPA Annual Summit Conference will be held next March in Texas.